By Jude Atupulazi
As I write this, the Okuama Community in Delta State is a ghost land. This is because many people have run away for fear of their lives. The situation in this community was brought upon everybody by the action of some of their youths who recklessly killed seventeen soldiers on a peacekeeping mission in that community. Then youths had ambushed the soldiers and killed all of them in one of the most thoughtless and rascally displays I have read in a long, long time. They did this despite (I’m sure) knowing that soldiers neither forgive nor forget when their own are killed. And it did not take long for the soldiers to move in, in a manner reminiscent of the retaliatory attacks on Zaki Biam and Odi, years ago. Now, what happened in Zaki Biam?
Look at how History describes it:
The Zaki-Biam Massacre (also known as The Zaki-Biam Invasion or Operation No Living Thing was a mass execution of hundreds of unarmed Tiv civilians by the Nigerian Army between 20 and 24 October 2001. The massacre was a surreptitious operation of the Nigerian Army to avenge the killing of 19 soldiers, whose mutilated bodies were found on 12 October 2001, near some Tiv villages in Benue State. The massacre took place in villages including Gbeji, Vaase, Anyiin, Iorja, Ugba, Tse-Adoor, Sankera, Kyado and Zaki-Biam.
At the time, the Nigerian Army and the Federal Government denied that soldiers killed any villagers. However, on 6 November 2007, the Chief of Army Staff, Lt. General Luka Yusuf, publicly offered an apology to the people of Benue State for the killings.
President Umaru Yar’Adua also visited Benue State to personally apologize on behalf of the Federal Government of Nigeria. No soldier was ever punished, and nobody went to jail for the offences committed.
Background to the killing of soldiers
On 10 October 2001, 19 soldiers were ambushed and captured in the town of Vaase by a group suspected to be Tiv militias. Two days later, the soldiers’ bodies were discovered near a primary school in the nearby town of Zaki-Biam. According to locals, the murders were prompted by previous incidents in which armed men in military uniforms attacked several Tiv communities. There was a strong suspicion among the Tiv that elements of the military were backing their Jukun rivals, with whom they have had a reoccurring conflict over land, indigeneship, economic and political power.
And what about the Odi Killings?
The Odi massacre was an attack carried out on November 20, 1999, by the Nigerian Armed Forces against the predominantly Ijaw Town of Odi in Bayelsa State. The attack came in the context of an ongoing conflict in the Niger Delta over indigenous rights to oil resources and environmental protection. It is estimated that over 900 civilians were killed in the attack.
People generally say that the massacre was ordered by the regime of former President Olusegun Obasanjo and Vice President Atiku Abubakar. The military has often defended its action saying it was ambushed on its way to Odi. As a result, tensions rose before entrance into the village.
Massacre
Before the massacre, twelve members of the Nigerian police were murdered by a gang near Odi, seven on November 4 and the remainder in the following days. In retaliation, the military decided to invade the village but there are reports that the army was ambushed close to the village thus tensions soared, they broke through the ambush and exchanged fire with armed militias in the village who were believed to be using the civilian population as cover. This and the “ambush” provocation led to the attack on the civilian population and the town’s buildings. Every building in the town except the bank, the Anglican Church and the health centre, was burned to the ground. All of this happened in President Olusegun Obasanjo’s reign.
Death toll
A wide range of estimates has been given for the numbers of civilians killed. Human Rights Watch concluded that “the soldiers must certainly have killed tens of unarmed civilians and that figures of several hundreds dead are entirely possible.” Nnimmo Bassey, executive director of Environmental Rights Action, claims that nearly 2,500 civilians were killed. The government initially put the death toll at 43, including eight soldiers.
…And now Okuama
According to Saturday Vanguard, the Commander of the Joint Task Force, JTF, in Bomadi, the late Major Saffa, was the first to come to Okuama, on March 14, with his men.
A former supervisory councillor, whose brother, Anthony Aboh, the Okuama youths allegedly abducted the previous day, March 13, reported the matter to the JTF, and he was with them in a camouflage uniform.
The suspected mercenaries held the JTF commander, who went to Okuama on the botched ”peace mission” and one of the soldiers in his team, hostage.
