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73 Chapter Fifteen AFRICA’S TSUNAMI hen cataclysmic incidents like tsunami (the undersea earthquake that hit the peoples of Asia very hard) happen, one is bound to take a second look at the situation back in Africa where many countries have been hit as well by natural disasters. Countries like Gabon, Cameroon, Niger and Ivory Coast among others have been affected by natural disasters yet very little action has been taken to prevent future occurrences. Ethiopia, which is on the verge of famine, has accused the world of waiting until skeletons appear on its television screens before taking action. While Ethiopia was grappling unnoticed with its drought vast areas of Mozambique disappeared under floodwaters. A woman gave birth to a child in a tree during one of those floods! According to a report by UNICEF Mozambique (2008:1) “Rosita Pedro became a baby celebrity when she was born up a tree as her mother sought refuge from the rising waters. Rosita and her mother, 26-year-old Sofia Pedro were winched by a helicopter rescue team to safety, and to some stardom.” God really has uncanny ways of doing things. Even if drought and floods are unpredictable in themselves, they happen with a predictable regularity. So why is the response to such natural disasters frequently so slow in Africa? Africa’s political leadership continues to pay scant attention to the impact of environmental degradation on local economies. Poor people all over Africa are vulnerable to droughts and floods since they depend on rainfed agriculture as their main means of subsistence and often live in degraded areas susceptible to rainfall variation. As I see it, there appear to be two main problems related to disaster management in Africa: the piecemeal approach to funding and a lack of co-ordination between governments and aid agencies. Inattention to environmental degradation in Africa has been attributed to environmental illiteracy which has resulted in the indiscriminate exploitation of meager natural resources by impoverished communities. Most Africans abuse the natural environment in the struggle to eke out a subsistence living through agricultural activities, many of which are detrimental to the health of the ecosystem. Human beings and the natural environment, I believe, are on a collision course. Human activities inflict harsh and often irreparable damage on the physical environment and natural resources. It should be noted that if this lackluster attitude toward environmental protection goes on unchecked many of our current W 74 practices will put the future generations of Africans at risk for many years to come. Sadly enough, when environmental and energy interests clash in the West, Africa goes up in flames, the same flames that dot the landscape of our oil-wells. The vendetta between MOSOP (Movement for the Survival of Ogoni People), the organization led by late Ken Saro Wiwa, is a case in point. I was in Nigeria on November 10, 1995 when the military dictatorship of General Sani Abacha, at the peak of international criticism of Nigeria’s despotic regime ordered that Saro Wiwa and eight others (the “Ogoni Nine” be executed by hanging. This was done by military personnel after a sham trial condemned as “judicial murder” by Britain’s Prime Minister at the time, John Major. Saro Wiwa’s real crime had been his defiance of the British oil giant, Shell BP, and one of Africa’s most brutal military dictators, Sani Abacha. According to most accounts, Ken’s death provoked international outrage and the immediate suspension of Nigeria from the Commonwealth of Nations, which was meeting in New Zealand at the time. Saro Wiwa and his followers were from Ogoniland, a small densely populated region of the Niger Delta, where Shell had found oil in the 1950’s. While the company had grown rich from the profits extracted from the Delta, the local communities continued to live in abject poverty, lacking basic facilities such as good roads, schools, healthcare and clean water. Africa Today (2005:1) points out that during a mass protest against the spoliation of their land by Shell BP, Saro Wiwa was noted to have said: The march is against the devastation of the environment. It is against the non-payment of royalties. It is anti-Shell. It is anti-federal government, because as far as we are concerned the two are in league to destroy the Ogoni people. Views like these placed Saro Wiwa and his Ogoni followers at loggerheads with the military junta headed by Abacha. The animosity resulted in repeated detention...

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