The Critical Now

By Oronto Douglas

November 20, 2009

Reposted from NEXT

Militancy and amnesty aside, the challenge of resolving the puzzle that has denied the many communities and clans of the resource rich Niger Delta has reached emergency levels. Although the crisis was easily predictable, successive governments had treated the anger and protests as mere irritations that can be brushed aside with warning shots, arrests or in extreme cases, devastating attacks on communities.

For scholars and survivors, there is something new that should worry all lovers of peace and livelihood – the completed project of the regionalization of anger and the now emerging nationalization of grievances anchored on stubborn defiance.

In the early days of the struggles by our people against the corporations and governments, the focus of mobilisation remained in islands of clans with small numbers of dedicated individuals and rarely was cross clan collaboration involved. In the renewed agitations of the 1990s, the idea of clan collaboration began to take firm root with the emergence of the Chikoko Movement and several groups worked like this. Read the rest of this entry »