· Does Wole Soyinka and Chinua Achebe support the Militant?

We must realize that not only the overwhelming delta population is supportive of the Militant acts but that a  vast majority of the “learned Brothers” either actively gives verbal support and/or contributes moneys to fund the militant organizations., ever since the demise of Ken Saro Wiwa,

  Using the mass media as a political front with a capacity to reach large and influential segments of the world population in the shortest possible time, the utterances of our learned brothers have provided factual

Information to show that they are against the Shell work in the Delta Region

  

People of prominence such as Wole Soyinka and Chinua Achebe through the mass media have affect the way that we participate in the political sphere, through becoming an important source of our knowledge by their verbalism

  

But the analysis and opinion has not in any way show that they supported the militant or am I missing something?

  Given this situation, what role can such brothers play in the delta domain to reverse this dangerous and unfortunate scenario being experienced now, what can they do with such media at their disposal in helping to resolve the lingering conflicts in the country

Is there any One Innocent on Both Sides?

We have been habituated to hearing and reading about the Shell/Delta problem in the Nigerian press and media. Usually the account will go somewhat like there is a militant assail which kills/kidnap x amount of innocent expatriates in the Niger Delta, followed by international outcries mostly against the militants as a condemnation for causing the deaths/kidnap of x amount of  innocent civilians.

 The Government, the Shell, The Militants, The Deltan’s, The press, etc, are there really any one innocent on both side?, In our media today, the concept of innocent lives in the Domain of the Delta is being unwrap in a manner different to proper thought and general principles of what the innocent should be

 “Let us have knowledge of other faiths, of other beliefs and other denominations. Let us try to understand how they came into being, and what they are all about. Let us also learn from our own history. Above all, let us not think we are always right”                                                                                                                                Colossians 3:1-17.” 

The Making of local a Militant

Assume a person living in the domain of the Delta sees/or hear that a militant group are waiting for a victim to kidnap and that he recognizes the militant group and knows the modus operandi of the group who lives in the neighborhood. He will be afraid to call the police, because if the police come and arrest the militant, they will not get the protection from the Government, and also when the militant is released, it is to be assumed that he will take revenge on the informer

 Therefore the “innocent” civilians/youth of Warri or adjourning land (one who has not supposed that violence is the key to sustainable development) learns early in the locality that he must give support to the new negotiation principle, either monetary, vocal or both, if he desires to continue to live in peace in the domain of the Delta

 This is normal because an indigene realizes quickly in such an environment that his life is not worth much by his own fellow indigenes if he opposes the militant and the civilian learn also that he has to either go along with the group or he is going to be in trouble forever in his home town

 In the domain of the creek it is foolhardy to actually stand up in the open against a militant group, it is inviting quick demise, if not a sluggish meandering end to their youthful age How Can we Stop it?

Niger Delta and the Nigerian Media

Each of us with access to the media is willing to be the first to steal a story, imagination becomes a fact, we become convinced that we did not will nor execute the imaginative art but that the deed did truly happen

In a state of chaos, we the press blame each other as always, we point out fingers, equipped with a list of the insufferable invective, yet we never seems to find a way in consultation with the people we profess to serve, we conducts all the negotiations in the pressrooms, there we do the backing and filling, the menaces we call the militia and explanations we assume lead them astray, we write our fantasy tales which slowly bring the delta domain into collision with the state or the Nigerian Government, and soon may be…very soon, we will slowly slides the country into war by our reportage. _may it never happen in the name of the God of the African soil

But the Americans predicted it; — The director of U.S. intelligence warned of instability in Nigeria amid concern as attacks continue on foreign workers in the Niger Delta oil-producing region

It is easy to detect that if there will be a war it will start from the delta, and such excuse about arms and military movement may later have other aims,

What can we do to stop it, we need more space in the papers that may be devoted to creative reasoning, were we ask ourselves what on earth distressed our brothers in the delta domain as to allow themselves to be regimented, coerced through life unsatisfied trails, unbalanced in their pursuits, why did they see the Government as the manufactory of destruction toward whatever they cannot identify within their domain revival, can we as the press do that, can we devote a page to find out, I have searched googles in the internet, not once have I seen any of such creative ethos by the Nigerian press to help our brothers and sisters in the delta

let us as the press identifies ourselves with the MEND purposes for once, let us as the press recreate the spirit of Ken Saro Wiwa through his letters from prison, projects Asari Dokubo in lieu with his militant thoughts and symbols, through us, the imaginations of men with much creativity, let nationalism becomes the dominant feeling as we project them, as we seek for reason why such individual bears much interminable drone toward the society of which he is a part. We can do it as we let its influences to mold our writing habits, our values in relation to theirs, let their ways of thinking be our ways of thinking, so that however aware we may become, we never really lose the stamp of our patriotism

let us forget what the international community thinks, theirs is mostly a physiological warfare, believe me if we can do this, we may detest most of what we sought to project, the persona of these whose delta domain we live in because the institutions of our country form a certain network which affects us essentially as it does individuals and intrigues our thoughts all the same, that beauty that seems to be a fundamental fact of our consciousness, an irreducible minimum of social feeling.

