OGONI people in Rivers State are unique and complex in their beliefs and orientation.
Found in the South Eastern part of Rivers State, South-south Nigeria, Ogonis estimated at about 600,000 populations occupy a sprawling four Local Governments land area of the state namely Khana, Gokana, Tai and Eleme.
Their uniqueness is found in their tenacity to hard work which they astutely displayed in their agricultural prowess which made them a leading tribe in food production in the Niger Delta and beyond.
Over the years, Ogoni people had come to embrace other industries and profession with the advent of Western education leading to the emergence of erudite scholars in the field of law, medicine, engineering and business.
The people of Ogoni had lived in peace with their Opobo and Andoni neighbours in the South, Ndoki people in North eastern parts of Rivers State and Okrikas and Ikwerre in the North Western axis.
But all that has changed as the hitherto peaceful and quiet Ogoni Communities have been unsettled by intra and inter communal strife over shared resources and assets.
Criminal gangs masquerading as fighting the course of the people have made life hellish in parts of the community. Incidences of inter – cult clashes have caused several painful deaths leaving residents of affected communities in perpetual fear.
What started as a collective struggle for better share from oil resources in Ogoni land spearheaded by Environmental Rights Activist Ken Saro Wiwa has snowballed into parchment of warlords all over the Niger Delta.
Kidnapping for ransom has become a past-time in the area as criminal gangs bestride the length and breadth of Ogoni land and indeed the Niger Delta region in search for their preys. Community leaders who dare raise their voices against the marauders are brutally attacked, killed in some instances or maimed and their homes razed.
The fate suffered by the traditional ruler of Okwali community in the Khana Local Government Area ofRivers State is a case in reference as notorious criminal gangs destroyed his house and those of chief Monday Abueh for daring to hand over a notorious armed robber to the police.
The gang had threatened to visit mayhem on the community should the King failed to free their leader from the Port Harcourt prisons where he was being held. They made did their threat on Tuesday 13 August 2019 shooting and killing innocent people and destroying properties in the community which they have promised to continue to terrorize.
Some analysts have situated the orgy of violence on the violent response by Ogoni people to issues of oil pollution and associated loss of arable land and water sources to oil spill.
The people across the four local government areas were united in the struggle to have a fair share in the oil resources beneath their soil. Those opposed to the mode of protest adopted by its protagonists were tagged vultures, (a local deadly and derogatory label for saboteurs). Some of those so labeled were mobbed and cremated at the notorious Giokoo massacre.
The Federal Government in its response arrested, tried through what many described as a kangaroo tribunal the Ogoni nine, found them guilty of complicity in the murder and ultimately executed them on November 10 1995.
That singular act halted further oil exploration and exploitation in Ogoni as staff of Shell Petroleum Development Company (SPDC) could not dare to access any of the company’s facilities for fear of being attacked by irate youths.
The executions of the Ogoni nine in 1995 were the culmination of a brutal operation by the military government of late General Sani Abacha to crush the Movement for the Survival of Ogoni People (MOSOP).
MOSOP had begun its campaign in 1990 with the publication of the ‘Ogoni Bill of Rights which outlined the movement’s grievances and demands. It wanted government to grant Ogoni people political autonomy and a much greater share of its oil wealth.
With this cause aborted by government’s brutal military action for fear that oil production, a major source of the country’s wealth could be gravely affected and the possibility of other oil bearing communities copying the Ogoni example, the criminal elements in Ogoni seem to have launched a secret revolution against the Nigeria state and its security agents.
Only last month, some Ogoni youths like their counterparts in Ijaw communities who have taken illegal oil bunkering and operation of illegal refineries as business, attacked and kill a soldier man and two personnel of the Nigeria Security and Civil Defence Corps (NSCDC). The killing which has become a regular feature in the once peaceful area precipitated a reprisal from soldiers from the 6 Division, Port Harcourt leading to the death of some villagers and destruction of several homes including that of the traditional ruler.
Worried by the incessant kidnapping operations in Ogoni axis of the East West Road, the Police in Rivers earlier this month launched a man hunt for a notorious kidnap kingpin Linus Lebari a.k.a ‘Devil’ and got him down during what the police called a sting operation carried out by policemen attached to Bori Police Station at their hide out in Okwale, boundary between Rivers and Abia States.
According to the Public Relations Officer, Rivers State Police Command, Nnamdi Omoni, the armed gang which had killed more than 30 persons in the state had opened fire on sighting the policemen who returned fire leading to the death of ‘Devil’.
Before his killing, Devil’s operational tactics bore the trappings of Osama Bin Laden, a notorious criminal gang leader who has always unleashed terror on several Ogoni communities.
The presence of pockets of gang stars across the length and breadth of Ogoni land has caused palpable fear on the minds of community dwellers some of whom fear to return to their home for fear of being attacked.
Besides these acts of criminalities, living in Ogoni land has become hellish as water sources have remained polluted. Effort by the Federal Government in a multi million Dollars Ogoni remediation project in Ogoni land is not yet impactful.
The people still drink from polluted streams and underground water thereby precipitating severe water borne disease conditions and deaths in impacted areas. In fact water has become an emergency issue in Ogoni land because of pollution.
It is instructive to note that several bizarre incidents have dogged the Ogoni recent history of violence as the traditional ruler of Kor Village in Bori, Khana Local Government Area simply identified as Chief Gua about a decade ago was killed and beheaded by unidentified cultists.
Gua was killed by some cultists numbering about six who in order to ensure that he was dead, decided to behead him before leaving his lifeless body. The criminals could not be arrested by the police forcing many to guess the motive for the killing.
The present tension in Ogoni land is underpinned by recent effort to lay fresh pipelines and the resistance of the project and alleged brutal treatment against persons from the Ogoni community and death threats against members of the Movement for the Survival of the Ogoni People (MOSOP) who are protesting non-violently against the laying of pipelines across some Ogoni communities by Shell Petroleum Development Company (SPDC), the Nigerian subsidiary of the international oil giant, Royal Dutch Shell.
The laying of pipelines touches on a particularly painful and unfortunate history for the Ogoni people. It was the same pipeline laying exercise without consultation that led to local protests, casualties at the hands of military security and a crackdown that included the arrest of MOSOP President Ken Saro-Wiwa in the fallout from the notorious Wilbros incident in 1993.
Members of the community who had recently gathered to embark on a peaceful protest against Shell over the company’s resumed laying of pipelines in Ogoni were violently dispersed, and scores of people were beaten up by armed security men.
But there are those who believe that a resumption of pipe line project in Ogoni will bring about progress and development as more job opportunities would be created by the oil prospecting companies and their sub-contractors for the teeming unemployed youths of Ogoni who according to them have resorted to criminalities for want of legitimate jobs to do.
President of Ogoni Youth Federation, Legborsi Yaamagbana while leading his members on a peaceful protest on Monday November 19 2019, said the protest was to tell the world that Ogoni people were for growth, development, peace and progress and would not allow primordial sentiment to over ride their sense of purpose.
In all of this, government has a duty to critically examine the Ogoni situation as in other Niger Delta oil bearing communities and come up with workable modus to solve the seeming intractable environmental and security problems plaguing the areas. The time to act is now.
