…Being excerpts from his latest book, Rethinking Niger Delta
My parents were teachers. My father was the principal of Government Technical College, Ahoada, in present day Rivers State, when he met my mother in her final year in secondary school at County High School Ahoada. My father was a graduate of Vocational Education from the University of Nigeria, Nsukka. Upon graduation, he taught there for a few years, until the Civil War broke out. He found his way back to the village, Ayakoro, in Ogbia council area in Bayelsa State. He stayed there until the war ended.
The government of the then Rivers State used him and others like him to restart missionary schools that were abandoned after the war. He became a renowned educationist and served as principal of many schools including Nembe Memorial Grammar School, and Matadei High School in Emeringi, all in Bayelsa State.
My mother studied Secretarial Administration at the Rivers State University of Science and Technology. Her parents had insisted that she must attend a university as a condition for agreeing to my father’s marriage proposal. She took to teaching when she finished the university. So I am the son of teachers. And because my parents were teachers, I developed a passion for teaching.
That passion is what inspired me to go for a PhD. Having started out early in politics, becoming the Chief of Staff to the Governor of Bayelsa State at 31, I believed I had spent the early part of my life exploring politics and wanted to follow my passion. That got me into the PhD programme. My appointment as Managing Director and Chief Executive Officer of the Niger Delta Development Commission, NDDC, came just as I rounded off my PhD programme.
I did not go back to school because I was trying to prepare for a career in politics. Rather, it was because I wanted to do something that I had a passion for; to follow in the footsteps of my parents. My father was my role model. I wanted to be like him. He was well respected in the society.
As a teacher, he moulded the character of many young people. I wanted to be in that space too, where I could also mould characters and mentor the younger ones. That was my vision. The PhD programme was my pathway to actualising it. These days, the university will not employ you as a graduate assistant with a masters degree. The minimum now is a PhD. So, I thought attaining that feat would give me the opportunity to lecture.
Although I am from Ayakoro community, I was born and raised in Port Harcourt. I have little memories of the village as I was growing up.
All my education – primary, secondary, university – was in Port Harcourt. I only had brief moments in the village when my father would normally take us to the village for holidays. I can recall that Ayakoro was a communal society at the time. I think in the community then, we were the only ones that had a television set. In the evenings, people would gather to watch television. The television set was always kept outside, not inside the house, for everybody to watch. That brought us closer to the people. It afforded us the opportunity to sit down with everybody.
My father never allowed us to go close to the river. If you did, you would be severely punished. That affected me in a unique way.
Everybody assumes that because you’re from Bayelsa, you must know how to swim. I am an exception. I cannot swim. My father denied methat opportunity to experience the water whenever we went to the village for fear that my siblings and I could get drowned. He was just being protective.
But I have fun memories of my mother’s village, Oruma. I was very close to my grandmother, indeed closer to her than my mother, because while my mother was a disciplinarian, my grandmother was the one that I always ran to. She always showered me with love. My grandmother named me Enerepamo. It means, ‘project my name, bring out my name.’
I believe that name is actually following me now. I spent one year with her when I was in primary three, while my mother was in the university. In that year, I bonded so much with her.
But I also made friends – classmates – and we have stayed together till today. I recall we used to visit each other’s homes to eat during break and after school.
That experience taught me one lesson, a child is groomed by the community, not just the parents. That’s the beauty of communal lifestyle. Unfortunately, now we have become more individualistic and erected boundaries for our children. But back in the village, we ate together in everybody’s house. We shared food and things and that actually helped to shape my thoughts and outlook. It is what has
deepened my commitment towards supporting my community and other communities in the Niger Delta. I feel indebted to the community that helped to raise me; indebted in the sense that other people have actually fed you, when you were growing up and they probably did not have much.
With that orientation, I feel obligated to give back to the community. Giving back does not necessarily mean giving handouts and money. Giving back to me is ensuring that you provide a conducive environment for them to live. It is an obligation to improve on that environment beyond what you met, ensuring you provide the necessary social amenities that they deserve. I have given myself wholly to the communities that produced me; my paternal and maternal communities. I put in my very best to ensure that they get the best that they deserve. And in my current role as MD of NDDC, this means ensuring that infrastructures are spread across all communities in the region. I am glad that NDDC projects serve the rural communities.