Long live Nigeria

My game outgrow the combat rule

My game outgrow the combat rule

With blood of our brothers as ink

Erode the tears and ignore the saints

Unseen, unheard, unknown to friend or foe 

My game outgrow the combat rule

With the score of heroes paid the price

Send my poetry helter- skelter

And left all men their debtor 

“In May, 1994 after the death of the 4 moderate Ogoni elders, Nigerian political activist and writer Ken Saro-Wiwa, together with eight others was arrested for their murder. Following the show trial in
Nigeria, he and his co-defendants were found guilty and sentenced to be hanged. Despite massive international publicity the executions were carried out by the Nigerian government on 10 November.
This collection is the extra-ordinary and moving fictionalized poetry of the Niger Delta and especially Ken Saro-Wiwa’s period of detention in 1993” …this is a fictionalised replay

It is a month and a day, and I am a prisoner of the Creek, a character from my own research, coming alive to hurts me with a wish to commemorate this drama, for what it is worth within the combat rule

The return of Nigerian playwright Ken Saro-Wiwa’s body to my imaginative write-up has been broadly welcomed by my literary family, who reflect on my idealism as a primary stride in my campaign to give voice to the Shelled creek (happy it is me not them)

My game outgrow the combat rule as I move my hands toward the slate, feeling the chalk poised to scribe a story as I try to imagine how it is in the other side of my Shell, but all I can see is the face of the Supreme Court judge as the right of the late Activist; Ken Saro Wiwa was being read to me…

 

“For the despicable crime you have committed I hereby sentence you to death by hanging”, and now I too await my execution, amid the injustice done to the oppressed people of my Naija land

 

It is eleven years since the minority rights activist, together with eight other Ogoni fellow campaigners, were hanged and buried in unmarked graves for a  game that outgrow the combat rule

…. I hope to see the flames still burning amid the ashes in his Pipe by the collection of the poetry am about to unleash

My game outgrow the combat rule

Were we play the game of trade and war

Spoil of greed scattered on its part

A drift to doom as conscience sleeps 

My game outgrow the combat rule

On people lost like slaves that swat

They are countless, voiceless, hopeless Born of a race of traders 

My game outgrow the combat rule

And hazards of the lonely quest Were dazed warriors may care to askHow soon our end may be 

My poetry will be a battle against oil exploitation by the culprits in their homeland, because my predecessors had been involved in a campaign against oil exploitation in their homeland also, the poetry will follow them to the Niger Delta region where they were condemned to death after a controversial trial, the trial that refused to let my imagination be within the Combat rule

So Sylvester Omosun will write-up the memories of the place, his careful analyze through his imagination will outgrow the combat rule, his daring interpretation of the lies, all devoted to the reconstruction of a fractured society, it will be something his academic peer had failed to do…to encourage him mail him the information he seeks or comment at http://omosun.wordpress.com

My game outgrow the combat rule

Where the breath of eroded fuel

Creep into our mouth and froze

The fear in every heart 

My game outgrow the combat rule

Reviewed our sinful ways to heaven Brooding on our hopeless plightBy sight of unknown shores 

My game outgrow the combat rule

And the empty hopes men nursed Till panic is written in plain poetryOn barren land and trackless wood 

My game outgrow the combat rule

Till in our heart an adoration grow

And a longing the way we knew For wife and child and friend,Amen 

Delta:the land in vengeance

When the spirit of the land in vengeance

Welcome pride most solemn gesture

The caused pasture of the domains

Have rooms for a million griefs

Across the wealth is a rustling beast

That breaks the silence gossips burrow

Hold life and death in its periphery

Coloured by oil from the shelled creek

Within we see the one despairing want

Banter and temp the pilgrim at the domain

Since the borrowed years the oil spilled

Till creation ugly crevices were filled

Three quarters of the land has no master

Behold against the re-creative fonts

As the “shell” enabled strands

Plumb the bottom of the State

Time is no solace in the endless quarrel

As blood of nation flow in an endless feud

Gouging the eyes and scotching the lung of men

Spreading Sahara for his sons and daughters 

Delta:In its wake

In its wake

The waste of the land rims the caused creek

By the acrid bile of time disordered lane

And the incubus creeps down the state

And taint the environment with dark mischief 

In its wake

Pestle and mortar mix flesh and bones

The rust of youth to mend

With hundred strangled in its claws

Over the thirsty acre 

In its wake

Death invade the floor of pasture

A measure of the eroding face of land

Dept of its origin since time began

Around the orbit of the oil point 

In its wake

Only God knows if we were first

To taste the lip within natures wealth

Drowned in plateau whose riches have no end

Amid the bones of men my brother slain 

In its wake

As long as son remember the price the father paid

The dream will persist to mimic the “mend” lines

Rousing once again the unconquered land

For the meaning bonded with the black gold 

In its wake

Leavened with hate exploding yeast

In the larger lust of his eyes

Rousing once more the immemorial reach

We ate the bitter bread  

Delta:the flower of death

Where the flower of death blossomed

It was like black demons belching deadly fumes

Robbing the last green meadow of its grain

With instability of myth and violence 

Exposed and trapped in the immense “shell”

The land pocketed with festering sores

As two obverse law tug at the state

Were quarrel are fought over the bitter end 

Red is the miracle of oil into blood

Caused by greed’s’ brief inauguration

Mixing men and their machine

As the crowded shore erodes fighting flesh

Delta:its’ death warrant

When the fertile womb of land admit to treason

Then the victimised village of the creek will rise

Surrounded by the masked warrior of each ethnic

Trained amid the tangled dogwood for the chase

Against the dispossessed of our country. 

I too thirst along the battle path

Browsing toward the moment of self pity

With longer odds and larger stack to win

Of a State unaware of its death warrant

Delta:The gathering pressure

When gathering pressure explode

The stance tell their troubles and their age

But war and strife conceal their heritage

And the whisper of the wind is a mystery

Of a state in the hordes of hell 

Posterity and folly of a debate

Shows the potters art with blood and clay

Many imperfect being over the mark

Of nature feeding us errors in the dark