Jesus and the criminals

FROM the cradle darkness walked upon the surface of the Niger Delta killing any splutter of fluorescence like sunrise extinguishing lamps in Soyinka’s  ‘Death in the Dawn’. From 1957 and beyond the consumed fluorescence turned into a vast void, only the crude oil flowing forcibly to illuminate demarcated territories.
So some criminals emerged and militarily engaged the mastermind of the darkness and the vast void as graphically captured in the language of the ordinary people in the book Dewdrops From Nigeria’s Starved Tree: ‘The Niger Delta enjoys recognition as one of the most developmentally impoverished regions in the whole world. The only transgression of Niger Delta against Nigeria is being the reservoir of the black gold.’
With a dexterity unbeatable the Federal Government of Nigeria and the oil companies had created the darkness and the vast void for years, bringing in its trail combatant Niger Delta bees resentful of the developmental VAST VOID.
The criminals merged into major Isaac  Boro born 10 September 1938, declared Niger Delta Republic in 1966 and for twelve days he took up arms against the enemies and died in 20 April 1968 under questionable mysterious circumstances outside the liberation struggle after witnessing the birth of Rivers State in 1968. Boro thus became the first JESUS CHRIST of the Niger Delta.
Before Boro’s death he was recklessly  maligned, derogated and differently appellated but worked devotedly for the Federal Government of Nigeria when engaged as a dependable material in the execution of the ill-fated condemnable civil war of 1967-70 after he had meaningfully and heroically wound up his liberation struggle in the Niger Delta – a meaningless civil war in which the Ibos were, regrettably, starved and massacred mindlessly with sadism by veterans of exploitation and hegemony in Nigeria.
However, for authoritative clarity and meaningful progression  on the issue of marginalization, exploitation, massacre and provocation of the Ibos in connection with the Biafra Republic before and during the Nigerian civil war of 29 May 1967, it is the Odenigbos, Ugwus, Kainenes and Olannas of Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s Half of a Yellow Sun  who could tell the story so the remaining half of the Half of a Yellow Sun could be completed by me.
Depriving people of a healthy space to experiment their ideals, intuitions, theories and talents  towards meaningful existence in a nation as it was in the Biafran days replicated in the Niger Delta, would always breed a whirlpool.
This is the fulcrum of Odenigbo’s thesis in Half of a Yellow Sun when he contends that: ‘The real tragedy of our post colonial world is not that the majority of people had no say in whether or not they wanted this new world; rather, it is that the majority have not been given the tools to negotiate this new world’. Deprivation and exclusion were the inspirational forces behind Boro’s Delta Volunteer Service of forty able-bodied men formed alongside with Samuel Owonaru and Nothinghan Dick in 23 February 1966 (the day the Holy Communion of war was showered on all in a circle in the forest), and High Chief Government Ekpemupolo’s MEND now dead.
Upon the retirement of Boro from the earth and his subsequent canonization as the first Jesus Christ of the Niger Delta, the darkness and the vast void came back with a bizarre virulent newness. Niger Deltans were turned into either Israelites in the hands of the Philistines at war or like the Israelites in the comfort of king Pharaoh of Egypt. Groaning under the spiky enslavement of the veterans of exploitation, balkanization and systematic pulverization, Niger Deltans were too cowered to come out canoeing confrontationally on an alternative canal against the surging  surfs of annihilation.
The tears of major Jasper Isaac Boro still stood as a tree freshly cut, dripping with sap. The veterans of annihilation were emboldened and so grew luxuriantly jubilant like palm fronds in the affectionate grip of a gentle breeze in Gbaramatu forest. A malevolent new storm of exploitation was thus yielded inalienable right of walk over the Niger Delta by the veterans of annihilation. Mysteriously, rather mysteriously, Niger Deltans lived like anaestheticized souls side by side with the destroyers of light camouflaged as light-bearers.
Living complacently as anaestheticized souls, a dangerous lull invaded the Niger Delta struggle in the wake of Boro’s retirement. The path walked on by Boro was overgrown with thick weeds turned a virgin forest, terrifying the Chinua Achebe’s UNOKAS of Umuofia in Things Fall Apart. As a man characterized by possession of the required ‘vital linkage with the poor and dispossessed of the land’ comparable to Nkem Osodi of Kangan in Chinua Achebe’s Anthills of the Savannah, poised to leave indelible imprint for people to follow, High Chief Government Oweizide Ekpemupolo transparently led a manumission war against the veterans of exploitation in the late 1990’s and salvaged the people.
With a commitment, consistency, transparency, sophistication and mysticism that amaze Nigerians up till now, Tompolo methodically cleared the thick forest of Boro and began his manumission struggle in the Niger Delta because his convictions were fired by Ralph Waldo Emerson who teaches thus: ‘Do not go where the path may lead, go instead where there is no path and leave a trail’. And indeed the trail left by Tompolo in the Niger Delta manumission struggle would perpetually resist effacement no matter the twisted verbal gymnastics manufactured by the Ministry of Propaganda, Instigation and Lie-programming Affairs in Nigeria.
Independently Tompolo pursues progressive ideals by which the path he had cleared for man would be invariably denuded of suffocating weeds. Niger Delta must be developed and Nigeria must remain one indivisible entity.
The  goals, the dreams of Niger Delta must be systematically pursued and achieved within Nigeria, measurably distant away from thoughts of dismemberment but based on new codes of togetherness  however the  virulence, the pangs, the anguish and the agonies of provocation from the veterans of exploitation. He will never dismantle his progressive ideals to satisfy propagandists but always unwaveringly cocooned within his tested carapace of philosophical, moral, mystical intuitions and projections, calmly patriotically in tune with the theory of a united, indivisible and prosperous nation because the cosmically decreed length of time for man is not long enough to be frittered away walking on the thorny path of propaganda czars who vindictively paint Tompolo in the colour of a freedom activist dangerous to nation-building.
Before the cosmic tide is full, the whole gamut  of Tompolo’s progressive ideals would be tenaciously lived to the fullest in the consolidation of a united, indivisible and prosperous Nigeria because he is daily nurtured and empowered ideationally by Steve Jobs (1955-2011) thus: ‘Your time is limited, so don’t waste it living someone else’s life. Don’t be trapped by dogma – which is living with the results of other people’s thinking. Don’t let the noise of others’ opinions drown out your inner voice. And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary’.
Because the thick-forest was cleared by him for habitation, Tompolo has thus become the SECOND JESUS CHRIST of the Niger Delta. Though famed to be connected to the  poor, the dispossessed, the gods, the Angels, the rich and the cosmic, he is yet to be found invoking these links to suffocate people.
Jesus was feared and suspected before the crucifixion but after it he became the love of the world, so much so that even for a falling man who trips over a stone, it was the invocation of ‘Jesus!’ which naturally calms the mind. Life without Jesus appears jinxed, careering down the abyss.
Somebody sacrificially emancipated the Niger Delta in the second phase after the death of Boro in the book of Genesis. The Niger Delta was liberated in the book of Exodus by Tompolo. He was killed, death celebrated with a panache but disproved; he was declared wanted and later died when the HEROSHIMA-LIKE Amnesty bomb was thrown on Camp Five in 2009. From the death he rose, seated at the right hand of EGBESU.




Check the Vanguard newspaper for the full story.