By Nnimmo Bassey
2024 Wallenberg Medal Lecture at the University of Michigan on 10 September 2024
Introduction/Protocols
It is a great honour to receive the Wallenberg Medal today in this distinguished institution. It is gratifying that Raoul Wallenberg, in whose memory this medal is given, studied architecture here at the University of Michigan, graduating as part of the class of 1935. By his extraordinary and selfless work, Raoul Wallenberg epitomized an exemplary human who was compassionate, humane, and sacrificial. His accomplishments are hard to match.
I share a background as an architect with Raoul Wallenberg. However, what brings me into his sphere is not the construction of physical structures but the intersectionality, complexity, and mergers of spatiality and relationality. Since 1990, when the first medal was given, you have carefully highlighted the works of very distinguished individuals whose attainments dwarf whatever I may consider myself to have attained. It is thus with great humility that I stand before you all today.
Permit me to also pay tribute to a great man, the late Professor of this university, Bunyan Bryant[i] (1935-2024) who was instrumental in establishing the first environmental justice programme and stood as a great fighter against systemic racism and environmental hazards. It would have been a great privilege to have met him in person. May he rest in power!
I stand before you as a son of the Earth, reminding myself that this reality holds true a long way before my nationality or race. Unlocking our ways of being can have a plurality of nuanced meanings, including who we are internally and who we are relationally as well. Our being is not bound by physical geographies or contrived boundaries but by complex meanings and manifestations that can be socio-cultural, historical, political, economic and spiritual.
Being a son of the Earth demands a consciousness that requires an organic relationship with our mother, the Earth, built with deference as an essential guardrail. It requires an understanding that every living being is a child of the Earth and that each has a role to play in this large family. Selfish notions of accumulation by dispossession, oppression, control, and destruction cause ruptures that, at best, yield temporary benefits but, in the end, hurt everyone.
We are told that humans make up a mere 0.01% of the biomass of living beings on Earth. This reality ought to humble every human and show the pettiness of racism, colonialism and every other negative isms. It should be even more humbling when we realize that our bodies and their operations are controlled mainly by other communities of largely invisible beings in our guts and other parts of our bodies. Looking beyond our bodies, we know that ants, earthworms, butterflies, bees, snakes, birds, and others play critical roles in maintaining the ecosystem balance that makes the Earth a planet on which we can live and thrive. Elimination of one species threatens the existence of others. We know all these but acknowledging that we need one another is hard. Humans like to emphasize our differences, our uniqueness, our achievements and our influences as exceptional, extraordinary and distinguishing to the extent that we consider ourselves not only superior to other beings but also to other humans. Once some humans are considered as essentially others or even sub-human we essentially lose our humanity.
The predatory inclination of humans has over the years permitted obnoxious relationships that have manifested in exploitation of others as a norm. This was one of the scaffolds by which the foundations of colonizing power structures were erected, and on which humans continue to cultivate imaginaries and tools that perpetuate extractivist, human-centric and destructive living. This notion of otherness and superiority also makes it possible for humans to see Mother Earth as only suited for exploitation and transformation for our consumption, and at times for the false reason of making her more efficient in the delivery of her services. The right to transform nature presents earth defenders as irritants and nuisances and makes the trampling on human rights as an unavoidable necessity. The loss of a sense of belonging to the community of beings as well as of being part of the human family numbs our senses and permits genocide, ethnocide, ecocide and terricide.
On the other hand, a realization that we are sons and daughters of the Earth, helps us build deep connections to systems of knowledge, agency, authority and practice that remind us that we are all interconnected, that our destinies are bound together. Compassion towards our neighbors, our communities and other beings brings out the spirit of sacrifice and indeed the best in us It emboldens us to act sacrificially and shows clearly that love is a greater force than hate. Raoul Wallenberg’s life testifies to this.
