Continued from Part 2.
PEACEFUL PROTESTS
In the month of April, 1993, in line with Shell’s decision that my movements be closely monitored, I had received the full attention of the security agencies. I was arrested and interrogated several times, the questioning being aimed at proving that MOSOP was advocating Ogoni secession from Nigeria (which was patently untrue).
This spate of arrests disturbed the Ogoni people and on 29th of April, 1993 in tune with the non-violent tenets of MOSOP, a peaceful protest march was stages in Port Harcourt. The march ended with a visit to the Speaker of the Rivers State House of Assembly to whom a petition was presented.
I travelled to Europe in the middle of May, 1993. In my absence, an attempt was made by Dr. Leton, late Chief Kobani and the late Albert Badey to sell the idea of the resumed construction of the Shell oil pipeline by Wilbros at public meetings. The idea was rejected by the Gokana villagers across whose land the pipeline was due to pass.
BOYCOTT OF PRESIDENTIAL ELECTIONS
I returned to Part Harcourt on the 1st of June, in time for a crucial meeting of the Steering Committee of MOSOP scheduled for 2nd June, 1993 at the usual venue, the residence of the then president, Garrick Leton. I was not a regular at meetings of the Steering Committee since I was fulfilling my responsibility of organizing for publicity and diplomacy, in particular, in Lagos and overseas.
At that meeting, two issues were tabled. First, the Committee received a delegation of the people of Gokana kingdom which came to formally inform the Committee that a resumption of construction works on the Shell oil pipeline was not acceptable to the people. The message was noted by the Committee. Next was the issue of the Presidential elections due to be held on the 12th of June, 1993.
A motion to boycott the elections was tabled and was exhaustively debated by the Committee. Support for a boycott was overwhelming. The reasoning was simple. MOSOP had to remain neutral among the two existing Nigerian parties. It was for this reason that the top officials of the organization had been advised to shun party politics, advice which both Dr. Leton and the late Chief Kobani (then president and vice-president respectively) had ignored. But more importantly, a boycott would make the point that the Ogoni were disenchanted with the Constitution under which the elections were being held since its provisions deprived them of their oil resources, and this was regarded as discriminatory.
At the specific instance of late Chief Edward Kobani, the boycott proposal was put to the vote and was approved be eleven votes to six.
The matter has arisen as to the composition of the Committee on the day. Available records indicate that the eighteen members who were present at the meeting were the same who regularly attended the weekly meetings of the Committee. One member, Sir Simeon Idemyor, did not vote because he was the electoral officer.
The proposal to boycott the elections was placed before the Ogoni people at various venues in Ogoni immediately thereafter and was unanimously endorsed. The people were properly briefed on how to conduct themselves on election day. Those who wished to were not to be prevented from voting.
Subsequent to this, the party politicians on the Steering Committee, including Dr. G.B. Leton, late Chief Edward Kobani, Late Albert Badey and Chief T.N. Nwieke called on me and pressured me into rescinding the decision of the Committee. I refused to be party to such unethical behaviour. Both Dr. G.B. Leton and late Chief Edward Kobani informed me that they would be resigning their positions as President and Vice-President of MOSOP respectively. I noted their decision.
I have to stress here that it was this decision to boycott the elections which led singularly to the resignation of Dr. Leton and late Chief Edward Kobani and not any disagreement over the methods of MOSOP. The boycott was a non-violent action, and the two men resigned their positions only because boycotting the election dented their putative positions in the Social Democratic Party to which they had trumpeted their ability to “deliver Ogoni”. The boycott decision had once again shown that no one could use MOSOP and the Ogoni people for their personal ends, as had been the case in the past; and that the Ogoni masses refused to be exploited by anyone whatsoever.
I left for Lagos on the 7th of June, 1993 on my way to the United Nations World Conference on Human Rights due to be held in Vienna from the 11th of June.
In my absence, the prominent politicians on the Steering Committee, including Dr. G.B. Leton, Dr. B.N. Birabi, Late Chief Edward Kobani, Chief T.N. Nwieke, late Mr. Albert Badey and Chief E.A. Apenu met and decided, I am informed, to issue a radio announcement IN MY NAME, calling upon the Ogoni people to go to the polls because MOSOP had rescinded its boycott order. Dr. B.N. Birabi actually issued the notice and signed what was purported to be my signature. This was an act of forgery.
The announcement on Rivers State radio of this forged document alerted Ogoni people who decided to frustrate the fraudulent politicians. Elections could not be held. No arrests were made, however, and there was no violence reported.
