Column – Patrick

Nigerians, Water No Enter My Mouth (1)

Alhaji Mujahid Dokubo-Asari apart from being a daring and abrupt ultra-Ijaw nationalist, is also a Cyclopean comedian. Perhaps, ethnic nationalism spiced with politics is a wrong trade for him. Humour and amusement merchandizing would have been the best for him. During last May's remembrance ceremony of Major Isaac Jasper Adaka Boro, the far-famed student leader and Ijaw revolutionary of the 1960s, Dokubo-Asari was in his typical nationalistic and comic temper. The Boro's forum was organized by Asari's group, the Niger Delta People's Salvation Front (NDPSF), the political arm of the armed Niger Delta People's Volunteer Force (NDPVF). In attendance were ethnic and civil society formations across the deltaic region. Celestine Akpobari, a diminutive, lively and youthful man I have known since the late 1990s, then an official of the RisomPalm workers union, attended the above event on his Ogoni Solidarity Front (OSF) platform.

I was told that the forum ended up in peace and crucial lessons learned from the life, time and struggles of the famous Ijaw revolutionary. I also gathered that after the meeting, Akpobari and few others also queried Asari why he has not been attacking the government of Dr. Goodluck Jonathan as he had done to other governments before. Dokubo-Asari was said to have adjusted his massive hat on his head, leaped his legs lightly and glistened with deep throat laughter, casted his fingers gently across his mouth, and bellowed satisfactorily in Pidgin English, “My brothers I no go fit talk again. Water don enter my mouth”. In same Pidgin English Language, he detailed how the Jonathan's government has been awarding mouth-watering contracts running into millions to him. As Warri folks of the western Niger Delta would say in their own Pidgin English type, Asari don pick money.

Dokubo-Asari has given us a piece of comic relief in a season of national tragedy, suffering and mourning, a season with comedy and comedians on the rampage. “Water don enter my month” is now a popular comic story among civil society activists in Port Harcourt and beyond. The phrase is paradoxical and periodic in content and context. It connotes corruption, cooptation and bribery.

On Monday January 9, 2012, Nigerians masses across the country and in diaspora occupied the streets, to express their rage and travails over the sudden and harsh hike in the price of Premium Motor Spirit (fuel) by President Jonathan as his New Year gift to Nigerians. Though, I participated actively in planning the protest, I couldn't participate in the protests that quaked Port Harcourt, the slummy, garbage infested oil city. I had told friends and colleagues during the pre-strike strategy meetings that I would travel to Abuja, to attend a meeting earlier scheduled by the British Council (BC) under its new “Nigerian Stability and Reconciliation Programme (NSRP)” which I am its coordinator for the Niger Delta zone, and I have to be there. Though, I was at the BC/NSRP meeting. My mind was with millions of Nigerians on the streets, expressing peacefully their anger against a bad policy that will further pauperize them, for as the famous Nigerian Musician FelaAnikupo-Kuti would say “Our minds are in those places “. It is the masses that were protesting, and not us. We merely supported them. Nobody should personalize the people's struggle for selfish ends.

The oil city massquake had just begun when Celestine Akpobari and Ken Henshaw reportedly told the crowd that this writer, is in Abuja in a meeting with Miabiye Kuromiema, the Ijaw Youth Council (IYC) and Oronto Natei Douglas, Senior Presidential aide on Research and Strategy to brainstorm on how to scuttle thepeople's strike in Rivers State and other places. And that I collected a worthless N5 million bribe from the duo to do their biddings. My colleagues in Rivers and Bayelsa States confirmed this to me as well as other participants in the historic March. It is bizarre indeed, Joseph Inyang, the Ibibio winsome activist and petro-chemical engineer who visited me during one of ourprograms session in an Abuja hotel, not Aso Rock, told me that Douglas was away from the country for medical reason throughout the period.

It is quite unfortunate that Akpobari and Henshawwho I have worked with closely for over a decade can cock such a frivolous falsehood to destroy me without any bit of investigation. They should have contacted Dr. Ukoha Ukiwe, the unassuming and distinguished scholar and researcher I respect, and others at the meeting with me since they no longer trust me. I don't really know what they intended to achieve from such an unfounded frame up. I learnt of the Kuromiema's meeting from a textual massage I got from Celestine Akpobari, the Khana Local Government chairmanship candidate of the Action Congress of Nigeria (ACN) in the May, 2011 flawed Rivers council elections, few hours before the commencement of the meeting. This is a season of blackmail and untruth, and I am the wrong one in the dock. From this society where the innocent and just are always the ones on trial, and suffer the worst form of misfortune is where I hail. Here where the villains are celebrated. In our society, one says all sorts of slanderous things against somebody and put up a counterfeit smile when their victims appear at the scene.Dr. Paul Joseph Goebbels ofNazi Germany was Adolf Hitler's Chief propagandist who warned us that if a lie is told repeatedly, and remained unchallenged, it becomes a truth.

I had met Ken Henshaw, born of Igbo mother and an Efik father of the Calabar basin, an vigorous youngster and striking philosophy student at the University of Port Harcourt in the expiring days of the 1990s when progressive student activism was in expeditious decline, and I was part of a series of conscious efforts by concerned activists then, to build an independent alternative movement based on the Marxism, Pan-Africanism and other progressive ideologies around Nigeria. Our encounter was great, and my commitment to the cause was whole, making him to fondly nickname me,” The Twenty First Century War Machine “

I didn't take the wild tale against me kindly. I challenged its originators to prove the allegations. Ken Henshawtold me four days after the false story had swept through like a thunder blast and opinions formed about me, that he never said I took bribe from anybody and that the textual message which read, “We are aware that certain respected CSO actors have gathered in Abuja at the invitation of the state to perfect ways of truncating the popular struggle of the Nigerian people against fuel price increase. While people have a right to attend any meeting they choose, but let if be known that by doing that, they loose all pretext to representing the people. We shall take it upon ourselves to make this truth, known to all Nigerian people” sent to me on Sunday, January 8 at about 11:45am was meant for Mark Oliseh, Henshaw claimed. Oliseh is an Ndokwa-born activist and secretary of the Dokubo-Asari's Niger Delta People's Salvation Front (NDPSF) who participated in the pro-Jonathan meeting, and signed some documents in support of the subsidy removal which were published in the Nigerian newspapers. Perhaps, that was his way of defending such infantile mendacity, whereas, Celestine shrouded his face in shame when we met recently at a meeting in his office. This article's title rendered in Pidgin English becomes necessary at a time like this, because as the old maxim goes, “ I've  done nothing wrong, so I have no fear “ , but as lawyers would confuse us, “ Innocence is no defence “. My concern is not the consequence on my reputation, but its negative impacts on our young comrades.

 I had travelled this bumpy path before, and remained untainted .Before the 2003 violent elections in Rivers State; I was part of an enterprise to put an end to the state sponsored violence, bloodletting, looting and corruption that characterized the government of Sir, Dr. Peter Otunaya Odili. The Rivers Democratic Movement (RDM), a political association, not a political party which had in its cot seasoned partisan politicians, business women and men, the academia, clergy women and men and rights activists was born out of genuine efforts to rescue Rivers State that we used to be proud of.

To be contd.