Delta Blues
Corry, John
DE LTA 22 October 1999 The American Spectator Port Harcourt here may be 500,000 people in this steamy city in the Nigerian Delta, although no one is certain, and there may be a great many more....
...No one paid attention, however, and as the French minister for foreign aid pointed out, mischievously but correctly, Christopher's visit had everything to do with American politics and nothing at all to do with Africa...
...The big plastic bags —red and white, or blue and white—were also much in evidence at the opening sessions of the new House and Senate...
...They also contributed to local charities, and gave the King a customized four-wheeldrive land cruiser...
...Manners were not what they should be, although perhaps they may improve...
...So the Delta is still seething, and as the Delta goes so will Nigeria, and as Nigeria goes, so will a large part of Africa...
...But Madeleine Albright is expected to visit Nigeria soon, and announce that Bill Clinton will drop in sometime next year...
...Even as the school teacher, an Ikwere, was speaking in Port Harcourt, the Ijaw, Itsikeri, and Urhobo were in a three-way war in the western part of the Delta...
...This also has to do with colonial days...
...SENT JESSE JACKSON...
...They are governed under a mixture of traditional law, legislated law, and law handed down by fiat, and they are divided by tribe...
...The White House sent Jesse Jackson...
...There is disagreement about the number of tribes, although 300 is as good a guess as any...
...A rail line runs north from Port Harcourt, but it is narrow gauge and single track, and left over from colonial days...
...Oil spills and leakage stain the ground...
...he also said he had a degree in business administration from the University of Toronto in Canada and a diploma in accounting from a university in Nigeria...
...The young people know about that," the school teacher continued...
...So Kellog Brown & Root went ahead...
...The Mount of Fire and Miracles, Catholic Charismatics, and Assemblies of God stand in a row on a single street in Port Harcourt...
...He sued the newspaper for Soo million naira, and rallied his supporters...
...For years the Delta's oil fields burned off their natural gas...
...Competent, honorable candidates committed to stable democracy—the new national assembly is even modeled after the U.S...
...He insisted he was 36 years old...
...Misplaced ideas about affirmative action, quotas, and diversity determine foreign policy...
...Bonny is at once very old and very new, and it is also the site of a liquid gas plant...
...Tribal villages have been absorbed, and mangrove swamps filled in, although Port Harcourt still looks unloved and unfinished...
...That same week, 25 Shell oil workers were kidnapped, presumably by the Ijaw, although the kidnappers were identified publicly only as "Delta youths...
...The day after that, however, a group that called itself the Ijaw Youths Forum demanded Si billion from the federal government and the oil companies...
...Eastern Ijo comprises four or five dialects, and Nembe-Akassa two dialects, and Inland Ijo three...
...When he next showed up in the House, many members of his party rose to their feet and applauded...
...At the same time the Christian God has been hospitably received, and mingles with other deities...
...No Nigerian government, either military or democratically elected, has ever done much for the impoverished Delta other than to appoint commissions to study its problems...
...And you got guys who were in America, and are back now...
...Finally it is loaded on ships, and carried to consumers in Brazil and around the Mediterranean...
...It also demanded, imaginatively, that the oil companies make improvements and do good works similar to those done on Bonny Island...
...The dialects may not be mutually intelligible, and while opinions differ on how many dialects make up Izon, everyone agrees there are a great many...
...He was forced to leave the House, and face criminal charges...
...In 1912, Frederick Lugard, Nigeria's first colonial governor, ran his canoe aground while searching for a suitable site to build a port and decided this was as good a location as any—forty miles from the Atlantic, on the southern coast of Nigeria, at the uppermost part of the tortuous Delta...
...Phones don't work, electric power fails, and potable water is a problem...
...The seething, unsettled Delta is more serious...
...That's right, his colleagues in the majority Peoples Democratic Party said, and elected him speaker...
...Ken woke everyone up...
...Buhari was now looking particularly bad...
