Niger Delta Demands 40 Percent Ownership of Their Oil

Chairman Silverbird Group Ben Murray-Bruce, has been making whistle stop and door to doorcampaigns for his Brass East Senatorial Zone with tumultuous crowds cheering along the way for the man they call the Obama of Africa. Traversing seas, thorny paths an

It is mid-morning and the party is about to begin. The entourage proceeds in a motorcade to the Ogbia Jetty on sea to Twon Brass. Ben Murray-Bruce, PDP Senatorial candidate for the Brass East Senatorial District in the March 28 slugfest, is running a race against time; his reflexes define his desperation to get things done for the sake of posterity.

Today his campaign team proceeds to Twon Brass where he will join the Bayelsa State Deputy Governor and Deputy Chairman State Presidential Campaign Committee, Rear Admiral Gboribiogha John Jonah (Rtd), with other State and National Assembly candidates. The waiting crowd of idle youths roars and cheers to welcome this black man who looks and speaks like Barack Obama. Murray-Bruce responds with a victory sign in the air.

He looks around him to take a deep survey of a decrepit environment he hardly comes in contact with; an air of depression sinks into his psyche; for a while he remains speechless and withdrawn, his countenance changes and you can tell he is crying without tears rolling down his cheeks. He picks up and waves to the crowd once more walking in quick steps and calculated gaits to the waiting gun boats ready to fly him and his team across the creeks to Twon Brass.

All around the swampy vicinity, quaint looking huts silhouetted against the back drop of brackish water beneath it, complement batchers on planks, contrasted with abandoned, obsolete zinc sheets, an architecture of the downtrodden meant for human habitation. This is the true face of the Niger Delta, the oil producing people.

The potential voters hanging around the pathway ask for nothing but cash which for them makes more difference than the promise of empowerment through good education, job creation and “let there be light,” Murray-Bruce’s mantra in this election period. Where no cash exchanges hands, the angry crowd, some semi-demented arising from abuse of some substance or having got hooked to alcohol, curses and threatens to no end. If “how for do,” some cash comes from a Good Samaritan in the campaign train, the curse even becomes more pronounced with the threat that someone would pay the price in the kidnap industry for handing over peanuts.

James Heineken, a young man in his early twenties runs helter skelter like a masquerade on the rampage in the market square, his handkerchief folded round his head like an imagery from the Islamic Brotherhood camp dropped into the middle of the creek town. “I no gree oohh. Tell Uncle Ben Bruce he must settle me today. I be welder oohh, my hands don scatter where me they weld all my life. Now I no fit oohh, na kidnap I wan do oohh and I go feed my family oohh, my wife and children oohh.”

The rampaging masquerade in human form had, judging from his early morning fragrance, soaked himself with this local brew called ‘kinkana ,’ asking for more if only some ‘quid’ comes his way. The personality he is asking for is somewhere in Kiagho paying homage to traditional rulers. Frustrated at not reaching his target, Heineken becomes an object of harassment to some members of the entourage left behind for want of space.

The party proceeds as Murray-Bruce shielded from the thickening crowd manages to disengage from his guards to speak hope and a future that can make a difference if only it will be part of his deal with the youths of Brass East. While some applaud the wake-up call, others want an immediate result indicative in their restless moves and shuffles almost wanting to jump into the waiting gunboats; but the presence of the soldiers and the smoking guns of the boat repel them, expectedly.

At 40 nautical miles per hour, Lance Corporal Efegi Padiki sets his throttle eastwards defining his destination against the backdrop of the roaring water, presently disturbed by the dazzling movement of the JTF gunboat. An hour and thirty minutes later, the Murray Bruce Campaign Network is on ground at the Yenagoa Jetty welcomed by an equally vote for cash crowd of young men and a sprinkle of young women mostly teenage mothers with their love kids strapped to the backs.

Somehow, it is fun to welcome the man they have heard of, seen on television and celebrated by newspapers and magazines home and abroad. But that is as far as it goes. What is the cash value of this homecoming, they demand. Is it worth a king’s ransom just like Sir Arthur and his Men of the Roundtable? Is this our own Robin Hood or ‘Alibaba and the 40 Thieves’ about to steal from the rich for the poor or has he come to impoverish us the more? Their looks and body movements spoke of nothing else but the anger of a deprived group. The answer? Definitely not. Yet, as sad as the situation presents itself, the fun of contrasts goes on to a comedy of