Justice And Equity In Nigerian Politics: A Case for the Niger Delta

By Prof. Tunde Babawale

ACCORDING to two of Nigeria's founding fathers, “Nigeria was a mistake of 1914” (Balewa),and also “a mere geographical expression” (Awolowo, 1947:47-48). What this implies is that conceptually and empirically, Nigeria cannot meaningfully stand the test of nationhood. The above expression therefore underscored the crisis, contradictions and ambiguities embedded in the foundation of the Nigerian nation.

Governor Peter Odili of Rivers State, Nigeria

Nigeria was not just a creation of colonial imperialism it was in fact a dysfunctional marriage of disparate and otherwise autonomous political formations who neither willingly nor consciously surrendered their independence to be ruled by a single political power. What informed the political matrimony was the administrative convenience and logic of colonialism. This was made possible given the superior weaponry and fire power that was deplored by the colonialist in their drive for a safe and secure territory for surplus appropriation and expropriation.

The question that naturally arises from the above articulation is whether the formation Nigeria as a nation under the above historical circumstances and context is in any way peculiar? In other words, is there any reason in the formation, constitution and composition of Nigeria as a nation under the over-arching interest of colonialism that precluded her achieving political stability, national harmony and consensus, economic development, and more importantly, a pervasive consciousness of nationhood?

Another pertinent concern relevant to our problematic in this paper is the interrogation of those political variables employed/engaged by nations in similar circumstances, and suffering from the dilemma of national maladjustment and structural incongruity as a result of the peculiar circumstances of their composition, as a desideratum for the convocation of an enduring national architecture. Put differently, of what heuristic benefit is the application of justice and equity as a sine qua non to nation building, political development and economic prosperity, with particular reference to the Niger Delta region of Nigeria?

The rest of the paper is divided into three parts. Part one explores the theoretical and philosophical discourses on justice and equity. In part two, a brief interrogation of the constitution of the Nigerian state and an explication of the centrality of the Niger Delta to the Nigerian political economy, with particular emphasis on the paradoxical underdevelopment of the region. In the final part, a case for a just and equitable distribution of national power with a shift to the Niger Delta is canvassed, following which we draw the conclusion for the paper.

Theoretical and Philosophical Discourse on Justice and Equity:
A proper starting point of any discourse on justice and equity is the identification of the ends which it seeks to serve. These two concepts are consequently better seen as a means to an end. Those ends which justice and equity seek to achieve are social harmony, community progress, individual and collective development, the stability and health of the human ecology. In other words, justice and equity seek the protection of humanity from self-inflicted harms and pains that could be injurious to the human social existence as an orderly collective. As Ogundare (1994: 106) opined “justice seeks to promote what is utmost fairness in relations among a society and consequently remove ills in the society” It is to this end that Euben (1990:39), argued that”.. .justice provides impetus and place for otherwise antagonistic forces (whether in the soul Or state) to enhance both the social efficiency and moral efficacy of the community.”

What then is justice? According to Agbede (2004: 169), justice is nothing but a moral imperative. It connotes a notion of equality, which could be of a distributive or corrective dimension. According to Ogundare (1994: 105):

Particularly justice is either distributive or rectificatory. The first can be illustrated by the distribution of honour or money or such other assets which are divisible among members of the community. Rectificatory justice by remedies an inequitable division between two parties by means of a sort of arithmetical progression. Thus, when one party has inflicted, and the other suffered a blow, or one has killed and the other has been killed, the active and passive aspects of the affair exhibit an unequal division. The judge tries to equalize them with the help of penalty.

