The current trials and travails of Alhaji Mujaheed Asari Dokubo,  the lcader of the Niger Delta Pcople's Volunteer Force (NDPVF) and Niger Delta People's Salvation Front  (NDPSF), mark his Journey to fame. I do not know who advice rulers of the Nigerian State.  They keep on making the same mistakes repeatedly. Arresting Dokubo and putting him on trial at a Federal High Court sitting in Abuja, on five-court charges of treason and felony, for holding a meeting at Samsy Hotel, Benin city, Edo State on Saturday, August 28, 2005, and for his (Asari) interviews in a national paper, was a terrible mistake made by them.

 

Samsy Hotel was the venue of that pro ­democracy meeting, my empathy for the poor workers and frenzy security operatives, who stormed the place in the aftermath of the meeting, to know what "the enemies of the state" were plotting, harassed owner of Samsy Hotel.  A media statement jointly issued after the meeting, and which Asume Isaac Osuoka of the Chikoko Movement, Dokubo of NDPVF, and Uche Ukwukwu (Esq.) of the congress for the Liberation of the lkwerre people (COLIP) was the worry of the Nigerian state.

 

"The meeting, which discussed popular and militant alternatives in the struggle to change the political structure of the Niger Delta and Nigeria in favour of the suffering people of the Niger Delta and modalities for participation and defence of the People's National Conference (PRONACO)".

 

The meeting was a strategy and mobilization meeting of the Pan Niger Delta Action Conference/Council (PANDAC). PANDAC is a coalition of popular ethnic nationality organizations, social, civil societies, women, youths and students, drawn from all over the length and breadth of the Niger Delta region of Nigeria and beyond, to discuss a genuine and sincere change for the people of the region and to a large extend, Nigeria.

 

Nigeria is really a laughable theatre with laughable actors and actresses. The president of a hitherto respected Nigeria Bar Association (NBA) and Attorney General of the Federation (AGF), Bayo Ojo, a Senior Advocate of Nigeria (SAN) has told us that he is an actor in this ridiculous theatre.

 

I read the charge sheet with No. FHC/ABJ/CR/67/05, which he (Ojo) appended his fine signature and

charged Dokubo  and others at large. I  am glad that I resisted my earlier, temptation of becoming a lawyer.

 

If I were a lawyer, for that Ojo's act of e "unlawyering", I would have committed a lawyer's harakiri.  Ojo's writ was more concerned about the  sub-title, On The State Of The Colony and the last item in the PANDAC communiqué,  "PANDAC calls on the n peoples of Nigeria to act towards overthrowing the current dictatorship and replacing it with a provisional ~Government of National Unity and a National Conference that will ( restructure Nigeria and restore ( sovereignty to its peoples".

 

A "learned" Ojo has told us that Asari and others, who signed the communique mean, "overthrowing" General Olusegun Obasanjo's regime through "arms insurrection". He needs to understand that when a civilian regime like ours, not a democracy moves into a dictatorship and fails to meet the aspirations and hope of a people like what we have now, it can be overthrown through popular action, not necessarily through the force of  arms, as Ojo wants us to believe.  Ojo is , really a man of contradictions and complexities, who told him that any  serious insurrectionary group will  meet in an open-space hotel like Samsy Hotel.

 

Who will tell Ojo that Nigerians are tired of this hyperbolic hysteria characteristic of a military fascism?

Many of the people's organizations  such as the Movement for the Survival I of the Ogoni People (MOSOP), The  Chikoko Movement, Civil Liberties  Organization (CLO), Niger Delta  Women for Justice (NDW J) and others are vehemently opposed to violence as a weapon of struggle. Even Dokubo's led NDPVF that started an armed  rebellion because of threats to eliminate him by a rightwing group in early 2004, had renounced arms struggle late that year, and participated  in a huge disarmament process which the Nigerian state gambled with. MOSOP and other group's leaders and representatives attended that Benin meeting. Ledum Mitee, the president of MOSOP and its erstwhile secretary,  Dekae Menegbon, who died in May

2003, after a protracted ailment and was buried at Bianu Village community in the Khana Local Government Area, Ogoni, Rivers State was also invited by Ojo's police.

 

I am sad that groups like CLO, NDWJ, MOSOP and others who fought gallantly to oust the military out of our system, we can breathe somehow now, and who saved even Obasanjo's life and others, are now illegal groups and holding illegal assembly.

 

Very soon, Ojo will soon invite poor comrade  Chima Ubani, the executive director of CLO, who died in an auto crash on Wednesday September 21, 2005 near Potiskum on their way to Abuja. He ( should have done well to arrest Pa Anthony Enahoro, Prof. Wole Soyinka, Dr. Beko Ransome Kuti and a host  of others; because they are leaders of PRONACO, and which Asari was part which led to the Benin meeting, and for which Asari is standing trial.               

 

It is a long time since I read that great but small book, The Trouble With  Nigeria (1983), written by Okonkwo of Umuofia, sorry Prof. Chinua  Achebe. My memory is failing me  these days, but 1 do not know whether C Achebe ever identified absurdity of  leadership as one of the troubles with Nigeria. If that is not there, he,  (Achebe) should write a part 2 of that o 68-page book and call it, The Deeper Trouble with Nigeria, and treat absurdity of leadership as a central theme.

The Benin accord, also condemned the recent increase of prices of petroleum products by Obasanjo, environmental pollution by the mega Trans National 11 Corporations (TNCs) in the delta, Its mismanagement and looting of the, revenues accruable to the area by  governors, politicians and others. None of these attracted OJo's attention, but the only one that captured his attention was ~ the one with an international appeal, "Arms Struggle" and which can be later misinterpreted, as "terrorism", The trouble with Nigeria is bad and irresponsible leadership, which Achebe earlier wrote about; this has produced the intense clamouring for self­ determination, agitation, the surge of resentment and deep undercurrents of bitterness and anger amongst the people, which Asari and others only expressed in Benin.

 

Deployment of naval gunboats, helicopters and brute forces and other military tactics are not the solution to our problems. Detaining Asari so that he does not halt who becomes what in the Niger Delta region or beyond in 2007, is not also the solution. I am afraid that the vindictive response  of the Nigerian State will only harden Asari's nature and other NDPVF zealots and transform  them from mere rebels to dedicated revolutionaries.

 

"The struggle for the freedom of my people is my life. Today marks the beginning of the liberation of my people," Asari Dokubo chanted stubbornly his "new" intoxicating dose of revolutionary rhetorics on Thursday.