BY SHOLA O’NEIL...THE NATION NEWSPAPERS
LAWRENCE OSIEGBU…
Agge Community in Ekeremor Local Government Area of Bayelsa State was in ashes, literally, when our correspondent visited on Wednesday, August 13, 2008. The entire community, unfurled at the confluence where River Ramos meets the Bight of Benin , had been pulverised – reduced to ashes in a rehash of the infamous Odi killings by Nigerian Army troops in 1999. The only stark contrast apart from that Agge was invaded nearly nine years after Odi was that nobody was shot by soldiers in the Black August 13 but more material damages were visited on the Ijaw community.
Row after rows of houses in the ancient community was reduced to ruins, allegedly by troops of the Joint Task Force in the Niger Delta region, which is ironically christened ‘Operation Restore Hope’. But if the accounts of hundreds of Agge indigenes are to be believed, then the task force, contrary to its code-name, has killed the hope of thousands of the riverside dwellers.
The destruction of Agge, pristine fishing settlement with a population about 5,000 persons comprising nearly 1,000 household was carried out in the early hours of Monday, August 4.
For 21-year old Anita Akpobolokeni, the day started like a bad dream, from which she was yet to wake up: “As I am talking to you now (Wednesday), I still don’t know what happened. We were sleeping in our house when my niece ran in and started shouting, ‘people are running, shooting all over the town’.
“I woke up with a start and started running along with members of my family – I had no underwear, just a piece of wrapper tied round my waist. We tried to run away from the sound of the gunfire but as we were running, bullets were whistling past overhead from different direction.
“That was how we ran into the bush, but after a while, we decided that the bush where we were hiding was too close to the town because the sound kept coming closer and closer to the place where we were. We then started moving again, this time, we ran towards a nearby village across the river,” she told our correspondent.
Anita and her sibling were lucky. They found a boat on the shores of the river and set off without paddle, their only aim was to drift away from the scene of madness into which they were woken.
But several others, according to our investigation, were not so lucky because at the time they got to the river shore, all the boats had left. But determined to put a good distance between them and what used to be their community, they jumped into the River Ramos and swam a length of over 500 metres into a neighbouring community on the other side of the river.
The leaders of the communities, including Chief Austin Korus and Williams Isiayei, Chairman and Secretary respectively, were the only members of the community who had a few minutes fore knowledge of the destruction coming.
Narrating their ordeal, in a telephone chat with this reporter shortly after the incident, Korus said they had boarded a speedboat for Warri at the Jetty, when they saw the armada coming towards their community.
“They drove past us in about 10 gunboats, went into a creek at the back of the community and started shooting sporadically for several hours. We did not know what it was about, so we drifted into a community on the other side of the river.”
Unknown to the community Chairman, what they saw was a military strategy to encircle the community and drive fears into the mind of residents.
After firing into the air for a while (some residents said it was up to an hour) the gunshots died down and the troops moved out of the creek, which is hemispherical round the community.
“When the gunshots died down, we waited for a long time and then start returning to the town from the bushes. We started coming out gradually – a few at a time until we were assured that there was no more danger,” one of the embattled residents revealed.
But unknown to them, the troops were engaging them in a cat and mouse game of scaring them off and them luring them back: obviously it was for a reason. For no sooner had a few of the residents returned did the troop sprung the trap and ambush them.
“They took my brother (Youmo Mietuade), who had been sick. They took him at the jetty and asked him to show them the house of the chiefs of the community. But he told them that he was a stranger and knew very little about the community.
“He was given a severe beating for claiming not to know the homes of the king and other chiefs of the community. After they tortured him for a very long time, they dumped him on the ground in front of the waterside and asked him to beat it,” recalled Smith Mietuade.
Youmo, in spite of his illness ran away from the invading troops immediately he was asked to leave. He ran for a long time until he got to a neighbouring community, where he immediately went collapsed. He went to a deep sleep, from which he never woke up.
The 37-year old fisherman became the only casualty of the JTF operation in Agge. He was, however, not shot, several sources, including Williams Isiayei, affirmed.
The first ordeal of residents later paled into insignificance against the seconding coming of the troops, as they reportedly unleashed a wanton destruction of property and an orgy of arson on residents.
During the visit on Wednesday, our correspondent counted no fewer than 150 houses that were razed to the ground. Properties that could be worth close to whopping quarter of a billion naira or more were either looted or burnt to the ground.