I had been stopped on the 11th of June, 1993 at the Lagos airport and prevented from travelling to Vienna by the security agencies. My passport was confiscated. Instructed to report to the Lagos offices of the State Security Service on the 18th of June, I remained in Lagos to keep the appointment and was told that I could not have back my passport. I returned to Port Harcourt later that day. On the 21st of June, 1993 I was abducted on the streets of Port Harcourt by armed security agents and taken to Lagos.
As reported, my arrest was followed by a massive peaceful protest march in Port Harcourt on the 21st, and in Bori-Ogoni on the 22nd of June, 1993. The Port Harcourt march was without incident. However, at Bori, the police used tear-gas on the protesters and this incensed the latter as the march had been peaceful. The protesters went to the police station and ransacked it.
Some government-appointed Chiefs who felt threatened by their anti-people actions in the past were frightened by this development which was totally uncharacteristic of the hitherto-cowed Ogoni people, and ran for cover to the Governor of Rivers State in Port Harcourt, alleging that their property had been vandalized. There is indication that four houses were slightly damaged by the angered mob.
At this point, I was not yet President of MOSOP, I was not physically present in Ogoni or in Port Harcourt, so no one can put the protests to me. If anyone is to be blamed, it would surely be Dr. Leton and his group who had abandoned the people in pursuit of their personal ambitions in the two existing parties, and who had, by forging my signature on a radio announcement, incited the Ogoni masses to protest.
DETENTION
Even from my detention cell I immediately called for calm, assuring the Ogoni people that I was safe and that there was no cause for alarm. I was to remain in detention for thirty-one days during which I was charged for sedition and remanded in prison custody. When my health failed, I was transferred to hospital and following considerable international protest, was granted bail on the orders of the so-called military Vice-President of Nigeria, Admiral Augustus Aikhomu.
NEW ELECTIONS TO MOSOP STEERING COMMITTEE
I was still in detention at Owerri when the Steering Committee of MOSOP met to fill the positions vacated by Dr. G.B. Leton and late Chief Edward Kobani. I was elected President in absentia and Ledum Mitee, a brilliant young Ogoni lawyer, Deputy President. The Committee decided that I should remain the Spokesman of the Ogoni People. Other young men were elected to positions on the Steering Committee, thus effecting a youthful reaction to the shenanigans of the older Ogoni who had abandoned the people in preference for anticipated political party gains.
I did not influence any of these decisions. They were decisions of the people, democratically taken, which I accepted.
SHELL LAUNCHES A PERSONAL CAMPAIGN
My detention raised a furore in international circles as writers, human rights, environmental and indigenous people groups campaigned for my release. As Shell’s role in Ogoni naturally came into focus, the Company issued a press note in which it accused me of organizing a secessionist movement. As far as the Company was concerned, my cause was not environmental, as Shell had done nothing wrong in Ogoni; I was merely using Shell to bolster my secessionist campaign. Quite plainly, Shell was now inciting the military against me. And it was in character. Their new public tack was entirely at variance with the views expressed in their internal memorandum of February 1993 at their meetings in Rotterdam and London.
THE NATIONAL SITUATION
At the material time, Babangida the military dictator, was playing games with the nation. The Presidential elections of 12th June were supposed to end a costly transition to civil rule programme which had taken all of eight years and cost billions of dollars. Babangida annulled the elections, which were reported to be free and fair.
In the various States of the federation, civilian governors with legislative houses were in place, voted into office in 1991. There was also a National Assembly in place.
In Rivers State, the civilian governor was Chief Rufus Ada-George. He was also the Chief Security Officer of the State and was, as such, the Chairman of the State Security Committee on which sat the Commanders of the units of the Army, Air Force and Navy in the State, as well as the Commissioner of Police and the State Director of the State Security Service. Security funds available to the Governor are not subject to normal accounting procedures of the government.
Although Chief Rufus Ada-George had been voted governor by the people, he still owed his position to the military dictator, Babangida, who could easily proclaim a State of Emergency in any part of the country, and dismiss the democratic paraphernalia that existed. Chief Rufus Ada-George did not want any such thing to happen to him.
He had shown sufficient disenchantment with MOSOP in the past, and left me in no doubt that he considered me a security risk and a threat to his personal situation as Governor.
Faced with the situation in Ogoni after the boycott of the presidential elections in June 1993 and my subsequent arrest, Ada-George did not re-establish police presence in the area. Instead, he and his Security Council decided upon a way to access the security funds of the State. A local decision was taken to draft a contingent of army , navy and airforce personnel to Ogoni. The contingent numbered no more than thirty-six but according to Chief Ada-George himself, it cost Rivers State no less than half a million naira (25,000 US dollars) a week. The troops did not have orders to shoot, since they were not there by authority of Army headquarters. They were there, therefore, not to protect the Ogoni but to provoke them; not to prevent violence, but to engineer it.
