By Louis Odion, FNGE
The narrow-minded would probably view the futility of the entire
visit only by a fleeting wardrobe malfunction. In the amusing picture that had
trended in the social media, visiting Prince Charles of Wales buttoned his suit
wrongly. Flanked by wife Camila and a Nigerian general in full ceremonial
attire in the blazing sun, his sunglasses would have accentuated his
grey-colored ensemble, but for the misaligned button.
Then, the cynical caption that could only be written by a PDP
sympathizer: “Just two days that Prince Charles spent in Nigeria his life has
been turned upside down. Just look at the way he buttoned his suit. Nobody
visit(s)... APC-led government and still remain (sic) in his senses.”
Of course, that is the most subjective - if not utterly unreasonable
- thing to say.
Another joke was made of the fact that at yet another
occasion, Prince Charles had to depend on additional illumination provided
by rechargeable lamp to read his speech because the room was poorly lit.
But the comic reliefs of sartorial indiscretion and poor
lighting aside, a few salient issues were undoubtedly thrown up by the royal
visitation of last week.
Regardless of the official garnish, a frank audit of the
prince’s itinerary would only suggest a vanity trip for a man on the eve of his
70th birthday, at huge social-cultural costs to the nation. His earlier tour of
the west coast included The Gambia and Ghana.
A visit to Plateau had to be cancelled at the last-minute at the
instance of the Nigerian authorities over security concerns. The visitor was
expected to discuss “peace-building and conflict resolution” there.
With the seemingly unending ethno-religious eruptions in Jos,
that proposal would appear perfectly in order.
But those who still remember how the same Prince Charles had
used his pen to stoke anti-Semitic tension in the Middle East in 1986 could
only have anticipated the Jos townhall meeting with baited breath. In the
tactless letter, he had blamed the influx of “foreign, European Jews” for
escalating the Arab-Israel conflict.
As if that was not explosive enough, his next sentence would set
Britain and the United States on diplomatic edge. He pointedly asked whether
then US President Ronald Reagan would summon the courage to push back “the
Jewish lobby” to stop terrorism in the perennially beleaguered region.
In the unlikely event that Prince Charles would have agreed to
submit his speech for security preview by the Nigerian establishment, the
invocation of “security concern” may indeed have helped stave off possible
landmines of a misspeak capable of raising the blood pressure in some quarters
in Abuja, especially as we enter the election season.
Two, the decision by Abuja to dragoon all the leading royal
fathers across the country to meet Prince Charles in Abuja is most
condescending. It was as if we were back to the colonial era when traditional
rulers had to appear before the district officer. If Prince Charles had
expressed desire to meet with our kings, couldn’t he have been encouraged to
visit them in their respective palaces like he did in Ghana to the Asantihene
of Kumasi?
Well, perhaps the only consolation we can draw now is that Oba
Ewuare II of Bini Kingdom did not allow the moment slip without reminding
Prince Charles of the need to return the artifacts agents of his forebears
looted from the acclaimed “cradle of black civilization” in 1897.
In his own assessment, Governor Nyesom Wike of Rivers State saw
the marginalization of the South-South. While hosting a Pentecostal preacher in
Port Harcourt, he argued that the heir to the British throne should not have
stopped at the showcases in Abuja and Lagos, but also visited the Niger Delta
which though produces the bulk of the nation’s wealth, its people are left to
live in desperate condition.
ODION |
Indeed, only those who endure acid rain or inhale air poisoned
by gas flare are in the best position to tell the story of pain in intimate
details.
Mindful of the facts of history - whether recent or
ancient, the observation by activist Wike would seem even too charitable. On
the contrary, the institution Prince Charles represents certainly still has a
lot of explanation to make to the swamp-dwellers of the Niger Delta. The debt
owed by Britain is both moral and cultural.
Coming in the very week that the twenty-third anniversary of the
murder of Ken Saro-Wiwa was being marked, it would have indeed been interesting
to hear what answer the heir to the British throne would, for instance, offer
to the Ogoni procession in Bori or Port Harcourt on the old question of British
complicity - both by commission and omission.
Until the Ogoni crisis exploded into a national conflagration in
the 90s, British-owned Shell had undoubtedly become synonymous with
neocolonial exploitation of the oil communities, inflicting unspeakable atrocities,
devoting vast sums to setting clan against clan in a rendition of text-book
strategy of divide-and-rule.
