Vanishing Soft Of Struggle In the N/Delta

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In recent times, the Niger Delta campaign for self-determination, resource control, environmental protection and political inclusion wears an unmistakably masculine face.

In recent times, the Niger Delta campaign for self-determination, resource control, environmental protection and political inclusion wears an unmistakably masculine face.
Its manly features can be seen in the deadly hostage taking events, which introduced themselves forcibly on the Niger Delta struggle landscape and lexicon since its introduction first from late December 2005 by the amorphous Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta, MEND. It plays out in the mutant clones in the hostage-for- cash events in Rivers State as well as, in the ubiquity of hard bodied men of the Joint Military Task Force, JTF, seen all over the core Niger Delta states of Rivers, Delta and Bayelsa, bearing rifles at checkpoints or on boat patrol in the sweltering creeks.

But women have their role in the struggles of the Niger Delta. This place is assured by the reality of their membership of these communities where oil production practices have wrought deeply impacting consequences too close to home for the women to be neutral in the struggles that play out daily. Over 50 years of environmental degradation resulting in the undermining of life support systems of community members in fishing, farming and cottage industry in which raw materials are sourced from diminishing forests of the Niger Delta cannot simply be a man's matter.
As equal partakers in the suffering that attends the reduced life quality that is the reality for millions in the resource endowed, but poverty ravaged Niger Delta, the women of the Niger Delta cannot but be part of their people's struggles to upturn the conditions that diminish the quality of their existence and the right to the enjoyment of an enhanced quality of life that translates to change in the long hours of spine stiffening work paddling canoes across turbulent rivers to fish: or wading through, thigh deep mud in the hunt for seafood, farming on overexploited land much like a woman made to endure a lifetime of frequent childbirth and the resulting hungry bellies and unhappiness all around.
Speaking on the impact of rights violations and the related diminished quality of life on women in the Niger Delta, Joi Nunieh an Ogoni and female lawyer noted that, “Women suffered most in all the crisis, in everything that has happened to the people in the Niger Delta. Take the Ogoni case for example, remember women are the mothers, the wives of all these people. They are the ones that actually fight the struggle. They are the ones that have suffered the most. They have lost their sons and husbands. They have been raped".
If there ever was a mass movement in the struggles of the Niger Delta peoples in which women effectively took control of their space in the struggle, evolving new strategy for survival and pushing the frontiers of the struggles working round challenges to overcome official opposition, terrorism, it was in the Ogoni activism that played out following the formation of the Movement for the Survival of the Ogoni People, MOSOP in 1990. MOSOP was founded by Ogoni elites including Ken Saro-Wiwa as a platform to push Ogoni self-determination and resource control concerns. The Federation of Ogoni Women Associations FOWA, was the umbrella under which Ogoni women under the various socio-cuJtural groups sheltered. They held their meetings and planned. At first they played largely ceremonial roles, led the choruses and danced whenever Ogoni people gathered. As the Ogoni campaigns deepened enough for the powers under the military administration of General Ibrahim Babangida and after him, Sani Abacha to feel threatened, FOWA came into its own as a body. FOWA was in the thick of the protests in 1993 when Ogoni people, men, women and youths took a position against Willbros, an American oil service company whose attempt to forcibly lay pipelines across farmlands at Korokoro led to protests and shootings that led to the killing of a boy.
Much later FOWA emerged as the focus of the Ogoni struggle.
Joi Nunieb, who the Ogoni people in the struggle called "Esther of Ogoni" in reference to the biblical Esther who saved her people is well known for her activism to save the lives of the 21 youths who were arrested and detained in the terror suffused ambiance of the early 1990' s when the full force of the Nigerian military might was brought to bear on the Ogoni agitations for a share of resources from oil and gas abundant in the Ogoni soil, but made largely inaccessible to millions of Ogoni people. The 21 youths were detained and obviously set to undergo the fate of Ken Saro-Wiwa and the eight Ogoni activists hanged by the Nigerian state for their alleged complicity in the killing of four Ogoni chiefs May 21, 1994.
Primrose plays a motherly role like a mother hen, visiting members and getting them back into the fold to continue with a difficult struggle, where material poverty in a life operated from the fringes of the power structures of the Niger Delta, has compelled many to abandon the struggle for political appointments, secured on the strength of the name they made as activists.