STATE VIOLENCE UNLEASHED
I was in my hospital bed on 15th July, 1993 when there came news that about one hundred and thirty-two Ogoni men, women and children returning from their sojourn in the Cameroons had been waylaid on the Andoni River by uniformed men wielding automatic weapons, massacred and sent to their watery graves. Only two women were left alive to tell the story. A complaint was laid with the Commissioner of Police, Rivers State. He bluntly refused to investigate the massacre, giving room to belief of complicity of the security agencies in the tragedy.
On the 5th and 6th of August 1993, the Ogoni market village of Kaa on the Andoni border was attacked with grenade, mortar shells and automatic weapons. Two hundred and forty-seven people were killed and all the villagers forced to flee. The primary and secondary schools in the village were laid waste. Foreign journalists who visited the scene the very next day confirmed the carnage. On both days, the villages of Tenama and Tera’ua on the Andoni border with Ogoni were also attacked and property destroyed. Several lives were lost.
Claude Ake, a highly-respected social scientist and Director of the Centre for Advanced Social Sciences, a political think-tank based in Port Harcourt, was so appalled by these events that he came to my hospital bed to alert me and suggest that we call on Governor Ada-George who had refused to react to the events.
We met the Governor and his entire Security Council the night of the 8th of August, 1993. All the members of the Council feigned ignorance of the grisly events of the 5th and 6th of August. Whereupon, we suggested that we all pay a visit to the area to see for ourselves what had happened.
I travelled with representatives of the Army, Navy and Air Force, Police and State Security Service on the 9th of August to Kaa. Dr. Bennet Birabi, who was at the time the Senate Minority Leader (of the same party as Governor Ada-George) was also in the team.
The unanimous view of the team was that the attack on the villages was undertaken by well-trained and armed troops. Each member of the team sent a report to his Commanding Officer. When I later asked Major Buraimoh, the Brigade Major of the 2nd Amphibious Brigade, Port Harcourt if the reports had been discussed at a subsequent meeting of the Security Council, he confirmed that they had been discussed but that “there appeared to be a mind-set on the issue” and there the matter rested. I also asked Wing-Commander Alli of the Air Force who was also a member of the team the same question and got the same answer.
I had received information earlier that similar attacks were being planned using the border territories of the Okrika and Ndoki sub-groups. I now realized that there was an official conspiracy against the Ogoni people and that I had to do something to protect the latter. I immediately issued press releases appealing to these neighbours not to allow themselves or their areas to be used against the Ogoni.
Then I moved to reconcile the Ogoni government-appointed Chiefs with the Ogoni masses. On the 14th of August, in the presence of members of the Rivers State Council of Chiefs, in a public meeting at Bori, I appealed to all present to maintain law and order and respect the sanctity of life and property. Given my standing in the community, this was promptly obeyed and the Chiefs returned to their villages in peace.
Next, I tried to get the party politicians, including Dr. Leton and late Chief Edward Kobani back in to the MOSOP fold. A number of meetings were held at the residence of Mr. B.A. Konya, an Ogoni banker. At these meetings, both Leton and late Kobani insisted on returning to the positions they had voluntarily resigned.
The discussions were still going on when Chief Rufus Ada-George introduced a diversion. He set up an Andoni-Ogoni Peace Committee headed by Claude Ake. I was wary of participating in any such Committee because the attack on the Ogoni villages was not undertaken by the Andoni. Andoni territory had only been used for the purpose.
Out of courtesy to Claude Ake, and to ascertain that the Andoni knew that they were being used, I and other Ogoni including late Albert Badey, late Edward Kobani and Dr. G.B. Leton attended the meetings of the Peace Committee.
Even at the very exploratory stages of the work of the Committee, both sides agreed that there was no reason for confrontation between the Ogoni and the Andoni. There was no territorial dispute, no argument on fishing rights or access to each other’s area; and that there was not, in history, any instance of an Ogoni-Andoni dispute. All there had ever been were disputes between one Andoni village and one Ogoni village, and the last of these disputes had been settled according to local traditions in 1973.
Had the Peace Committee continued its work, we might have been able to show to the Andoni that they were mere pawns in an oil game. Shell were active in the area, and Chevron had also just struck oil there. Indeed, the latter Company had been making overtures to be allowed to undertake geophysical surveys to determine the extent of the oil deposit in their new concession.
The Peace Committee was not allowed to continue its work. There was a change of government, I was suddenly summoned on September 1 to Abuja to meet with General Abacha, who was evidently planning a coup against the contraption, the Interim National Government, which his colleague, General Babangida had set up before he was disgraced out of power on August 26, 1993.