NDDC has done hundreds of roads, electrification and water projects in rural communities across the region. There are hardly communities today across the region that have not felt the impact of the Commission.
For those communities yet to enjoy NDDC projects, I urge you to wait. It’s a matter of time. The NDDC transformation train is heading your way. I am passionate about rural transformation. I understand what it means to live in the village. Having lived in the village at a point in my life, I saw how bare villages were, completely lacking in the basic things of life. There was no electricity. Everywhere was dark. It is a constant reminder that if I am living in the city today, those who are in the village
RETHINKING THE NIGER DELTA 12 deserve to have electricity. They must not experience what I experienced. The generation behind me should be able to say yes, at a point in time in our lives, there was an improvement. We are using the
Light Up Niger Delta programme to address power situation in rural communities and beyond.
It is that mixed experience of living in the village and in the city that has shaped me. The village is the crucible that has produced empathy, compassion, and social justice in me. I believe society deserves justice.
Underdevelopment in our society is injustice of the highest order. Most of the people suffering from this injustice don’t deserve it. They wish for better, but are helpless and incapable of helping themselves. I believe that those of us who are privileged, have a responsibility to make things happen for those who cannot.
Political power is a tool for transformation. Our campaign promises
are so transformational, we only have to fulfil them to lift our people up.
If politicians who go around making campaign promises take steps to
fulfil those promises, Nigeria will be a much better place. That is why I
believe in the President Bola Ahmed Tinubu’s Renewed Hope Agenda.
The Renewed Hope Agenda is a social contract that is transmitting
vision and ideas into reality. Through its implementation, the vision and
ideas of the President are coming to reality in various areas.
Economically, he is taking harsh decisions with long term gains rather
than immediate, cosmetic solutions. He is taking decisions that are
making him, in the political circle, unpopular. Overall, Nigeria will be
better by those decisions. Take the removal of fuel subsidy for instance.
It might be unpopular to many, but at least those extra monies that have
been saved is what has increased allocations to the states to fund their
development.
My primary school was another major influence in my life. I was
born in Okija, which I would consider a rough neighbourhood in Port
Harcourt at the time. It was the belief then that no child from that
neighbourhood could make significant progress in life. I am an
exception. And it is all rooted in the things my class teacher at Christ
the King School, Oromenike, D/Line in Port Harcourt told me. It is
never enough to hear; you must take action with what you heard. I recall
that one day while in my primary five, we made so much noise in the
class that our teacher had to come in to rebuke us. “Why are you pupils making so much noise? Don’t you know you’re the leaders of tomorrow?
Leaders don’t make noise. And you shouldn’t.”
Those words sank deep into my heart and became the rudder that has
influenced my actions ever since. I took that tomorrow literally. I
believed the next day was the tomorrow, my teacher was talking about.
I began to look forward to every new day with great expectation, day
after day, month after month and year after year until it became part of
me to wait for that tomorrow to come.
Suddenly, it struck me. So tomorrow, we the pupils in the class were
going to become leaders; the military administrators, the
commissioners, the managing directors, etc? That excited me. I started
seeing myself as a leader. Waiting for that tomorrow to come changed
my thoughts. I started conducting myself like a leader. Suddenly, I did
not see myself in that neighbourhood anymore. So no matter the
activities taking place around me, I did not find myself there, because in
my mind, I wouldn’t want to do anything to punctuate my leadership
journey.
It was at Government Secondary School, Borokiri, Port Harcourt,
that I started engaging in political activities because I wanted to be a
leader. I contested elections as treasurer of the school press club, ending
up as president of the club. The quest for leadership blossomed at the
University of Port Harcourt. I was first elected president of the Ogbia
students. From there, I was elected Speaker of the Bayelsa State
Student’s Parliament in the university.
