greenlightnigeria.org

The world has hardly paid attention to the Niger Delta and Nigeria’s travails since 2003, or to the region generally. Unlike Los Angeles – or London, or Paris, or Hong Kong - there are very few stories and images that come to mind at the mention of the Gulf of Guinea.

If there is now any predominant narrative of the Niger Delta’s troubles it is “angry black man with a gun is in the way of your oil.”

A public discourse about whether these young men are militants, insurgents, terrorists or freedom fighters is in a fuzzy state and it suits many people to keep it that way. This primitive narration is exemplified, for me, by the recent ABC News ‘Nightline’ piece (which, in turn, is based on an article that appeared in ‘Vanity Fair.’)

There is a more complex story waiting to be told about the Niger Delta, its relationship to Nigeria, and the election process that begins in 2007 and should end with local government elections next year. I hope this story can be explored in public space through greenlightnigeria.org during the months to come.

This more complex narrative is about hope, rebirth and optimism. I am no longer a practising Christian but I continue to have faith in, and respect for, the power of symbols, stories and hymns to lift up the soul when the sense of chaos all about is overwhelming.

The spiritual faith of people of the many religions practised in Nigeria is a cornerstone of a society, most other institutions of which seem to be dysfunctional and broken.

I do not share the cynicism of many of my liberal activist friends about evangelism. It is true that when you look at despair and inequality all around - and then see people flocking to Church or the Mosque - it does seem like the last hope of the hopeless. (And I’m sure a lot of preachers in Nigeria are crooks.)

When I used to go to Church every Sunday as a child, I wouldn’t pay as much attention to the priest as I would to the congregation.

(The ornate Saint Mary Magdalen Church in Brighton, East Sussex, is still attended by much of the city’s Irish and Polish communities. My mum would often bring my brother and myself in for the end of the previous Mass, in time for the next one. So we would be there at the tail end of the mysterious, full Latin and Polish liturgies. In the 1970s you didn’t get to hear Polish spoken as often as we do now in England. The back pews would be filled with elderly ladies in black lace and perpetual mourning, Sunday after Sunday.)

When I went to celebrate Easter in 2003 at my friend’s chapel in Port Harcourt, I found myself doing the same thing. (The sermon was fascinating and extremely long… about the scriptural view of mankind’s life expectancy.) The worshipers around me were impeccably dressed, studying their Bibles and making careful notes in the margins. I got a sense that - far from being something retrograde and conservative - their faith was an expression of a continuity of personal and cultural identity, from tradition to modernity.

The stories and parables were familiar to me but the music was full of repeating, yearning polyphonies (which, to my ear sounded most like Steve Reich’s repetition-and-phase period) that must have deep, African roots.

There is a common continuity, that is palpable in my own culture and upbringing, in the traditions and mythologies of the peoples of the Niger Delta, and in the other spiritual beliefs that have found a home in Africa.

All the myths of Delta peoples I know of contain stories about a saviour, and a concept of salvation. This is because all peoples, at all times, need to believe that they can be saved.

I am struck by the fact that the title of Chinua Achebe’s ‘Things Fall Apart’ – which is so often cited as the seminal novel about Nigeria and Africa, and well describes the fragility of Nigeria as elections draw close – is the first line of a poem by the Irish mystic and poet, William Butler Yeats.

Yeats’ poem ‘The Second Coming’ was written in 1921. It was both his response to the chaos and horror of the First World War, and a premonition of the Depression and the rise of fascism that was around the corner.

It’s not a poem about despair though, and Achebe’s reference to it is a deliberate invocation of hope as well as a recognition of the bleakness of present reality:

Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.

Surely some revelation is at hand;
Surely the Second Coming is at hand

Things are not so much falling apart in Nigeria as gradually becoming looser, very slowly disintegrating. I have felt for a decade as though I am watching in slow motion as a train wreck is about to happen.

I can see the nuts and bolts that hold the wheels on are vibrating apart, millimetre by millimetre. The wheels are sliding off their axles by subtle increments. I wish I could stop time (like Hiro) to rush in and rescue a few of the innocent passengers.

The world has diligently recorded the slow motion train wreck. We can freeze frame and rewind and download the podcast. We have an authoritative audit of human suffering in the Niger Delta and Nigeria: we know why the train’s broken and is heading for disaster.

Isn’t it about time we all did something to prevent the disaster from happening? (Nigeria’s the most populous country in Africa. The oil is what keeps the economy going, until it’s diversified. If a fully-blown conflict starts it would have unknown consequences which may destabalise the whole West African region, just as war in the Congo sucked in other neighbouring states.)

Nigerian democracy - and Nigeria itself - are salvageable, I believe, but only so long as its people are given a reason to believe in ‘Nigeria’ and ‘democracy’ as concepts that are meaningful to their daily lives. In small ways, through innumerable heroic acts, people in Nigeria defend the symbols and values enshrined within these ideas, and give them new meaning.

Believers in democracy in Nigeria must fight for it. People who enjoy democracy’s benefits elsewhere - and who care about Nigeria and its people - like myself, must continue to defend them.