Peace Process in Central Uruan, Niger Delta
TRANSCEND MEMBERS, 6 Oct 2008
Kimberlye Kowalczyk - TRANSCEND Media Service
When oil was discovered in the Niger Delta region of Nigeria in 1956, hopes were high that development would follow. Soon all Nigerians would live a comfortable and healthy life with accessible and affordable social services including healthcare, education, and transportation. However, it quickly became apparent that the foreign oil corporations (notably Shell) and a corrupt & mismanaged government were pocketing profits, leaving empty promises and frustration amongst the people from whose land the liquid gold was taken.
Decades of violence have followed; killings, kidnappings, belligerent corruption, neo-enslavement, unemployment, and environmental degradation. As Father Patrick Udotai eloquently wrote, “The host communities have been made to feel like slaves in their father’s land and the one time ‘giant of Africa’ has now become a giant without legs. Nigeria has been impoverished by the very force that gave it hope – oil.”
I met Fr. Patrick this summer in Brattleboro, Vermont, where we both participated in the 3-week CONTACT Summer Peacebuilding Institute at the School for International Training. He recently sent out a jubilant email to our listserv, sharing his joy over the success of his community in transforming a land dispute between two neighboring villages in Central Uruan, Akwa Ibom state in the Niger Delta region. Last week I spoke with him over the phone about the conflict, and his subsequent peacebuilding efforts.
Fr. Patrick was invited to St. Joseph’s parish in Central Uruan in February 2008, by the Uyo Diocese. With a MA in Peace and Conflict Studies and several trainings in Conflict Resolution and Conflict Management, he was asked to use his expertise to resolve a dispute between two village communities in Central Uruan.
The parties to conflict were the peoples of Ifiayong village and Mbiakong village. The Ifiayong lived on a piece of land that was said to have been given to their ancestors by the Mbiakong. However with the growth of the Ifiayong population, more land was needed and the Ifiayong started to expand into Mbiakong territory. There were economic reasons for the dispute as well—a large gravel deposit was found on the land, and a 5-star hotel generated substantial government compensation. This dispute resulted in outbreaks of violence, a few deaths, homes burned, and the Holy Trinity secondary school’s science laboratories and administrative offices were burned down. At a deeper psychosocial level the conflict generated cycles of violence and revenge, mistrust and hatred between the two villages. Roads connecting the villages were abandoned for fear of attacks and kidnappings.
Father Patrick began the peace process immediately after his arrival in 2008 with dialogue. He met with the traditional rulers and their counsel in each of the six villages that make up Central Uruan, analyzing the history of the conflict and its deep roots. He assessed the deep needs of the Mbiakong and the Ifiayong through many meetings with them. He realized that the Mbiakong wanted only to be respected in the traditional way. The traditional rulers told him that had the Ifiayong come to them and respectfully asked for an expansion of land, they would have gladly given it to them. Fr. Patrick decided to emphasize peace instead of the land dispute.
“The strategy I adopted therefore,” he told me, “was to combine the professional skill, the traditional skill, and the religious skill. Professionally, I used diplomacy to meet with the two villages. Traditionally, I used our culture as the Ibiobio people. In our traditional culture we have three important gods. One god is the god of the grandchild, one god is the god of the in-law, and then we have a god of the stock. We have a belief that no one is an island, that everyone has a large extended family that links you to other people. Your family is connected to another family, and so on, through an original stock. The Mbiakong and the Ifiayong have intermarried, they share grandchildren, and have shared some common ancestral beliefs so their fighting and killing each other tantamounts to an abomination and a tabboo punishable by the gods. So there was need to infuse this aspect of reparation, intercession and reconciliation with this traditional belief before there could be lasting peace.”
With the help of two influential men, one from each village, Fr. Patrick then organized a series of community sessions. They asked each village to send nine representatives who sought peace (three women, three elders, and three youth), and invited pastors from each community to offer guidance and prayers. Both villages were tired of the violence and were ready for peace. By the second session a peace agreement was reached.