In 1999, I contested and was elected national president of the
National Union of Bayelsa State Students, NUBSS. That position gave
me a bigger exposure. I was now interacting with the then governor, His
Excellency Diepreye Alamieyesiegha. That was when I also met the
present governor, His Excellency Duoye Diri, who was then the
Executive Secretary, Centre for Youth Development, in the state. He
took me like a younger brother, supported, and exposed me deeper into
politics. That is why I call him my first Political Oga, because he was the
one that really exposed me more to politics and gave me that attention
and cooperation I needed.
I graduated from the university in 2000, and after my national youth
service programme, I contested for, and was elected the publicity
secretary of the Ijaw Youth Council, IYC, Central Zone. I kept moving
RETHINKING THE NIGER DELTA
14
until I became the Chief of Staff to the Governor. It all started with the
words of my teacher who said we the pupils were leaders of tomorrow.
As president of NUBSS, I was on the cover of The Vanguard
newspaper of November 27, 1999, sharing the spotlight with Isaac
Osueka, then public relations officer of the IYC. I was excited. Finally, I
saw my dreams of becoming a leader come true because it was only
leaders who graced the front pages of newspapers. I was only 24 at the
time. I was happy that my performance and activism as NUBSS leader
had been noticed and got me on the cover of that respectable
newspaper. It was some sort of endorsement by an independent arbiter
of what I was doing as an activist.
I am an activist; an intellectual activist. Fighting for the Niger Delta
is in my DNA. We fight with intellectual resources and
transformational actions; not with sticks and blockades. I cut my teeth
as a youth activist with the Ijaw Youth Congress, IYC. The Ijaw people
have had a history of struggle for resource control. There were the
militant arm, exemplified by Major Isaac Adaka – Boro, who believed
in military aggression and separatist agenda. IYC came as the
intellectual arm, a collection of young, highly educated people who
believed in the force of argument, mental and intellectual engagement
and deployment of facts and reason to wage a sustained campaign of
reason to win the war against marginalisation and exploitation.
IYC was founded on December 11, 1998 when 5,000 Ijaw people
drawn from more than 40 Ijaw clans met in Kaiama to articulate their
aspirations for the Ijaw people, and demand an end to
underdevelopment and environmental damage from oil exploration in
their land. I can still recall the atmosphere at that meeting; it was
charged. Dr Felix Tuodolo was elected its pioneer president. Other key
leaders included Oronto Douglas, Kingsley Kuku, Onyefie Jonjohn,
Asari Dokubo, Azibola Nelson, Robert Azibola and Von Kemedi among
others. They were educated, highly cerebral and very committed to the
struggle. I was quite young, 23 at the time, and people like Oronto
Douglas, TK Ogoriba, were the ones the younger ones were all looking
up to.
My contemporaries were the likes of Max Oko, (my cousin) late
Mike Wenibowe, Charles Taylor, Jude Tabai, among others. We’ve all
had those sweet and bitter experiences together, and that’s what has
really bonded us together. Many years after, we are still keeping in
THOUGHTS AND WORDS OF SAMUEL OGBUKU
15
touch. My position means I have a responsibility to alleviate the plight
of the people we fought for. I am now in the commanding seat and it
behoves me to deliver on the progress we all fought for.
The first action of IYC was the adoption of the Kaiama Declaration.
The declaration was revolutionary, especially coming in the run-up to
the first general election in Nigeria in many years. The electioneering
campaign was already on and the Niger Delta question needed to be
elevated to national attention once again. The declaration blamed the
political crisis in Nigeria on the struggle for the control of oil resources
in Ijawland.
The Kaiama Declaration excited us. It gave us hope because most of
us believed that our people were being marginalised and oppressed. We
saw the declaration as a sense of hope that victory was near. We saw the
commitment from everyone there. That commitment emboldened us to
believe that we were going to succeed in the drive for resource control.
Our idea of resource control was not separatist; we were not fighting to
divide Nigeria.
The issue was, how could we be so endowed, producing the riches of
the country yet so poor? We had no control over our resources nor the
share of revenue that accrued to us. We were getting little out of what
we have. That was the orientation then. We all imbibed that
orientation, and believed in it. For me and my contemporaries in the
struggle, we thought it was an opportunity to use that platform to right
the wrongs of the past and set a new tone for the generation behind us.