They took the army officer hostage when he insisted on going away with the chairperson of the community and others.
Reports said the former councillor was among the persons killed on that day, while the corpse of his brother they went to rescue, was found floating in the River Forcados, just like the soldiers’ remains.
The Commanding Officer of the 181 Amphibious Battalion, the late Lt. Col. A.H. Ali, proceeded on a peace mission to Okuama when information reached him that some armed youths in Okuama had abducted Major Saffa and another soldier.
Ali mobilized men in his command the same day to save his colleagues, but he met the same fate.
A driver who escaped with some soldiers when the brigands opened fire at the waterfront, said: ‘When the armed youths came out of their hideout after the peace talks in the community hall, as the soldiers were forcing the community chairman to the waterfront to board their boats, they signalled the community chairman to stoop and lie low on the ground.
‘The commander and his men did not notice the signal. This was after the incantations by the juju priestess and priest. It was after the chairman lay down that the shooting started. The soldiers could not return fire because of the powerful incantations.
‘They did not kill Major Saffa instantly; they took him in a speedboat with the other officer, and sped towards the opposite direction of the community into the creek leading to Ewu, the traditional headquarters of Ewu kingdom.
‘The Lt. Colonel and his team might not have seen the colleagues they went for. They exterminated all of them, but it was the following day the news broke that they had slaughtered them.
‘They beheaded Major Saffa and killed others with weapons other than guns. The reinforcement and burning of houses at Okuama started the same day.’
The story of how the mercenaries asked Lt. Col. Ali to ask his men to drop their weapons if he did not come for war, after which they collected the weapons, and opened fire on them, is no longer news.
Now, after reading the accounts of the Zaki Biam and Odi killings of soldiers and policemen and the repercussions that followed, you would ordinarily believe that no sane community would consider attacking soldiers again, having learned from history. But, no, the youths of Okuama refused to learn from History and decided to stir the hornet’s nest and the result was what followed: the decimation of Okuama Community by the Nigerian Army.
Why would any right thinking group of young men decide to embark on what clearly amounted to suicide by attacking and killing soldiers in their community? Did they not know the consequences? Have they no elders to advise them against such a suicidal action? Did the elders advise and the youths refuse to listen?
It may not be clear what actually happened but suffice it to say that the irresponsible and rash action of the Okuama youths is a reflection of what we see in many communities today where the youthful elements no longer listen to anyone. They take precipitate actions that eventually invite chaos to their communities. It even happened in the larger Igbo Land where some supposed freedom fighters brought terror in their own land despite the advice of some elders who knew the implications. Today the entire South East is still trying to recover from the self-destruct button pressed by those youths, while their leader is languishing in detention in Abuja.
Today, the Okuama youths and some of their elders want the nation to believe that they are being unjustly treated but forgot they brought what they are facing on themselves. Really, I’m miffed with the activities and actions of many of our youths who have closed their ears to receiving advice of any kind. They believe they are above all authorities and they respect no one. With their entitlement mentality, they believe that society owes them; yet they refuse to acknowledge their own failings which are mainly refusal to be humble, work hard and respect their elders.
Indeed, many of these youths are those who because of their stubbornness or lack of humility failed as apprentices or dropped out of school. Having failed and having no stomach for honest, diligent work, they now look for easy means of livelihood. They sell people’s and their own families’ lands, blow the money and return to make more trouble. You see them every morning loitering in beer parlours (pubs) and monitoring people going to work. Of course other hard working and honest youths are not found in shops and pubs in the morning drinking. They are found in their own shops or work places fending for their livelihood. And when they make it, these lazy ones rob and kidnap them.
These lazy ones will always complain bitterly about the country while they are a major part of the country’s decay. They hit out left, right and centre at perceived enemies as causes of their problems while they are their own greatest problems. After refusing to listen and they cause trouble, they will be the first to shout and cry that ”innocent youths are being killed”.
What happened in Okuama was what happened earlier in Zaki Biam and Odi and will continue to happen unless the troublesome youths decide to behave better. It is time they really sat down and draw a line between activism and rascality. The two are never the same and should not be mixed.