The BN Village - View Single Post - Black Struggle In Niger Creeks: How Much Do You Care About This

FireStarter · (#8 (**permalink**))

Quote:

Originally Posted by afrikanchuldren

THE THING IS THAT THE GOVT HERE WILL SUPRESS ANY FORM OF UPRISING OR CIVIL DEMONSTRATION.

This has not stopped so called rebels attacking and killing ordinary people going about their business in Port-Harcourt and other eastern places, has it ?.

Truth is, repeatedly, when black people are faced with external persecution they turn inwards and attack themselves. A policy that has resulted in wars throughout Africa; wars that don’t seem to solve the problem that brought them about in the first place. There is a saying; fools are people who never learn from their mistakes. The fact that African wars simply do the rounds in Africa - one minute in east Africa the next, in West Africa etc - and never result in meaningful progress, should inform the wise. In other words, we have been going about things the wrong way now is the time to try something different.

I would like to see Africans for once focusing their attacks on those external forces ultimately responsible for their problems. The rebels in Delta should copy the Arabs and focus their attacks on the West. Let us do something like that for once. If the rebels are truly serious about redressing environmental degradation in the delta and recouping lost revenue for the people they should take Shell to task. They can do this by focusing the world media on Shell’s degradation of the environment, its corrupt backhand payments to politicians – demand billions of dollars compensation for this and for the flaring of gas (It causes acid rain ). Any such campaign should involve protest in the west, stand ups, chaining of selves to embassy doors , and even more direct militancy if the situation calls for it.

These things should be done both in Nigeria and in the west. However, what the rebels have been doing so far, in my opinion, amounts to the industrialisation of armed robbery. Plainly put, I believe that what has happened is that because Nigerians are smart people even armed robbers who hitherto confined their activities to sticking up people for money, breaking and entry and occasional hijacking with fatalities, have now gone upmarket. They saw an opportunity to hijack the genuine concerns and suffering of the people of Delta for financial games. They thought why don’t we commit armed robbery and disguise the fact under some sort of pseudo freedom fighting thingamajig.

All over the West African coast, ships from Europe and Asia trawl for fish, depleting fish stocks, resulting in loss of livelihood of local African fishermen. The result of this is African migration to Europe via Spain and Italy reported often in the media. Any other people but Africans would take speedboats up to some of these trawlers and either board them forcibly or lob grenades into them to blow them up in order to recoup their fishing grounds. However, Africans do not take such understandable actions. In fact, let me make a prediction. The prediction is this: in future, those Africans that are loosing their livelihoods to foreign trawlers will mount some sot of militant actions against a tribal neighbour , or their own governments to blame them for not doing enough to stop foreign trawlers. Moreover, the weapons the exploited Africans will use to attack their neighbours and governments will most probably come form the countries who own the exploiting trawlers in the first place.