However, that struggle did not achieve what we wanted but as a
people, if not for anything, we had results. Part of those results was that
at least Nigeria gave us the opportunity of producing the president of
this country in the person of His Excellency, Dr Goodluck Ebele
Jonathan. His emergence showed that our voice was heard. It was good
enough to say that finally, an Ijaw man would occupy the highest office
in the land. It was a victory, not just for the Ijaws but for everyone in
the Niger Delta.
Overall, we may not have gotten exactly what we wanted with the
Kaiama Declaration, but, there was 13% derivation to show for it. Apart
from that, today, there is the NDDC, the Presidential Amnesty Office,
a Ministry of Niger Delta, that has been transformed into the Ministry
of Regional Development. There are so many things that have come out
of that struggle for the control of our resources.
Remember the struggle for resource control did not really start only
with the Ijaws. The Ogonis had their own agitation too. In fact, they
were the major influence in our struggle. It is one reason I say we may
be different in the Niger Delta but we are all united by our common
challenges. Ken Saro-Wiwa was the symbol of the fight for resource
control. After the likes of Adaka Boro and co, he re-initiated the fight,
this time, from an intellectual side. A lot of the people who were in the
forefront of the resource control struggle in Ijawland like Azibola
Robert, Oronto Douglas, were all protégés of Ken Saro-Wiwa. He
schooled them, and it was part of what they learnt from him that they
brought to the Ijaw struggle. So there was a relationship between the
Ogoni struggle and the Ijaw struggle and up till today, we still keep that
relationship.
In the contemporary struggle, those who inspired us were the ones
who spoke with us directly. And when they spoke, we saw that these
people were well educated. They were the ones who went to the
different communities to mobilise us to take action. So you can say that
those who initiated the contemporary Ijaw struggle, were all
intellectuals. And they recruited their kind into the struggle.
As a Niger Delta activist, you are permanently in the trenches
because there are so many issues to fight for. We fight to transform the
region. If I could do it then when I didn’t have the resources that’s
available today, you can trust me to do much more in my current role as
managing director of the NDDC.
I consider my current position as strategic. The Commission has had
more than 16 chief executive officers in full and acting capacities since
inception but I am the first Niger Delta activist to run this intervention
agency. That is a hefty moral weight that has been placed on me.
Becoming the managing director of NDDC was never in my thoughts
while I was in the trenches. I believe sometimes God allows certain
things to happen to people or allows them to go through certain
experiences because He is preparing them for something bigger. Today,
I can easily handle NDDC issues because of my exposure. I can handle
youth issues and address their concerns because of my training and
experience as a youth leader. I have been at the forefront of Niger Delta
agitation and the experience is helping me in my current assignment.
Because I have a firsthand, experiential knowledge of the challenges of
THOUGHTS AND WORDS OF SAMUEL OGBUKU
17
youth activism, I am well-placed to design solutions that deliver
sustainable outcomes.
For instance, most of the youths and young people that are on the
street agitating, aren’t necessarily unreasonable. They may be agitating
because no one is listening to them. So I give them my full attention. I
am always open to listening to the youths; I know their pains and their
challenges. I keep my doors open at all times for them. I create a
situation where they can share their concerns freely. I am constantly
engaging and dialoguing with our young people. My experience as a
youth leader has taught me that constructive engagement pays huge
dividends with the youth constituency.
The Niger Delta has huge challenges. The region is diverse but we face
our common economic, environmental, infrastructural and social
challenges. I believe that my appointment is an opportunity to fix these
challenges. I may not be able to fix all the challenges during my tenure.
So, I have to create the right foundation for my successors, whoever they
would be, to continue and build upon. That foundation is ensuring that
we have the right corporate governance framework in place. We have
engaged KPMG to review, design and implement a corporate
governance framework for the Commission, one that defines standard
operating procedures, and code of conduct for the organisation. With
those in place, it will be difficult for the progress we are making to be
discarded midstream.
My vision for NDDC is to ensure that we institutionalise equity,
justice, probity, and accountability so the institution can outlive all of
us.