In its first official reaction to the invasion, the Coordinator, JTF Joint Media Campaign Centre, Lt. Col. Rabe Abubakar, described the operation as a routine cordon and search. The JTF image maker said it was part of an orchestrated strategy to rid the region of militants and illegal bunkering.
Abubakar’s reaction, which came on the heels of an extensive report on the incident by The Nation of Tuesday, August 5, said the task force believed that the community was being used criminals to attack its troops.
A few hours before the Agge invasion on Friday, August 1, a number of gunmen invaded the Logistics Base of the special military outfit deployed to the Niger Delta in 2003. Two soldiers were killed in the ‘battle’ at far away Bomadi, in Delta State .
The attack on the JTF base was followed by a similar sortie against the task force’s Fast Attack Crafts by suspected militants. The armed attackers overpowered the troops and commandeered two of the vessels after seizing a number of weapons from the soldiers of the Nigerian Army.
There was also a development before the attack on the two military targets.
The JTF, under its new Commander, Brig. Gen. Wuyep Rimtip, had launched a running battle against illegal bunkering operations in his areas of responsibility. The renew ‘war’ against illegal bunkering yielded some spectacular results. So much so that he started receiving death threats from the warlords and ringleaders, who threatened to deal with him if he did not relent.
Still unrelenting, the task force raided Tuomo Community in Bomadi Local Government Area of Delta State, where a stunning 111 illegal refineries were destroyed by its troops. The illegal refineries where purportedly owned by militant groups who resulted to crude refining of stolen crude oil because of their inability to evacuate oil stolen from pipelines in the creeks of the volatile region.
Before that JTF soldiers arrested fourteen Filipinos for alleged illegal bunkering off the shores of Bayelsa State . The foreigners are currently standing trial in the oil city of Warri , Delta State .
Col. Abubakar said the operators of the illegal refineries and oil barons whose activities were affected by the operation of the task force carried out the attacks on its formations.
He said the task force believed that the hoodlums who attack troops were from Agge, which he also claimed harboured criminals and illegal bunkerers operating in the areas. He further claimed that a number of arms and ammunition were recovered during the operation.
Its troops, he said, did not burn down any dwelling in the course of the operation, rather, he said the houses must have caught fire during the exchange of gunfire between ‘own troops’ and the militants.
Independent investigations carried out by our correspondent in the community during Wednesday visit, showed Lt. Abubakar’s version of the burning to be rather woolly as there were only a handful of plastic drums usually found in such riverside communities and residents said they could hardly had cause the wanton burning observed.
Although he did not quite say that they were found in the community, the JTF mouthpiece also claimed that anti-aircraft missiles were recovered as a result of the JTF exercise during the period.
But for retired Director of Personnel, State Primary Education Board (SPEB), Delta State , Mr. Augustin Isiayei, the JTF are desperate to cover up their atrocities by giving the community a bad name.
Contrary to Abubakar’s justification, he said the troops that invaded Agge that morning came “to plunder, vandalise and loot the resources of the people of the community.
“We were woken up by gunfire near our greatest shrine that has been there since time immemorial. It is at the shrine where we settled certain quarrels among our members. We started running when the shooting started. I was on this side of the community and our king was on the other side (pointing to the far end a river). My house was vandalised. They came here to plunder and vandalise.”
He flayed the task force for stooping so low to tell such fallacious stories and wondered “where is the honour of the soldier that we used to hear about, that an officer’s word is his bond?
“They didn’t see any gun, that I can tell you because if it was otherwise, they would have displayed it for all to see. I would not be surprise if they come up with some guns and say it was recovered here, we will insist that they prove it with finger prints because we have grown used to such lies by the police and military men.
“That claim (of weapons), I can tell you without fear of contradiction, I am a retired civivl servant, I am over 60 years old and I put in 35 years of service, I am telling you this to let you know that I can never stoop to their level of lying, they did not see anything here it is just military propaganda..
“They unjustly destroyed our town, innocent people are being victimised, we want justice. If they said we are militants, let them show the world how the ‘militants’ resisted them, they should show us their casualties and bring out the people they subdued here. If we had resisted them our people would have been killed. The only person that died suffered from cardiac arrest,” he maintained.
If the retired civil servant was angry, Monday Lugbeinwei, a member of the Redeemed Christian Church of God (RCCG), was despondent when our correspondent met him front of what used to be his house.
