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Ways of the Rivers: Arts and Environment of the Niger Delta
African Arts, Autumn, 2003 by Sylvester Okwunodu Ogbechie
The attendant density of symbols systems, signs, and concepts deriving from this heritage provides a unique matrix of visual and verbal representations that the exhibition explored in great detail. It was evident in the monumental wood and delicate bronze sculptures, water spirit masks, and canoe paddles displayed, and also in all manner of trade goods of foreign provenance that have been incorporated into indigenous contexts of practice, such as the Italian glass trumpet included in the exhibition (catalogue, p. 89).
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Anderson and Peek thus hinged their selection and analysis of artworks on the fluid nature of ethnic identities in an environment where ideas about cultural practice and social organization have circulated among individual societies for centuries. The principal themes--water and war--and the artworks (mostly focused on masquerades and shrine arts) underlying the exhibition provided evidence of this intercultural process. It would be hard to identify any two factors that contributed more to the organization of contemporary Niger Delta cultures than water and war. In the first, navigable waterways fueled endless migrations and the resources to sustain human ingress. The second factor attests to the fight among diverse populations for control over those same resources, and to the tyranny of oppressive powers, both local and foreign, that succeeded in imposing their will on the environment.
The struggle between abundance and abjection is an age-old story that has left physical and psychic scars on the watery landscape of the Delta. The initial site of this struggle was the encounters between different migrant groups and their need to secure living space. From the fifteenth century to the early nineteenth century, it was evident in the immense local wealth and concomitant social disintegration engendered by the transatlantic slave trade. Later it emerged in the conflict between local leaders and the colonial aspirations of the British for control of economic and political power. Anderson's analysis of this aspect of Niger Delta history strikes a sour note in an otherwise creditable text. She asserts (p. 80, Interleaf B) that chiefs emerged in many places in the Delta because of colonial structures of governance; yet preexisting economic and social forces had already engendered the rise of powerful rulers who competed for economic advantage. Anderson notes, however, that "... during the latter part of the nineteenth century, many of these colorful leaders made the mistake of trying to outsmart the British"--with disastrous consequences. The implication here of natural British power insults the memory of those great Niger Delta chiefs. It also places on them the onus of conflict and the eventual destruction of Niger Delta polities. The historical record clearly shows that the Western world has never accepted that Africans have a claim to their own bodies or natural resources. It was the British who, through genocidal force and unethical trade relationships, tried to outsmart these leaders in their own local spheres of influence; thus their resistance. The historical record is littered with the subjugated bodies of those great rulers: King Jaja of Opobo, King Nana of Itsekiri Koko, and, most scandalously, Oba Ovortramwen of the Edo kingdom of Benin. The ensuing disruption of Niger Delta kingdoms engendered by colonization directly resulted in the contemporary corporate exploitation (both local and international) of Delta resources that represents today's unique brand of African enslavement.
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