ugnet_: AFRICA'S PROBLEM ARE ROOTED IN COLONIAL BOUNDARIES

[Edward Mulindwa]

NIGER DELTA REPUBLIC MOVEMENT P.O.BOX 33535 London E9 7NS Email: [EMAIL PROTECTED]. Tel:+44(0)208 9853905. To: Africa Commission,  announced by the British Prime Minister, Mr. Tony Blair. AFRICA'S PROBLEMS ARE ROOTED IN COLONIAL BOUNDARIES. We are greatly delighted to hear the announcement made by the British Prime Minister on Tuesday 4th May 2004 on the formation of  Africa Commission.  " I have decided with others to form Africa Commission to take a fresh look at Africa(South of the Arabs) past, present and future.  It will be a comprehensive assessment of the situation and examine a)what has worked b) what has not worked and c) what more can be done.''  In our opinion, in the Niger Delta Republic Movement, these seem to cover comprehensively the matters that need to be looked into, in respect of problems of Africa through this present age - the 4th AGE in Africa. The 1st  AGE was the age of total darkness, backwardness and exclusion from the civilised world.  It was a sort of pre Stone Age when the map of the continent did not show any nation; only features such as mountains, rivers and deserts.  This was because there were no nations, only human settlements that were mostly unknown, even to our fellow Africans.  During this time we shared the continent with wild beasts, disease carrying insects, frightening deserts and hostile rivers that were not easily navigable.  All of these contributed to keep African communities, south of the Arabs, away from one another, and from the active world of civilisation nearly 2000 years ANNO Domini.  Only legends flourished among us. The 2nd AGE was the age of exploration of the continent by brave Europeans.  It also includes centuries of the notorious slave trade that contributed to make Africans the most submissive race of mankind.  And it lasted more than three centuries. Then came the 3rd AGE when European adventurers scrambled into Africa in pursuit of colonies.  They created the modern nations of Africa, south of the Arabs, and so, catapulted us to the modern civilised world of the nineteenth century.  Those who look for a date for the commencement of the colonial system usually refer to the notorious Berlin Conference of 1885.  That was a period of the world when no one sermonised on democracy, freedom, right and justice, only brutal force everywhere.  And each of the "modern nations of Africa" was created by brutally merging a collection of colonial conquests that comprise disparate tribes, plus warring religions, in some cases such as Nigeria.  At the Berlin Conference, Cecil Rhodes of Rhodesia, now Zimbabwe, was reported to have remarked - "We have been engaged in creating boundaries and drawing lines upon maps and over places where no white man's foot ever trod".  And a later author remarked "These boundaries owe everything to European interests, and a little to topography; but nothing whatsoever to the African reality.  Yet they determine and form the boundaries of the nations of modern Africa.  Today, in post colonial Africa, their inhabitants are still coming to terms with their contrived nationhood." Hardly did the Europeans know that they were creating nations for future generations of Africans.  However at about that time in the early 20th century, Mary Kingsley remarked "Whatever we (Europeans) do in Africa today, a thousand years hence, there will be Africans to thrive or suffer for it".  It is not quite 200 years hence, already, the people of the Niger Delta, a wholly Christian communities on the Central Atlantic coast, have been suffering for it during the past forty years.  They were converted to Christianity by European Christian missionaries towards the end of the slave trade.  After the slave trade they were forcibly cobbled together with hundreds of other tribes, including those from Arab orientated Islamic Africans on the fringes of the Sahara desert, to form a colony that was given the name Nigeria in 1914.  In Nigeria, as in many parts of Africa, the colonial system lasted much less than a hundred years; from Bismarch to Hitler. The 4th AGE is the present age of Independence that began in the aftermath of Hitler's war in the 20th century.  In many colonies such as Nigeria it came "on a platter of gold."  Only a handful of colonies fought hard for independence; because the moral issue in Hitler's war softened the hearts of the Imperial nations; and they scrambled out of Africa.  We Africans for the first time got our brand new Free Nations that looked equal to the civilised nations of Europe, Asia, America, and the Middle East.  Albeit, we, of the modern African nations did not realised that, there is one common factor that makes each of our nations different from the nations of Europe, Asia, America and the Middle East; hereafter called the civilised nations. Whereas, each of the countries of the civilised nations comprises communities of like minded peoples whose way of life and traditions are influenced by one common religion, in the modern African nations, almost every country comprises multiple disparate ethnic communities of unlike minded peoples plus warring religions as in Nigeria.  