He was on his way to the Redemption Camp, bear Lagos State, that Monday when reports reached him that his house and all he has had been razed by fire set to his house by the soldiers.
“We were on the way to Lagos , I and my wife. In fact we were already at Benin , when my telephone rang and somebody from the town told me that soldiers had invaded the community and set everything on fire. They said my house was among the scores of houses razed by the rampaging soldiers,” he said.
At that point, Lugbeinwei, a marine transporter, said he was faced with a hard choice of running back to ascertain the extent of damage to his entire property and his faith and commitment to God. “But I decided that my loss can wait, I must go and serve my Lord with other members of my faith.”
But his faith did not undo, physically, the havoc the soldiers had wreaked on him: three outboard engines, worth over N1.5 million, household items, wares, fishing equipment, his wife’s items of trade.
“My entire life savings, what I spent the whole of my youth working to acquire are all gone. The only things left were the things we were taking to the camp for the programme. But we are giving thanks to God, because that is what he wants from us in everything.
“I lost the entire house built on a stretch of 100x50 land. You are asking me the extent of my loss, can you quantify the sweat of a life time; can you undo what the soldiers have done? I can tell you that I have lost over N7 million in this inferno. I came back here to see the extent for my self, I couldn’t bring my wife with me, she is at Aladja (in Udu Local Government Area of Delta State),” he stressed.
Perhaps the man that suffered the most material lose was Chief Samuel Alla, a famous deep sea fisherman, who lost seven houses – one of his, one each of his three wives, three for his children.
Alla, a chief of Kou Clan, was still dazed, ten days after the incident. He said, “As I stand before you, this is all there is to me, I have no other cloth, no other hat and no other shoe. You are seeing the whole of me.
“They came , destroyed shot at engine boats they saw on the waterside, I am a fisherman, that is why if you see one of the outboard engines they burnt it is 40hp Yamaha, what does a bunkerer need a 40hp engine for? It is fishermen who use them. Who do you think can console me; do you think that even if the government comes here and say they want to compensate us I can get my life back on track with the cost of what I lost? If we had arms we would have resisted this destruction,” he lamented.
But our correspondent gathered that a man did resist the soldiers. His name is Alfred Omonifegha, who resisted, not with guns, but his will. “When they came, I ran initially, but later when I saw people’s houses going up in flames, I returned.
When they got here they said they were going to burn down my house and I should leave, but I told them they have to burn me with the house, I cannot rebuild another one if they burn it any way. So that started beating me, flocked me, but I insisted that they burn me along in the house. Later, they saw some government books inside the house. The books belong to the primary school, I offered to keep it for the teachers because they have no space for them. So when the soldiers saw the books, they said, ‘this house must be government house, lets leave it’, he said even as he showed our correspondent the marks of his torture.
The list of victims is endless: Tom Selegha, a 29-year-old okada rider, married with two wives ad two children. The carcasses of his three motorcycles were lying forlornly beside his burnt house, during our visit.
“Please tell the government that they should remember me and send me even one okada so that I can feed my wife and children. Life must go on, you see me now, I am trying to rebuild my house,” he said. And, he was. He had, with the help of his wife, retrieved dozens of burnt roofing zincs and was cobbling them together when our reporter met him.
“I have to get something to cover up the place because we now sleep in the open but some nights when it rains, like it did last night, it is terrible. We have to stay awake until rain stops. Even at that time it is no longer possible to sleep because the ground would be soggy,” Selegha said in Pidgin English.
Apart from the widespread burning of property, the soldiers also allegedly raided various homes and stole money, GSM handset and portable electronic devices from the victims of the raid.
Retired primary school teacher, Chief Lawrence Orukemezougha, wondered who N80,000 disappeared from his wife’s house that was partially burnt, wondering, “The boxes where also not burnt yet the money disappeared, who took them, the soldiers of course.
‘True’, chipped in Mrs. Eunice Eddy who claimed she lost over N750,000:00 both in cash and valuables to the invaders. “I had just returned from Onitsha where I went to stock my shop the previous night when they came, by the time I returned from the bush, my money and other valuable were stolen and burnt down by the soldiers, god will punish them,” she vowed amidst tears.
Meanwhile, the community members were trying to pick up the bits and pieces of their lives again. Those who able to savage half-burnt zincs and other roofing materials are cobbling them together for protection against the elements.
