Read: Non-Fiction

WARRIORS OF THE SOUTH
EMEKA IDUMA

1967 is a very fortunate year in the history of Nigeria. Just seven years after we decided that we were old enough to take care of ourselves, we hit gold. This time it was not blonde-colored neither was it held together by metallic bonds.  Black gold became a curse, guise-skinned as wealth, to the common people of Nigeria. While our leaders rejoiced at the blessing of nature to our economy (and their pockets), we wept at the irony of the blessings it promised.

Our black gold chose to have its home in the south; an area of over 20 million people of diverse language and ethnicities. The wealth from their land singlehandedly supports 90% of Nigeria’s budget and sustains her economy annually. Their land is so rich that it has attracted Germans, Britons, Filipinos, and Americans to Nigeria. Their lands became populated with lots of expatriates wearing hard hats and cruising customized light farm trucks. Their beautiful ladies became objects for relaxation, and their young men, well, modern slaves that sacrificed their lives at the oil rigs.

As the years progressed, the landlords of this black gold soon discovered that they were being milked without being fed. They only knew the locations of the black gold but never saw the real cash. They began to lose their lands to oil spillage, their atmosphere to gas flaring and their aquatic life to pollution. As though this was not enough, their roads were not tarred, they lacked electricity, they lacked quality education for their children and their hospitals were death havens. At that point they realized that they were minorities. They would have to wait until the trinity – the three ultimate tribes – were fed and satisfied, to see if any leftover would fall for them.

As the years rolled by, they became more impatient. Voices began to rise from the south, demanding for attention. How could they have been forgotten? Then the government noticed the bold and non-aggressive opposition of one of them: a poet who thought he could use the pen as a sword to fight guns and armored vehicles! He stood and fought fearlessly, speaking words that cut right through the conscience of the military Dictator. When he became too noisy for them, they quickly silenced him.

Then they began to rise: young, agile, heavily-built, angry looking guerillas, from the valleys of abandon and misery. They were driven by one mandate; to localize the control of their black gold and demand reparation for the offences committed against them over the years. Their activities have since been on headlines of both national and international media. They have fought fearlessly and undauntedly against their enemies – government officials, foreign companies and the military. With time, they improved their expertise and strategy. Rather than use the pen to fight, like their ancestor, they have taken to the proper sword, matching their weapon with their enemy’s.

When the retired Army-General-turned-farmer-turned-President-dictator took radical actions to silence their activities (even using belligerence against non-belligerence), they fortified their garrisons and began to take hostages. They started by ‘adult-napping’ top government officials and high rank employees of foreign companies and demanding ridiculous ransoms from their families. Even when it got so heated that they lost fellow warriors, they took it as an incentive to wrought more havoc, seemingly proclaiming that it was a do-or-die affair.

For them it was either they possessed complete control of the management of their black gold or not.  They initiated an operation to destroy any means of oil production and completely got rid of any person who stood in their way. They told the foreign companies to either leave their land or be ready to die on it; some did die. In one direct hit they succeeded in crippling Nigeria’s oil production by a whooping 10%! They were so desperate that they fully intended to ground oil mining and production in Nigeria except their demands were met.

When it began to seem as though they were gaining grounds and the support of the other Nigerians, the government came up with a plan: amnesty. They promised them full federal pardon amidst several bags of cash, as extra bonuses. The government built them a University, started to tar their roads and began to consider some of their preposterous demands.  One of their own was crowned Vice President of the country as an indication that the political lords were serious about making life better for them. It seems, thus, that they succeeded in gaining the attention their fathers desperately desired. It seemed that they were ready to drop their guns and embrace peace.

In the news we are told that these surrendered warriors are going through ‘rehabilitation’ to make them better citizens of Nigeria. While some of the warriors never accepted the call for peace and are still carrying out hostilities, their brothers are smiling to the bank.

There are questions needed to be asked, relevant now, as always:
Is the amnesty another shrewd ploy by political lords to shut these warriors up? Will the warriors of the south drop their weapons? Are the kidnappings, extortions and vandalisms going to stop? Will Nigeria be free from the political corruption that has arisen from black gold? Who knows how this would end?

These are only questions.

EMEKA IDUMA is a Christian writer, presently working on his first book. He is a final year student of psychology.