After 17 dialogue sessions, they organized the Peace Work, an event to physically clear the bush from the abandoned road between the two villages. The open road would make it easier for development to reach Mbiakong village as well as to get rid of the scar of mistrust and miscommunication. After the Peace Work there was a Peace Meal in Mbiakong, attended by more than 500 people from both villages. “We sat down and ate together, we sang songs, we danced ~ and people were very happy because some had been too scared to go to Mbiakong for four or five years. We also had a ceremonial shooting of the gun. It symbolized the last gunshot in battle,” Fr. Patrick told me.
On Sunday, August 31st, an inter-denominational Church service was held, with traditional worshippers, chiefs, community members and government representatives (including Akwa Ibom State represented by Engr. Patrick Ekpotu) were in attendance. “We began the service at Mbiakong and ended it at Ifiayong. On that ocassion, two warlords confessed, reconciled and vowed that they will never again go to war. It was here too that the government promised to renovate the destroyed school buildings – work is going on there right now,” Fr. Patrick said.
And what of the disputed land? Did one village win over the other? Or did they split it in half? “We agreed through dialogue that part of the land would be given to the government and part of it would be used for what we call the Unity Peace Park where we will have annual celebrations, and cultural displays that will attract people from different parts of the state and different parts of the country,” Fr. Patrick says.
And what other creative initiatives have taken place in Central Uruan? “We also inaugurated the Peace Corp. Not the US Peace Corp but the community Peace Corp.,” Fr. Patrick says with a laugh. “It is made up of people from both villages, and they are the ones who will ensure that there is no further trouble. The two representatives who worked with me, we made them ‘Peace Ambassadors’, that’s what we call them. We also have a Peace Flag that was hoisted in both villages, symbolizing peace between the Ifiayong and the Mbiakong.”
When I asked Fr. Patrick about the mood of the people in his community he told me, “Oh, they are very high and very happy. I mean, the road that I am living on links the two villages and used to be very quiet, now everybody is passing it. Everybody is feeling free and expressing their gratitude for what we have done. They say they were living in the dark, that they never knew that they were suffering but now that there is peace, they know how free they feel.”
Fr. Patrick is now working on spreading the lessons they learned to other communities in neighboring states, and perhaps even to larger intrastate conflicts within Nigeria. When I asked him what lessons might apply to his country as a whole he said, “First and foremost is the fact that many people are still not convinced that the best way to get what’s right, is not by fighting. The second lesson is that if our people can always be honest about their history, about their own stories, so many conflicts would not have risen. There needs to be sincerity. That applies to the Muslim-Christian conflict that we have in the Northern part of Nigeria. Its lack of sincerity, a lack of knowing that fighting cannot get us what we want. Through dialogue, sitting down together and agreeing, we can have so much peace. These lessons can really apply to my country as a whole.”
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Kimberlye Kowalczyk, former TRANSCEND Media Service Resident Journalist, is a member of the TRANSCEND Network for Peace, Development and Environment and director of communication at Peace Mask Project. She has been a lecturer at Kyoto University of Foreign Studies, founder of Media for Peacebuilding, and lecturer at Doshisha Women’s College of Liberal Arts. She studied Conflict Transformation at the School for International Training. Kya is originally from Kyoto, Japan.
This article originally appeared on Transcend Media Service (TMS) on 6 Oct 2008.
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I am most delighted to have been opportuned to read this piece among others posted on Uruan and her people. I knew a lot about our people before reading this based on what I sourced from titles like who are the Ibibios, E.N. Amaku among others. After exhausting this piece, I am well versed in our heritage as a nation couple with modern touch that you have added. Sincerely speaking, as an old boy of Holy Trinity College, I wept on hearing the calamity that struck a great institution that produced great sons of Uruan, Akwa Ibom and even beyond. Fr. Patrick I salute your wisdom and success on this protracted crisis that had almost degraded our kins. God bless you and your concerns. Offiong Bassey hails from Ikot otonyie Uruan
Thank you Father Patrick