...The nightmare is that if the Delta fell apart it could ignite a civil war, with north and south dividing, and fighting over the oil fields...
...However...
...First it built a village with brick houses for the Bonny Islanders who had lived in mud huts in a village called Finima...
...the burning off of unwanted natural gas fouls the air, and turns night skies orange...
...Bribery, however, cannot be done on the cheap, and so politicians and their aides had to carry big plastic bags stuffed with naira all over Nigeria...
...Britain sent Prince Charles, for example, and South Africa sent Nelson Mandela...
...Nigeria is a cash-and-carry society, and the largest denomination is a 50-naira bill, equivalent to only about 5o cents...
...Nigeria's oil fields are all in the Delta...
...therefore it was Itsikeri...
...As always the environmentalists overstate things, although their complaints are heard in Congress...
...tightly coiled braids, he said, were her most distinctive feature...
...Then it leveled Finima, and in its place built barracks and other accommodations for 20,000 workers...
...In fact, all rail lines in Nigeria run north and south...
...Meanwhile the administration has just opened the Office of Transition Initiatives in Port Harcourt, and announced that one of its first programs will be the "empowerment" of women...
...In some areas, twins are considered a misfortune and are eliminated at birth, but in others they are regarded as a special blessing...
...Sensible initiatives might help them, but Washington is in thrall to political correctness...
...In 1995, however, everything finally came together...
...Public amenities in the Delta are virtually non-existent...
...Presumably it is a group of people who all speak the same language, but Ijo alone is made up of Eastern Ijo and Inland Ijo, as well as Nembe-Akassa and Izon, which also are Ijo...
...Something...
...They understand how things work...
...none go east and west...
...So the Delta is a land unto itself, and besides the different languages there are different social structures, customs, and religions...
...The gas goes up hot and comes down cold, and then is stored in gigantic concrete tanks...
...Decent committee assignments and leadership positions cost money, too...
...The Ijaw claimed Kantu was in traditional Ijaw territory...
...For a while it was thought the LNG plant should be an S8-billion project...
...Meanwhile waterways imperfectly divide the Delta into parcels, and each parcel may be home to a separate tribe, but who knows what is a tribe...
...Natural gas now reaches the plant from some 125 miles of underground pipelines...
...Warren Christopher, Albright's predecessor, visited sub-Saharan Africa for the first time on the eve of the 1996 election...
...History and the River Niger have created an area that makes the Balkans look like a model of homogeneity...
...Serbs and Croats may insist otherwise, but they both understand Serbo-Croatian...
...The poor get by however they can, but even people with money may find life difficult...
...Bonny Island, an hour by speedboat from Port Harcourt, or the best part of a day by dugout canoe, perches at the southeast corner of the Delta and juts into the Gulf of Guinea...
...An international consortium—American, French, Japanese, and Italian put up $3 billion...
...25 TWO TRIBES ON OPPOSITE SIDES OF A CREEK IN THE DELTA MIGHT HAVE TO CALL IN INTERPRETERS, OR ELSE TALK IN PIDGIN ENGLISH...
...THE U.S...
...hen Olusegun Obasanjo was W sworn in as Nigeria's first democratically elected president last May after years of military rule, some 25 heads of state and other distinguished guests showed up in the capital, Abuja, for his inaugural...
...Then it brought in the workers...
...Obasanjo was promoting an anti-corruption bill for one thing, and for another the legislature had been embarrassed...
...estimates it has 120 million people...
...it was born of an accident in the first place...
...It is also one of Nigeria's best hopes for the future...
...For years, too, there were plans to build a liquid natural gas, or The American Spectator • October r999 LNG, project...
...The extraordinary project, start to finish in only three years, was also an exercise in community relations...
...Hippos share some of its beaches with salt-water crocodiles...
...Apparently it was Texas Democrat Sheila Jackson Lee...
...Democratic National Committee priorities still drive U.S...