We like to remind Mr. Blair's Commission on Africa, that in India, at independence in 1947, the great Islamic jurist, Mohammed Jinnah, insisted on the separation of the Moslems from India that comprised, in the main, both Hindu and Moslems.  Pakistan was therefore created as a separate nation for the Moslems.  Then as the Moslems happily promoted their own cherished Islamic religion, they founded a brand new capital, they gloriously give the name - Islamabad.  And they moved on along a peaceful existence, with confidence.  Today, both India and Pakistan are among the civilised nations of the world.  Each of them enjoys internal peace that has enabled their peoples to develop impressively.  We admire their wisdom and the world that supported them. It is very unfortunate for Africa that we have not produced capable leaders such as Mohammed Jinnah.  The European colonial civil servants and administrators who ruled the African colonies, did so with motivation and with the ambition to promote the interest, prestige and glory of their imperial nations.  All the peoples and tribes they ruled saw them in the same way.  No one tribe felt that the other tribes could be favoured by them.  The whole colony or country was like one huge prison compound in which the  colonial officers were good warders. They had no reason to be partial in favour of any particular tribe.  So they were seen as impartial slave masters.  On the other hand, the native rulers who succeeded them at independence, as in Nigeria, had no such motivation and impartial standing.  Instead, in a country like Nigeria with more than 200 disparate tribes, the native ruler is one only out of 200  tribes.  It is impossible for the rest of us to see him as an imperial umpire.  So understandably the country can never have a good leader.  As a result, every election is like a horse trading market; and politicians bargain and compromise only on tribal and ethnic basis.  This type of behaviour hastens corruption, nepotism, and never ending bloody conflicts aggravated by religion.  Consequently, in Nigeria, no Nigerian makes a home in any part of the country besides his ancestral area.  No one gets a government job in any state or local government, other than in his own ancestral state or local government area.  Only 'Federal' jobs are available to all; but they are characterised by nepotism, corruption and other social evils.  Every transaction in respect of landed property, however small, in size or duration, whether a home or a factory or other kind of premises, requires government written consent.  This has nothing to do with tax payable on the transaction.  Almost all big international banks, Insurance companies and manufacturing ones, have left the country, Only corruption works perfectly well.  A country of 200 disparate tribal homes cannot be any one's loving nation. Since independence more than eight million have lost their lives in the never ending bloody conflicts that includes pogrom, umpteen executions, military coup, civil war, incessant ethnic and religious rioting aggravated by religion, and killings by government troops.  Even on the eve of the New Millennium, President Mullah Olusegun Obasanjo, having become President by the grace of the Northern Military, a few months earlier, sent his bombers to the Niger Delta; and they bombed the area all night, killing thousands of humans and other God's creatures at a blow.  Earlier, his predecessor, General Sanni Abacha, as military head of state, had wiped out all the leaders of Ogoni in the same Niger Delta.  The reason for the killings in the Niger Delta, is to subdue the people, while their lands and their resources are mercilessly exploited to service the corruption based economy of the country.  We in the Niger Delta are the most savagely exploited peoples in the whole of Africa.  We do not even enjoy the basic right of control over our lands, our rivers, our creeks and our God given resources.  Democracy is abused to enable the large tribes to cheat and rob the smaller tribes of their God given resources.  And we see President Mullah Olusegun Obasanjo, as the most bloodthirsty leader that has ever been head of state in Nigeria.  He came to power pretending that he could eradicate corruption and other evils.  But he has done nothing in this regard; though he knows many more corrupt people than the average Nigeria.  And despite the restrictions on land transaction, he owns more landed property than the average land dealing Nigerian.  Yet he is not known to have inherited any land from his ancestors. Nigeria, full of problems, is a typical modern African nation.  And it is the worst of them.  A great majority of its peoples do not love it.  Many fear it.  Only a few love it , but in the same way as Lucifer and his disciples love Hell.  