How then does injustice take the place of justice in human community? As Aristotle (cite in Mukharji, 1972:4) argued, “Injustice arises when equals are treated unequally, and also when unequals are treated equally”. Pieper (cited in Johari, 1987:358) identified three basis norms of justice: “(1) reciprocal or mutually exchanged justice which orders the relations of individuals called ‘cumulative justice' or ‘justice in exchange', (2) ministering justice which brings order to the relations between the community as such and the individuals composing it with the result that it marks the inseparable association between law and order, and (3) legal or general justice which orders the members' relations to the social whole”

The common threads in the above postulation are: one, justice implies fairness; two, justice entails equality of opportunities to social benefits including power to control the state; three, there cannot be justice when no conscious attempt is made to correct obvious injustice to equal stakeholders in an enterprise; finally, justice embraces a programmatic sense of collectivity and inclusivity. Hence, accommodation, proportionality and equitability are the underlying factors in the justice equation. In fact, according to Ogundare (opt cit) “equity is the rectification of legal justice”. To this end, legalism does not necessarily make for justice. A strict adherence to constitutional provisions and majoritarian democratic percepts with little or no regards to minorities' concern may be counterproductive in the long run for national stability and development. Plato's articulation of justice to mean “giving to every man his due” is meaningful in the present context. A nature without justice cannot endure for long.

While legal justice ultimately has its purpose in the sustenance of human community, as argued previously, it is a very shaky basis to construct an enduring and stable nation made up of diverse and heterogeneous population,, especially like Nigeria where the resource for social production and reproduction is owned by the minority who given their minority status are excluded from power. This calls for political justice, which is not only the progenitor of legal justice, but of a superior nature in the context of social balance, distributive justice and power equalization. As Aristotle articulated, political justice is a property of every community of free and equal citizens with a commonality of interest in general welfare and progress, which is either done “arithmetically or proportionally. In his elaboration of this position of Aristotle, Ogundare (thid), submitted that, “Hence in associations where these conditions are not present there is no political justice between the members, but only a sort of approximation of justice”.

In Arior V Elemo (1983) 1 Sc. 13 at 81 it was held that:
immutable justice demands that justice must be even-handed and where injustice has been done by unfair adjudication, nobody can set a substantive standard of justice for himself by acquiescing to it. (Cited in Ogefer, 1997: 157).

Our final concern is whether injustices could be purposive, and the propriety of blaming people for injustices perpetuated. Ogunde (1994) provided a perceptive answer to this when he argued thus:

It is only when an unjust act is voluntary that it is blamed. There are three kinds of injury. Those done in ignorance are mistakes. Those done knowingly but without premeditation is (sic) an injury. The first two do not make the doer unjust or wicked. Those done on purpose or maliciously are unjust and wicked.

How are we to understand the continued and historical injustices on the people of the

Niger Delta socially, economically and politically since the formation of Nigerian nation?

Are they to be understood as ignorant mistake, unpremeditated injustices, or malicious and calculated injustices? These concerns are our next focus.

Nigeria and the Niger Delta: A Tale of Oppression, Exploitation and Subjugation:
The intention here is to situate the imperative of justice and equity in the origin, structure and composition of the Nigerian political economy. Colonialism as experienced in Nigeria was not just arbitrary, it was a very autocratic, undemocratic, oppressive and dictatorial system. Expectedly therefore, the nature and character of the state that colonialism institutionalized in Nigeria followed the logic of these negative orientations.

To compound this crisis, the economic process that was put in place was highly dependent with the centrality of foreign capital concretely assured.
The implication of this was the subservience and subordination of the domestic ruling classes to imperialist capital. The reason for this was their lack of control over the means of production within their economy. Not only were the various social formations integrated by colonialism to form Nigeria not consulted, the colonial authorities in furtherance of their own interest created artificial majorities where none existed hitherto. For instance, before 1954, there was no entity known as Hausa-Fulani. As Usman and Abba (2005:56) argued, “Hausa-Fulani”, cannot meaningfully define an etlmic group, or, a nationality, because Hausa is a language with its associated cultures and identities.” Just as Yoruba solidarity was a creation of colonial politics of survival and irredentism.

The same can be said of the Igbo. As Usman and Abba (Ibid: 43) again argued, “The Yoruba ethnic identity, like almost all the others in Nigeria, is a product of the formation of Nigeria in the late 19th and 20th centuries. This process was not simply one of the integration of communities speaking related dialects. It involves the incorporation of people speaking different languages”. Relying on the authority of Kenneth Dike and Felicia Ekejiuba (1980:6) Usman and Abba (lbid:51) demonstrated that the Igbo ethnic identity is of a very recent date. This is the political engendering of spurious majorities and hegemonic rule.