She remains in the struggle she says, because, “some of us remain to make history, to witness the realization of the aspirations of our people. If the South Africans could make it, I don't see why we cannot. Our issues are real.”
Another woman who has remained in the struggle of the Ijaw people is Annkio Briggs. Like Primrose, she traces her passion to exposure to the anti-apartheid struggles in the United Kingdom in the 1980's, as well as her horror over the hanging of Saro-Wiwa and the Ogoni 8.
Born of a British mother and Ijaw father, she occupies a distinctive presence in the Ijaw struggles, not merely by virtue of her unmistakable presence as a half-caste. She dares speak out where many act shy. She kept up a high decibel campaign for two years, calling for the release of Mujahid Dokubo-Asari who was detained in September 2005 by the Obasanjo administration on charges of treasonable felony. Annkio, along with Asari, was deeply involved in organizing and support for the prominent role the Niger Delta people played in processes connected to the PRONACO Sovereign National Conference in 2005.
Annkio has been deeply involved in the activism of the IYC as well as the protests by women under the aegis of the Niger Delta Women for Justice, NDWJ, who lent active support to the IYC following the hounding of its members, with the public presentation of the Kaiama Declaration.
Also referred to as "Iron Lady" by the boys, she took her campaign for the release of Asari far and out. At every turn, she told audiences of Ijaw and other people in the UK , US and Nigeria that “Dokubo-Asari is not a hoodlum. He is not a criminal. He is a committed Ijaw son, fighting for the rights of our people.”
She formed an organization, Free Asari Campaign Organization, FACO, as a platform to canvass his release, often launching into attacks on the Ijaw elite and traditional rulership structures for their tepid response to issues affecting the Ijaw people that often had the members squirming in their seats.
She is currently involved in an initiative to get members of armed groups in Rivers State in discussions with officials of the Federal government in Abuja . For this without first seeking their approval, she drew the ire of the Ijaw elders and other male dominated groups, who perhaps consider it their sole right to rock deals with Abuja .
Primrose, Annkio, Elfrida Olunguo and the few women in the struggle, still have to tread the lonely road in the struggles of their people. Not many women want to follow that lonely, often dangerous path to freedom. The vast majority of visible Niger Delta women belong firmly in the gele brigade, only good to decorate conferences and meetings with their well made up presence.
Annkio says, “Even some in my family want me out. They understand the issues people like us pursue. But, they are concerned for my safety, knowing how vicious the powers that be in the state and Abuja are.”
She disclosed that some less charitable persons describe her as "a silly old woman going about with boys in the name of a struggle.”
Primrose adds that, “People see you and think you are mad.”
If there is a group that symbolizes and dramatizes the immense potential of the women to impact on the struggles of their people, it is the women of Escravos, in Delta State . Their activism, dramatized in the spectacular take over of the installations of oil multinational, ChevronTexaco July 15, 2002, remains the high point of struggles of Niger Delta people in recent times. Their Itsekiri neighbours had earlier protested July 12.
The action of women on the Escravos besides making good television, was remarkable in the manner of organization and successful execution, without the usual male presence. Josephine Ogoba, one of the women who led the Ijaw women protests of July 15, 2002, recounted that it was an all women protest.
“We did not involve the men. We made a vow to keep our preparations secret, all of us. We succeeded and everyone was astonished”
That day was the culmination of a strategy of protests against the oil company by the Ijaw women and their ethnic rivals from Itsekiri, but co-sharers in the devastating impacts of pollution oil spill, gas flaring and the militarization of their hometowns to protect oil facilities in the Niger Delta.
By August 8, the initial protest had infected other women who live in Warri metropolis. These organized themselves and barricaded the offices of Shell, at Ogunu, Warri. Shell deployed a team of soldiers and mobile policemen to dislodge the protesting women, which they did, brutally.
According to Alice Ukoko, a lawyer and women rights campaigner who lives in London , but was home on a visit and joined the women, the security operatives wasted no time dishing out their standard fare of brutality against the women. They fell on the women, some of them with horsewhip, boots and gun butts. In their terror, the women ran into the swamps around the oil company's offices where many of them received deep cuts and some of the older ones some of them grandmothers, fell and got battered.

Posted by: Inemo Samiama