PROCEDIMIENTO DE CALIBRACIÓN Y OBJETIVOS DE CALIBRACIÓN

At independence, the British colonialists bequeathed a Nigerian State that was highly susceptible to conflict and instability in a number of ways. For instance, the vast geographical size of the northern region and its population size in comparison to the western and eastern regions gave the northern region the leverage to politically dominate the Nigerian State. Apart from that, the Nigerian State was created in such a way that in each of the three regions there was a hegemonic ethnic group that dominated the politics of the region amidst several marginalised minority ethnic groups (Oyerinde, 1998: 59-63). Particularly pertinent to the Niger Delta conflict was the emergence of the Igbos as the politically hegemonic ethnic group in the eastern region which conferred on them political dominance over the Niger Delta oil-producing minorities.

Considering the above, the first manifestation of the conflict was during the pre-independence era when fear of ethnic domination and marginalisation was expressed by the Niger Delta and other minority ethnic groups against the hegemonic ethnic groups that dominated the incipient Nigerian rentier

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neopatrimonial state. During this era, Harold Dappa Biriye, a Niger Delta minority rights activist led a delegation of ethnic minorities from the Niger Delta region and other parts of Nigeria to a London pre-independence constitutional conference to express their fears of domination and marginalisation in the emerging post independent Nigerian State (Simbine, 2006: 47; Etemike, 2009: 154-156; Epelle, 2010: 24; Adeyemo & Olu-Adeyemi, 2010: 46; Ojakorotu, 2010: 109; Ibaba et al., 2012: 1-2). The demand of the Niger Delta minorities at this stage revolved around having a state of their own in order to avert the obvious political domination and plundering of their resources by the Igbo hegemonic ethnic group that was politically dominant in the Eastern region. The Niger Delta minorities’

delegation to the conference made a case for the creation of Calabar-Ogoja-Rivers state from the then eastern region and the right to control their resource (Epelle, 2010: 26). Thus, the whole gamut of pre-independence minority agitation of the Niger Delta (and which equally persisted even in the immediate post-independence period) revolved around these issues:

The logic of…minority agitations in Nigeria runs as follows: access to power determines personal and group enrichment. Possession of power itself is determined by numerical superiority. Political mobilization for capturing state power is rooted in ethnicity. Majority ethnic groups have used their numerical superiority to corner political power in the country.

With such power, they have expropriated economic resources that naturally belong to ethnic minorities. With their numerical inferiority, minority groups will never get their hands on the levers of political power…Without a fundamental restructuring of the country, political power will always accrue to the ethnic majorities since the game of political numbers is in their favour, Thus, with ethnic minorities’ numerical disadvantage, they will continue to be marginalized (Agbese, 2003: 245-246).

The above minority consciousness was further heightened in the Niger Delta after the discovery of petroleum in commercial quantities by Shell-BP in Oloibiri (present day Bayelsa state) in 1956 (Obi & Rustad, 2011: 5). However, the fact that the conflict continued to spiral upward demonstrates that the issues in contention were not adequately addressed either by the departing British colonial regime or the immediate post-colonial Nigerian State (Ojakorotu, 2008: 94).

3.3.2. The 1967 Insurrection (the Twelve Days’ Revolution)

The unaddressed pre-independence minority grievances reverberated a few years after Nigeria’s independence in the 1960s, when Isaac Adaka Boro from

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the Ijaw ethnic group and leader of the Niger Delta Volunteer Force (NDVF) led an armed insurrection known as the twelve days revolution that declared the Niger Delta region a sovereign Republic (Azaiki, 2003: 80; Obi & Rustad, 2011:

6). The revolt was significant because it signalled the first violent attempt by youth from the Niger Delta region to reject their marginalisation and exploitation by the Nigerian State (controlled by hegemonic ethnic groups). It also signified an attempt by the Ijaw segment of the Niger Delta minorities to assert the region’s rights to self-determination and control over petroleum resources found in their land (Azaiki, 2003: 80; Obi, 2010: 225 & Obi & Rustad, 2011: 6). Adaka Boro encapsulated the reasons for the insurrection as follows:

Today is a great day, not only in your lives, but also in the history of the Niger Delta Perhaps it will be the greatest day for a very long time. This is not because we are going to bring heavens down, but because we are going to demonstrate to the world what and how we feel about oppression…Therefore, remember your seventy-year-old grandmother who still farms before she eats; remember also your poverty stricken people; remember too your petroleum which is being pumped out daily from your veins (sic); and the fight for your freedom (The Adaka Boro Centre, n. d.: 2).

Boro’s speech clearly suggests that beyond the quest for self-determination, poverty and fear of marginalisation and underdevelopment, the control of petroleum resources discovered in the region had now become a major issue of contention. However, the fact that the attempted revolt was militarily crushed and the grievances not dealt with lends credence to my argument that the postcolonial Nigerian State, like its colonial progenitor, was primarily a law and order state that relied on the instrument of coercion to sustain itself and suppress grievances instead of constructively addressing them. Even though it was short-lived, Boro’s revolution has left one enduring legacy in the trajectory of minority struggle in the Niger Delta as a model after which the Kaiama Declaration and MEND phases of the conflict were framed. A Niger Delta academic expert observed that ‘if you go to a typical Niger Delta activist home you… [will] see a photograph of Saro Wiwa and the photograph of Adaka Boro because they are regarded as heroes of the Niger Delta struggle’.²⁵

25. Respondent 032, November 2013.

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