Within the context of the dependent political economy, the creation of majorities and minorities' dichotomy was a veritable instrument of exclusion, marginalization, underdevelopment, exploitation, oppression, and injustice. All these were already clearly evident well before independence. And it was in this context that the Willink's Minority Commission of 1957 was setup by the colonial authority in the march of the country towards independence in 1960. The discovery of oil in commercial quantities in the Niger Delta, and its transformation as the dominant source of national wealth and capital accumulation has only further compounded the oppression and exploitation of the people of the Niger Delta area by the combined forces of the local ruling classes and global capital. The state economic nationalism was a function of the oil wealth from the Niger Delta ( Obi, 1997:141).

As Odukoya (forthcoming) argued:

The oil-based accumulation in the Niger Delta has paradoxically been justified on account of national development! This found legal backng in the Land Use Decree of 1978 and the Land Use Act of 1980 and Section 40(3) Of the 1979 Constitution and also Section 42(3,) of the 1989 Constitution gave the Federal Government the ownership and control of all minerals, mineral oil and natural gas within Nigerian territorial boundaries. This was an improvement of Section 15 of Decree 51 of 1969, which contains similar provisions.

Oil has brought mixed blessings to Nigeria. For the majority ethnic groups, especially those living in the urban areas, oil has brought about unparalleled prosperity and increased welfare. Paradoxically, for the entire Niger Delta Region where the oil is found, it has been sorrow, tears and blood. As Olorode (1998:15) opined, “consequently, the oil industry in Nigeria has inflicted unprecedented agony on the indigenous communities by completely disrupting the water ways, by destroying soil, water, air, animal and plant life and indeed cutting off all the means of livelihood of the communities” . The Ogoni Bill of Rights equally lamented the paradox of poverty in the oasis of wealth in Nigeria when he declared that, “..oil and gas have only brought misery to Ogoni people. . .deprived them of farmlands and polluted their streams. . .Nigeria should be rich, and not a debt-ridden country with education, health. . . in a parlous state, its people hungry and malnourished”.

As Odukoya (Ibid) further argued:
Following from the above scenario, it is not surprising that the potential wealth of the Niger Delta has turned into an apparent poverty. Majority of the Niger Delta people are living a subhuman life. This is because they happen to be minorities and powerless in the dynamic power calculus between the imperialist forces represented by the multinational oil corporations and the ruling oligarchy in Nigeria, represented by the major ethnic groups.

The agitation, resistance and protests of the people of the Niger Delta have been met with continuous state violence and brutalization. This started with the suppression and repression of the Isaac Jaspa Adaka Boro insurrection in the Niger Delta in 1966. The trial and death sentence passed on Boro, Dick Nottingham and Samuel Owonaru for committing treason against the Nigerian state was the beginning of the massive bloodletting by the Nigerian political class against the Niger Delta people. This pattern has become institutionalized. The massive oil wealth was not only instrumental to the attraction of the military to power in Nigeria, military rule also served the purpose of the ruling cabal in their grand exclusion, suppression and exploitation of the Niger Delta people.

The military, especially during the Babangida and Abacha regimes acted like soldiers of occupation in the Niger Delta. The people were seriously violated and suffered serious degrading abuses. The peak of this was the judicial murder of Ken Saro- Wiwa and the Ogoni eight. Without any equivocation, oil in the Nigeria political economy evidence internal colonialism and domestic oppression. No wonder international best-practices are not given consideration in the operations of the multi-national oil companies working in the Niger Delta.