...Then it is put through a heat-exchange machine that weighs almost 300 tons and looks like a space-age silo...
...Ken was Ken Saro-Wiwa, and along with eight other Ogoni dissidents, he was hanged by the Sani Abacha government in 1995 after being convicted of inciting a riot that led to the murders of four traditional chiefs...
...Playing the north-south card is also a tactic in Nigerian politics...
...The American Spectator • October 1999by voting for Democrats in the 2000 election...
...Bill Clinton, responding to pressure from the Congressional Black Caucus and its almost perfect record of being wrong on anything to do with Nigeria, threatened to block American participation, but fortunately then he relented...
...Construction has gone on in fits and starts ever since...
...The plant is the world's largest construction project, as well as an idea whose time has come, and ought to have come much sooner...
...He announced U.S...
...Half-empty office buildings stand next to tin-roof shanties...
...Among other things, the LNG people built a school, repaired roads, donated a boat to the police (piracy is an old problem in the Delta), renovated public buildings, immunized and dewormed children, built a public jetty, and conducted an AIDS and TB campaign...
...Kellog Brown & Root of Houston, which was the American part of the consortium, was also to be in charge of the construction...
...His subtext was that he was from the mostly Moslem north, and the newspaper was published in Lagos in the mostly Yoruba south...
...Attention must now be paid...
...Consequently the House elected as speaker a former computer salesman named Salisu Buhari, although the Nigerian constitution says a member of the House must he at least 3o years old, and it was widely rumored he was younger...
...They are a source of wealth for others, but not for the people who live there...
...Attention was being paid to the Delta...
...In a related episode a few days later, other members of the House reportedly threw chairs at one another...
...Capitol—lost to rogues and tricksters...
...As a Nigerian diplomat in Abuja wryly said later, "The Americans sent us their colored people...
...I don't know what...
...Spiritual comfort is everywhere, although in the Delta that no longer is enough...
...The Bonny Chiefs Council, which rules Bonny Island along with the King, now says the LNG people have not done enough, and that unless they do more they may encounter the same tactics of sabotage and kidnapping practiced by the Ijaws...
...After it was disclosed that House members would each get $26,000 to furnish their residences in Abuja, and each senator would get $37,000, municipal workers demonstrated...
...Nigeria, though, is one of the most complex, as well as the most populous country in Africa...
...the U.N...
...Its hereditary ruler is King Edward Asimini William Dappa Pepple, Perekule Xl, Amanyanabo of Grand Bonny Kingdom...
...Little has changed since then...
...There had just been a battle over a town called Kantu, and an unknown number of people had died...
...In the end, though, it did Buhari no good...
...Linguists estimate that Ijo, one of the principal language groups in the Delta —there seem to be five or six—took some 7,000 years to develop...
...Environmental groups like Greenpeace insist the oil companies are the principal villains in the Delta, and probably in all Nigeria...
...delegation, including Jackson, were black, and while the White House apparently thought that appropriate, Nigerians found it demeaning...
...I remember the night before, thinking he wouldn't be executed, but the next morning he was dead...
...In its more than 14,000 square miles there is only one road —from Port Harcourt to Warri in the western part of the Delta...
...That was where he worked," a school teacher was saying, while he pointed out an old sign —"Saro's International"—in a building on Aggrey Road in Port Harcourt...
...But soon afterwards a newspaper reported that no one at the University of Toronto had ever heard of Buhari, and that he had no diploma from the Nigerian university, either...
...Meanwhile the country is plagued by violence, and its economy is in shambles...
...Ken was wrong in some things, but WHEN NIGERIA'S PRESIDENT WAS SWORN IN LAST MAY, BRITAIN SENT PRINCE CHARLES, AND SOUTH AFRICA SENT NELSON MANDELA...
...Buhari denied the rumors, however, and even took out newspaper ads to rebut them...
...Port Harcourt has been neglected, and so has all the rest of the oil-rich Delta...