These enjoy the shambolic nature of the country.  More than six million Nigerians have emigrated to become refugees and asylum seekers in Europe, America and Southern Africa.  Of these, more than 98 per cent are Southerners.  Every tribe in the South and in the Middle Belt is demanding a Sovereign National Conference to discuss separation.  Only the Islamic North is opposing it; and they are supported by President Mullah Olusegun Obasanjo, their agent to rule Nigeria.  And they have unilaterally converted the country to an Islamic nation, by making it a member of the Organisation of Islamic Conference in 1984.  This was followed by rioting that cost lots of lives.  Since Mullah Obasanjo came to be president, the Islamic North have further declared full Islamic systems as they introduce Sharia, Fatwa and other Islamic systems throughout their area.  These make it impossible for Southerners to live and do business among them.  Every engagement between America or Europe and the Arab world is imported to Nigeria by the Islamic North.  And it aggravates the existing conflicts.  The Niger Delta and many other groups that are wholly Christian like to promote our own Christian religion that we cherish.  Everyday there are press reports of people killed in bloody religious conflicts as well as ethnic conflicts, as the country continues to be the fastest regressing country in Africa. In it's edition of 15th June 1999, the London Economist journal wrote "The task before Mr. Obasanjo is nothing less than the reconstruction of Nigeria.   It cannot be solved by gestures.  The name and the football team are about the only thing that unite them.  Even the footballers, however brilliant individual players though they are, do not work as a team.  It is the same with the country.  The hierarchies and structures that hold most modern states together, do not exist in Nigeria." The foregoing provide a clear picture of Nigeria often described by foreign writers as 'the most populated nation in Africa.' Even though everyone knows that the Nigerian population count cannot be reliable, because every tribe and every state, accuses every of the others of inflating its population count in order to cheat on Revenue Allocation, a system whereby the revenue from the Niger Delta is distributed among all the states and local governments. How can Tony Blair's commission for Africa find a remedy for a country such as Nigeria in order that the people can enjoy peace necessary for development, without revising the colonial boundaries, so that communities of like minded people may live together?  Yet this is the one and only way in which the peoples of Nigeria, and in deed Africa, can enjoy peace.  Europeans must try and imagine themselves in the situation of Africans.  The difference between a man from Bayelsa in the Niger Delta, and a man from Katsina in the Islamic North,(both Nigerians); is much more greater than the difference between a Welsh man in the United Kingdom and a Serbian in the former Yugoslavia.  No European will accept that Wales and Serbia be under the same administration.  Yet no foreign writer on Africa's problem ever tries to understand that Africa needs similar arrangement in order to live in peace.  Fragmentation will settle itself when separate, but adjacent nations, see the wisdom of merging voluntarily as in America. Wherefore; Africa's 5th AGE - The Age of peace introduced by the revision of colonial boundaries so that each nation will comprise communities of like minded people as in the civilised world.  We make this proposition from the fact that although Africa is ridden with never ending bloody conflicts almost in every country, there is no evidence that, such conflicts do  exist within any one tribe or where the tribes agree to live together.  When a nation has been settled, it can more easily accept or tolerate new comers; even of different traditions and cultures.  Even here, many in Europe are beginning to realise the difficulties of multiculturalism.  You can imagine the problem when such multiculturalism is imposed by force, and the different cultures are separately located within the same country.  Only peace can stamp out poverty, and backwardness among the nations of Africa.  And only separation of the tribes, as here discussed, can introduce peace.  Our people in the Niger Delta appeal to the British government and people to give their support for the separation of the Niger Delta from Nigeria.  Our people claim nothing whatsoever from Nigeria.  And we realise that we are only fighting a cause; not an enemy.  We pray that the Commission on Africa initiated by Tony Blair should succeed to bring peace to the Niger Delta and the rest of Africa. Kindly consider our proposal. Thank you. Aliyi Ekineh Niger Delta Republic Movement.  The Mulindwas Communication Group "With Yoweri Museveni, Uganda is in anarchy"             Groupe de communication Mulindwas "avec Yoweri Museveni, l'Ouganda est dans l'anarchie"