It is therefore not surprising that from Odi to Choba, Warri to Yenagoa, Ilaje to Ogoniland, Okrika to Afam, and from Andoni to Eleme what we have is monumental cases of economic desolation, environmental degradation, social disarticulation, excruciating poverty and unparalleled youth unemployment and underemployment. it is within this context that the people through various organizations and platforms call for justice and the control over their God-given resources. The failure of constitutional mechanism to redress these apparent injustices was at the root of the escalating conflicts and violence in the Niger Delta area. This struggle for equity, justice and development was internationalized by the late Ken Saro-Wiwa and his Movement for the Survival of the Ogoni People (MOSOP).

The demands of the Niger Delta people are simple, genuine, practical and constitutional. What they demand is control over their resources and destiny, justice and equity within the Nigerian federation as a major stakeholder providing the mainstay of the political economy, chance to administer Nigeria like other regions of the country, and more importantly, to be treated as equal partner in the Nigerian project, as well as the development of the Niger Delta whose underdevelopment is inversely related to the volume of oil taken by the Nigerian state from the soil of the region. Above all, the Niger Delta people demanded for genuine democracy, constitutionalism and the rule of law in the affairs of the Nigerian state. As the saying goes, “to whom much is given, much is expected”. The Oil Minerals Producing Areas Development Commission (OMPADEC) set up during the military regime of President Ibrahim Babangida, the Niger Delta Development Commission (NNDC) established by the Obasanjo administration in 1999 as well as the increased derivation allocation in the 1999 Constitution to 13 % have been nothing but tokenisms to a largely oppressed community.

- The inelegant structure of power in the Nigerian federation is a major factor in the perpetuation of injustice and inequity in the Niger Delta region. The Nigerian federation has been largely administered as the enclave and empire of the three major ethnic groups, whereas the minorities like the Niger Delta are treated as conquered people. It is also informative that when the interest of the major ethnic groups are involved or injustice is visited on them either by omission or commission immediate action is taken to redress these seeming injustices.

It was within this context that we can understand the post-civil war policy of no victor, no vanquished, as well as the policy of reconciliation, rehabilitation, and reconstruction towards the Igbo. Also the return of the so called abandoned properties of the Igbo in Lagos and Port-Harcourt is another example of doing justice by the Nigerian state. The fielding of a Yoruba candidate by all the political parties in the 1999 General Elections was a conscious national effort to redress the injustices inherent in the annulment of the June 12 Presidential elections won by Chief Moshood Abiola. Not to be forgotten is the constitutional provision for federal character, the quota system for admission and recruitment into the armed forces, and the convention of religious balancing in the choice of presidential candidates and their deputies.

In other words, the Nigerian state is not insensitive to injustice when the interests of its managers or hegemons are concerned. As the situation stands now, of all the geo-political zones, it is only the Niger Delta that has never produced the President of the country. The fact that the South-west has been in power since 1999 is no reason to foreclose the chance of the South-south to rule Nigeria. Out of the forty-six years of nationhood, the North has been in-charge of the affairs of the nation for thirty-five years! In the words of Shakespeare, fair is fair, foul is foul.

Recommendations and Conclusion:
We cannot hope to build a stable and united nation when a part of the country is treated with disdain on account of its demographic essence. Nations like America, France, Switzerland, India, etc have similar compositions like Nigeria, but they have been able to engender a sense of nationhood through the enthronement of justice, equity, rule of law, constitutionalism, participatory and popular democracy. If Nigeria must develop economically, socially and politically, the solution must entail the transformation and reordering of the power equation in the country. And in the present circumstance the power must move unequivocally to the South-south. This is the only path to peace.

As an anonymous writer once said, “the final justice, against unjustifiable injustice, is justifiable justice'- As we said earlier justice entails distributive and corrective imperatives. Distributional and corrective justice both favours power shift to the Niger Delta region. The policy of reconciliation, rehabilitation and reconstruction need to be urgently brought to bear on the Niger Delta situation before it is too late. What has happened in the Niger Delta since independence in 1960 could be likened to a low intensity war against the people of the region with the rest of Nigeria, especially the major ethnic groups as the aggressor. The irreducible minimum condition to redress this historical injustice and guarantee lasting peace in the country is to concede power to the Niger Delta.