...Meanwhile the LNG people say they can build a road in the Delta—remember there is only the one road now—but the Ogonis have filed an environmental impact request to stop it...
...The House held hearings on Nigeria this summer, and by the time you read this the Senate may have held some more...
...Two tribes on opposite sides of a creek in the Delta might have to call in interpreters, or else talk in Pidgin English...
...International bankers told Nigeria it was "under-borrowed...
...The fear now is that the other tribes may retaliate against the Ogonis...
...The Foursquare Gospel, Eternal Sacred Order of Seraphim and Cherubin, and God's Kingdom Society are around the corner...
...Many tribes live there, and most of them despise one another, and have done so for a very long time...
...The United States Information Agency has sponsored talks on attracting more Nigerian women to politics...
...ut corruption is an old, and not necessarily intractable, B problem...
...It was, of course, never that simple — Saro-Wiwa threatened to lead the Delta into something like secession, and Shell had nothing to do with his death —but the protest campaign was effective: rallies in London, speeches in Washington, reports on television, and page-one stories in the New York Times...
...There is a carelessness about Port Harcourt...
...The month before there had been a battle at Warn, and as many as zoo had died...
...He also recalled that at the inaugural Jesse Jackson wore a safari suit, and that at the formal state dinner a female delegate insisted on sitting at the place reserved for a prominent Nigerian politician, and then spent the evening glowering...
...Ten of the eleven members of the U.S...
...The Niger rises in Guinea z,600 miles away, and flows through West Africa until it joins with the Benue in Nigeria, and eventually disappears into the Delta's rivers, swamps, and lagoons...
...0) JOHN CORBY Meanwhile no one doubts Obasanjo would have won anyway, but even so the elections were marked by massive bribery and what Nigerians call "rigging...
...Ojukwu is also a supreme deity, but he may be thought of as the son of the supreme deity, too, and the Delta understands the mystery of the Trinity...
...Successive Nigerian governments were happy to believe them...
...23 U.S...
...The Itsikeri said it was part of the Warn Kingdom, and under the rule of the Olu of Warn...
...roads have ruts and pot holes...
...support for an African peacekeeping force, and urged other African nations to bring pressure on the then military government of Nigeria to stop its human rights abuses...
...He described her as medium brown and medium build...
...The Ijaw youths now want the oil companies to do the same...
...AFRICA POLICY, AT ONCE CYNICAL AND IGNORANT, PROVES NO MATCH FOR THE ETHNIC COMPLEXITY AND SOCIAL NEEDS OF MODERN NIGERIA, CONDITIONS ROOTED IN THE COUNTRY'S GEOGRAPHY...
...Meanwhile the joint venture partnerships that the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation has entered into with oil companies —Shell, Mobil and Chevron, and France's Total and Elf, and Italy's Agip — have left little except pollution...
...Lord Lugard laid it out...
...But Nigeria also bursts with energy, and its great strength is the creativity, generosity and entrepreneurial spirit of its people...
...The young guys they'll do something...
...Also, he was 29, and not 36...
...o, something, but who knows where S or what...
...Their minimum monthly wage was only $32, and some of them had not been paid for months...
...I don't know...
...That means Ijo people roamed the Delta before the first Pyramid arose, or Britons learned to paint themselves blue...
...Buhari said he would never resign, and that the "media speculation," meaning the evidence, was part of a plot to destroy him...
...24 October 1999 • The American Spectator if it hadn't been for him, no one would be paying attention...
...The z White House expects black Americans to show their gratitude JOHN CORRY is The American Spectator's senior correspondent...
...Greenpeace seized the moment then, and depicted him as a victim of Shell Oil and a martyr to the ecological movement...
...Usually they died of grandiosity...
...policy...
...The evidence was irrefutable, but stonewalling often works well in Nigerian politics, and Buhari stuck with his story...
Vol. 32 • October 1999 • No. 10
