SEA ROUTE IGNORANCE & INLAND SHIPPING NEGLECT

Whenever the viability of a republic of Biafra is discussed detractors always claim the south south will not be part of the republic and they will post maps showing that the present day south east is landlocked.

That political map however fails to understand that several Igbo communities were folded into present day Rivers state through boundary adjustments with the intent of marginalization Ndigbo typical of how the Tiv, they former 5th or 6th largest tribe in Nigeria has been marginalized by having its vast population split into Cross River, Taraba and Nasarawa States. 

Many Igbo communities in Rivers close to the Atlantic Ocean will in the end by default be folded into any Biafra through natural affinity and agitation and will intrinsically increase its access and proximity to the Atlantic coast through its network of creeks flowing into the Atlantic. 

Secondly many maps used in those discussions are political maps not marine maps, they do not show the confluence of rivers and creeks that flow upwards and downwards into the Atlantic Ocean. 

This ignorance of the internal creek system of the South south and the south east is a prime reason for the initial failure of the Nigerian security forces to checkmate the Niger delta militants when they first emerged and the ongoing challenges to thwart piracy and bunkering because of the complicated creek system than runs far inland than many Nigerians understand. 

In contrast the colonialists the British invested a lot of energy into exploring our rivers for their benefit and during the height of the colonial era the British used these vast connection of creeks to move commodities from deep within the Nigerian hinterland and the south east to ships docked on the Atlantic coast for transport back to its empire.

After independence and perhaps after the civil war the Federal government for inexplicable reasons that at the end boil down to marginalization failed to maintain the colonial inland shipping system leaving old colonial shipping ports desolate, abandoned and eventually forgotten.

Most of the popular assumptions about a landlocked south east are far from accurate because many Rivers like the Imo River, Otamiri, Oguta lake flow directly into the Atlantic and the south south cannot deny ships access to those tributaries, not only will the lose in any international court, those lakes if dredged can be categorized as international waters.

A south south region that attempts to block access could also find itself in an unnecessary war typical of how allied powers declared war to build and protect the Panama Canal, it also makes no sense for a south south region with a vast network of creeks and poor roads to rail against a natural internal shipping system to move goods simply to punish an ethnic neighbor, especially considering the east is a nation of many independent clans.

This singular characteristic and homogeneous confluence of rivers and tributaries makes it impossible for the South South and south east to operate independently of each other, any succession will remove Nigerian administrative divisions, vaporize state borders back to interrelated igboid clans and assimilate the region without a single shot because it makes economic sense.

Moving past this issue moves us to the substance of this discussion involving the extreme congestion of Lagos from the direction of a majority of Nigeria’s shipping to its ports. 

Lagos congestion and traffic jams and the resultant demurrage Payments are the greatest cost drivers of the Nigerian economy putting steady inflationary pressure on everything in Nigeria today that Nigeria’s national planners have criminally failed to grasp. 

It is time for Nigeria to begin immediately to dredge the ports of Calabar and port Harcourt and from there dredge upwards through the southeast, linking into the Benue River and past it into River Niger with a terminating inland port at Lokoja.

This policy if implemented will revitalize the entire economy of these areas and create millions of jobs from floating vessels engaged in fishing, transportation, and allow for cruise and cargo ships to sail all the way from western destinations all the way up to the port of lokoja.

Insert pictures:  OGURUGU SEA-JETTY(SEA PORT) 

an abandoned inland Sea Port from where Colonialists entered Northern Igbo Land and where the entire Igbo nation traded their goods and transported their agricultural products to the outside world especially, through Onitsha. The dredging of the linked Omambala/Mabolo River has long been abandoned. (Source: Igbo Nsukka United front)

Summary: many instances of abandoned dredging projects litter Nigeria’s in land coast.

By Terhemba Osuji







Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Igbophobia, Criminality and the Nigerian Army

Image
By Terhemba Osuji You can gauge the sadistic intent and mission objectives of the Nigerian army by the code names it gives to its operations.  We had crocodile smile in the Delta and now we are dancing with pythons, actual code name Operation Python Dance, coming on the heels of a scathing report by amnesty international about the civil rights violations by the army in the South East.  It is obvious to even the blind that the agitation for Biafra is in the nonviolence phase, yet buried in all the usual hogwash about providing security, is the direct and coded message to imagined rebel secessionist armed forces aka IPOB/Massob agitators that they will use the rules of engagement to disperse all peaceful demonstrations in the Nigerian army's press release about the new operation, a clear case of paranoia which must be labeled as Igbo phobia. From even the most casual observations it is obvious that nothing mobilizes Nigerians or its security forces more than taming Igbo in all s...
Read more

Nnamdi Kanu - The last Igbo Griot

Nnamdi Kanu is the last living Griot of IGBO History passed on from a long line of griots and medicine men over the centuries in Biafraland to him.  The spirits of Biafara land have been searching for a medium to pass on the knowledge for mass consumption to lost souls for ethnic revival and they have found Nnamdi Kanu to use as a communication medium to share the knowledge before the history is lost forever.  His seance revelations and prayer sessions are laced with Igbo theology and vernacular descriptions that sounds strange, but oddly and mysteriously familiar to all ndigbo, and all Igbo races across the land, because of signature correlations to their ethnic DNA.  Those spirits are confusing people by allowing Kanu speak about succession to camouflage his speaking in tongues, Providence May allow for the mans eartly wishes to be fulfilled, but that is not they real concern of those blood spirits. Mother Igbo is crying for all her sons who left their fathers compound ...
Read more

NDIGBO - STAND BY KANU OR STAND ASIDE

What has become of Ndigbo Bekonu? You cannot post anything whether advisory, strategic, realistic or self-effacing or recriminatory about Ndigbo attitudes or issues without Ndigbo attempting to crucify for sabotage against Ndigbo, it doesn’t matter whether you are an Amala or a politician or an academic or diasporan if you go against the unwritten and inflexible philosophical narrative code you will be torn to shreds, literally.   All Ndigbo, can read or hear anything and instinctively know whether you are speaking like an Igbo man on any issue most especially about politics and economic policy. There is no Igbo man in his hearts of hearts who is Not aggrieved about the state of Nigeria and most particularly the instinctive feeling of exclusion and marginalization and victimization of the Igbo race, it permeates every single narrative we engage in and it drives our motives no matter how politically correct we try to pretend. All that searing pent up resentment has been finding...
Read more