Then, Shell had no qualms colluding with a military without
patriotic education to “pacify” the restive. It provided logistics and cash
incentives to the Okuntimo-led internal security squad that became the byword
for terror against defenceless activists like writer Saro-Wiwa agitating for
fairer deal for the people.
When nine Ogoni activists were sentenced to death in 1995
through a trial adjudged a sham at best, it took not the righteous indignation
of the institution Prince Charles represents, but the lobby championed by
a few men of conscience including immortal Nelson Mandela (then South
African President) to stampede the Commonwealth into expelling Nigeria then
under the despotic jackboots of Sani Abacha from the body uniting Britain with
her former colonies.
Twenty-three years on, very little has been done to clear the
environmental rubble Shell left behind, even as the culture of exploitation
remains. It took Saro-Wiwa’s memorial last week for the world to be reminded
that the promise of clean-up by the Nigerian state has not been fulfilled, even
as efforts are being intensified in official quarters to fasttrack Shell’s
return to Ogoniland to resume “business as usual”.
Of all the existential needs of Ogoniland, the Nigerian
authorities would, for instance, recently consider the award of the contract
for the building a cemetery the most urgent in what clearly showcases nothing
but contempt for the humanity inhabiting that space!
It would have been interesting to hear Prince Charles’ response
on Rivers soil to such difficult questions and grotesque suggestions.
Elsewhere in Edo, the British royal would perhaps not have had a
respite either. In Benin City, he would not have missed the imposing statue at
the beginning of the Sokponba road by the
iconic Ovonramwen Square. It is an enduring monument to courage under
fire and loyalty in the face temptation.
Surrounding it is a tract from Bini’s rich history. It is where
in 1897 the advancing British forces, with all their thunderous artillery fire,
reportedly met the last wall of native resistance.
Tellingly, Prince Charles came visiting last week close to the
commencement of the annual Igue Festival. It was indeed a willful violation of
this deeply spiritual season in Bini’s cultural calendar by the British in the
twilights of the 19th century that had set off the chain of events that
culminated in the “punitive expedition” by imperial Britain. The spiritual
seclusion forbids the Oba from hosting visitors, much less entertain
mercantilist talks the British were agitated about.
The murder of the British emissaries by the enforcers of the
referenced cultural “curfew” would then provide a perfect alibi for the
imperialists to apply clearly disproportionate military force with the
sole carnal objective of rooting out the impediment the Oba was thought to
be constituting to their economic interest through the imposition
of customs duties on goods leaving his territory.
When eventually outgunned and subdued on that historic day
of 1897, the Bini general leading the local platoon was asked by the invaders at
that location (a stone’s throw from the great Palace) to renounce the Oba
and proclaim allegiance to Britain or face death. Without hesitating, the
captive defiantly exclaimed “Sokponba” (No one but the Bini King).
Of course, he thereafter paid the supreme price, but with head
unbowed till the last breath.
The spectacle was no different when the great
Oba Ovonramwen was later encircled. He bore the indignity of
dethronement without losing honour and subsequently endured the
humiliation of exile in distant Calabar with uncommon equanimity.
In the process came not just the wholesale arson by a
1,200-strong wrecking army against anything standing in the kingdom whose
sheer magnificence had indeed captured the imagination of Portuguese explorers
more than 400 years earlier; but also mindless looting of artifacts for
which it had become renowned relative to other notable civilizations.
Of course, on return to London, the conquering generals declared
some of the cultural loot from Benin to the British government. Some of them
are presently put on display without shame in British museum, while others have
been traded off in the United States and Germany.
Still fresh in the memory, for instance, is the dust raised in
2016 over the “Okukor” bronze cockerel at the Cambridge University.
Following an advocacy mounted by a group of conscientious students that it be
returned to its origin in Benin, the university authorities had to quickly
remove the statuette from the dining hall.
The same way China has continued to pester Britain to repatriate
estimated 23,000 artifacts looted from the country during its occupation,
even as the British Museum has had to deal with the shame of being constantly
reminded by Greece to return its Elgin Marbles auctioned to the British during
the Ottoman Empire.
So, had Prince Charles summoned the political courage to visit
Bini kingdom last week, he would certainly have been received by perhaps the
third and fourth generations from the Ovonramwen lineage still
exuding royal aplomb and a people whose cultural fraternity remains
unbroken, even 120 years later.
He would also have heard in Benin the court of palace chiefs
resplendent in white garments amplifying, perhaps more militantly, the message
earlier delivered by Oba Ewuare II: please return the artifacts stolen in
1897.
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