In the heart of Ogoniland, in southern Nigeria, the palace of the traditional ruler of Khana local government area, Mark Igbara, lies in ruins. Bori, the traditional capital of the Ogoni kingdom, has been deserted, and the Rivers State Polytechnic university is closed indefinitely. Emergency police forces patrol the lands of the Yeghe people of the Gokana area and the people of Zaakpon in the Khana government area, the two principal warring factions in the rash of violent clashes that has inflamed the region in the past few weeks.
In response to the crisis that erupted over a month ago among several Ogoni communities in this part of Rivers State, Governor Peter Odili last week ordered two judicial commissions to investigate two particular scenes of violence which continue to paralyze much of the region.
Odili's announcement of the establishment of the fact-finding bodies coincided with a visit to the affected areas last Friday, during which he pledged to secure a lasting peace between the warring parties. Two high court judges, Justice Bannet Ugbari and Justice Chukwunenye Uriri, will chair the respective commissions. One will focus on events which took place in the town of Bori and the other will investigate clashes in the Ogba/Egbema/Ndoni council area. Both reports are expected within three weeks.
At the center of the dispute is the land that serves as the headquarters of the Khana council in Bori. The people of the town of Yeghe claim that it belongs to them, and express anger at their exclusion from the Khana government council since its creation in 1990. The conflict reportedly began when Igbara was assaulted on May 3 at a filling station in Bori by men from Yeghe. Some men from the Gwara community of Khana intervened, leading to a fight which left one of their number dead and several injured. Members of the Zaakpon and Gwara communities of Khana soon retaliated, and the conflict spread throughout the towns of Bori and Yeghe.
The Ogoni number roughly half a million, and have inhabited the Niger Delta region for at least 500 years. Their economy is traditionally based on agriculture and fishing, but due to oil pollution and gas flares soil quality has deteriorated, and crop and fish yields have been decreasing steadily. Government projects such as health care facilities and school construction are few and far between, and very little of the profits from the sale of their land's oil reach the Ogoni.
Peace and prosperity have been elusive for the Ogoni since Nigeria's independence. The natural bounty of their kingdom includes significant oil resources, which have been systematically exploited by a series of repressive Nigerian governments and corporations such as Shell since 1958. Recent lawsuits filed against Shell for environmentally destructive extraction practices and complicity in years of human rights abuses have brought to light shocking details of corruption and cooperation with government officials in facilitating false charges and public executions of environmental activists, such as the poet Ken Saro-Wiwa. The Ogoni's organized protests against the devastation of their lands have made them ripe targets for intimidation, discrimination and torture by government agents.
The antagonism between Ogoni and the government apparently continues: accusations of abuses by the state police have been made in the present conflict, as well. Boniface Nda-ue, a lawyer from Yeghe, claimed that the police sent to quell the violence instead embarked on their own campaign of terror. According to Nda-ue, police set fire to buildings in Yeghe and killed 30 residents, apart from the seven who died in the fighting between the two communities. Other Ogoni have faulted the state government for failure to address pre-existing tensions by investigating past incidents around Bori. The general secretary of the Movement for the Survival of Ogoni People, Deekae Menegbo, expressed concerns that the government's use of force will only intensify the conflict.