My meeting with General Abacha was important in one respect: over lunch, he confessed to me that government had been misled by false security reports on the Ogoni issue and he apologized to me for the undeserved punishment I had suffered. He ordered that my passport, seized on June 11, should be returned to me.
I returned to Port Harcourt to find that the conspirators were flustered by this new development and had determined to do something about it.
Accordingly, further attacks against Ogoni villages on the Andoni border were staged by armed troops. The troops used boats belonging to Shell and Chevron, and on the days of the attacks, a helicopter which Shell often charters was always seen in Ogoni skies. The villages of Eeken, Gwara and Kenwigbara were devastated in these attacks which took place between the 1st and 15th of September, 1993. Over 1000 Ogoni men, women and children were massacred and about 20,000 rendered homeless.
Disturbed in the extreme by these developments, I, as President of MOSOP, called on Claude Ake and we together went to the Brigade Commander, 2nd Amphibious Brigade, Port Harcourt, Brigadier-General Thaddeus Ashei. We asked him why the troops stationed at Bori had not protected the Ogoni people during the attacks. He replied that the deployment of the troops was a mere local arrangement and that if they were to do anything more than what they were doing at the time, he would need proper orders from Army Headquarters. Present at the meeting was Wing Commander Dilli, Commander of the Air Force unit in Port Harcourt who rudely assured me that I and the Ogoni were getting what we had asked for.
I knew there and then that I needed to get proper protection for the Ogoni. I headed straight for the airport and flew into Lagos that 15th of September for a meeting with General Abacha, then Minister of Defence. He made arrangements for a small contingent of troops to be sent to Ogoni.
On my return to Port Harcourt, I got rumours that further attacks were planned on other Ogoni villages. Even before the rumours could be checked out, the attacks did take place, the most dastardly of them being that on the village of Kpean in which every single concrete building, including the secondary school, was destroyed.
Even as Kpean lay in ruins, I received a summons to meet with Chief Ernest Shonekan, the head of the Interim National Government. I met with him on the 21st of September, 1993 holding a videotape of the carnage at Kpean, which he refused to see. He did not tell me much beyond the fact that he would have preferred to have the police rather than the army, in Ogoni.
In subsequent discussions with the Director of Operations of the dreaded State Security Service, I gathered that I had been called to Abuja at their instance. I had travelled with Ledum Mitee, Deputy President of MOSOP, and together we outlined to him, since he had only just assumed the duty desk, the issues at stake in Ogoni. We returned to Port Harcourt with the impression that he would visit Ogoni to see things for himself.
It was upon our return that I knew the precise reason I had been summoned to Abuja. A fictitious security report had intimated Abuja that 10,000 armed Ogoni youths had dug trenches all the way from Bori to the Onne junction, a few miles from Port Harcourt and were attacking the security forces. And that was the very day Kpean was flattened to the ground!
Here was an example of the false security reporting which General Abacha had told me about on the 1st of September. And that was the alibi for using Nigerian troops against Ogoni villages!
Time was running out for the official conspirators in Port Harcourt as troops were officially deployed on 24th September, 1993 with instruction to protect the Ogoni people.
However, we knew that since the security operatives were making a lot of money out of the Ogoni situation, and since Shell were interested in restoring their operations in Ogoni, we could not rest on our oars if the Ogoni people were to be properly protected.
Accordingly, we made representation to the Inspector-General of Police and the Minister of Police Affairs, as well as the Commissioner of Police, Rivers State, asking for adequate policing of Ogoni. I believe that consequent upon this request, the Minister of Police Affairs, Mr. Solomon Lar, did visit Ogoni, but I was abroad at the time and did not meet with him.
This is not the end of this statement. Due to the length of the statement, we have decided to publish it in series. Parts 4, 5, and 6 will be published in due course. Please keep an eye on this page.
OGONI HEROES’ DAY: CALL FOR ARTICLE SUBMISSION!!!
We are now calling on all Ogoni writers and intellectuals to submit their papers/articles about the Ogoni 9, the struggle and the way forward for Ogoni in preparation for November 10th. Tell the world what actually happened between 1990 and 1995 and even events that occurred before, during and after oil exploration and exploitation in Ogoniland. Your articles will be featured on our news website free of charge and we will ensure they (articles) get to the right audience at the right time. All articles should be submitted toarticles@huraclub.org on/before Nov. 9th 2013. For further enquiries about article submission, concern about this advert, or to contact HURAC, please write to enquiry@huraclub.org or contact us by clicking this link (Opens in new window).