Environmental Justice in the Polycrisis
My work as an environmental justice advocate has been based on the understanding that the polycrisis confronting us has roots in the geopolitical and socioecological frames within which we find ourselves. Seeking out those roots helps us to both avoid superficial responses and to pursue real solutions, some of which may be unattainable in our lifetimes. One of our key struggles has been to gain an understanding of the mindset that permits inequalities in our societies. The mindset that elevates might over care and love. The mindset that promotes the individual rather than the community. The mindset that refuses to understand that we are relatives. The mindset that grabs, trashes, and feeds on the misery of others. The mindset that permits environmental racism.
Understanding the roots of the polycrisis helps us to see the phenomenon of expanding sacrifice zones in our world today. It also placed on us the duty of standing with the oppressed to halt the expansion of sacrifice zones in Nigeria, in Africa and elsewhere, by seeking to overcome the energy and other hegemonic transitions that sacrifice nature and are driven by colonial extractivism built on embedded geopolitical power imbalances.
The mindset that has promoted this situation has been one driven by greed, and an elevated sense of entitlement to a life of ease and convenience. The outcome has been odious eternal debts and the rise of fiction, an overarching canvass, in the climate change discourse, where the focus has been on atmospheric carbon molecules and not on what happens to humans and our relatives. The result has been willful avoidance of climate action and heavy investment in false solutions. Climate negotiations have revealed a willful blindness to the fact the world is facing a global problem. Many fail to see that while the crisis is literally fueled by humans it is multifaceted and affects all beings and not just humans.
The Conference of Parties (COP) of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) appears to annually transform itself into more of a carbon trade fair than much else. It was not until the 28th COP that an agreement was reached that there has to be a transition from fossil fuels for energy generation. This was loudly applauded as an achievement even though it is well known that the burning of fossil fuels is the primary cause of global burning problem. At the same time we are seeing more investments in fossil fuels rather than less. And, of course, fossil fuel companies are making inordinate profits and the world is plunged into extreme weather events and as fence line communities wallow in indescribable levels of ecological damage.
Rich polluting nations and corporations continue to do their best to avoid any notion of responsibility and ignore the Common But Differentiated Responsibilities (CBDR) and capacities, the very basis of justice in multilateral climate action. For the powerful, not even a notional acceptance of a climate or ecological debt exists. The nearest ideas that are acceptable after years of kicking and screaming are camouflaged as charity when, in real terms, they are baits to deepen the debt trap further. The denial of responsibility ensures the denial of reparations.
There is a lack of readiness to provide access to technologies even though this would benefit everyone. It is known that with existing renewable energy technology, it is possible to power the world many times. The clinging to trade secrets has been a hook for maintaining a global power structure imbalance. Trade secrets and contractual confidentiality clausesensure continued exploitation and inordinate accumulation of profit. If we consider this matter as making economic sense, we can surely not find justification for the hoarding and eventual trashing of COVID-19 vaccines at a time when the pandemic ravaged the world and threatened the survival of millions of people.
Money as a measure of value has literally trumped other considerations in relations between nations and peoples. It has so sunk deep into human thought patterns that even a sense of self-worth is sometimes measured in monetary terms. Nations are grouped as rich or poor and as high-income, middle-income or low- income. Using broad strokes, we find the poor grouped as being from the Third World, while the rich have the pleasure of fitting themselves into the First or Second Worlds. This colonial inferiority is so normalized that to qualify for assistance through certain financial instruments wielded by the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund, nations accept the toga of being highly indebted, poor nations as badges of honor. Additionally, these impoverished countries are conditioned or forced to be silent in the face of rabid transnational plunder.
Researchers like Fadhel Kaboub[ii] point out that global financial architecture is wired in such a way that $2 trillion flows from the global south to the global north yearly through exports, imports, interest payments, illicit financial flows and the like. The skewed financial flows are powered by a colonial economic system overseen by the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund, both created in colonial days for colonial purposes. Climate finance, the agreed Climate Fund, and the Loss and Damage Fund may be seen as efforts to move in the right direction of the global financial flows. With $2 trillion moving to the north, what is coming to the south as climate finance hardly adds up to $100 billion and about $12 trickles in as Climate Fund. The Loss and Damage Fund cannot rise to the billion-dollar mark, even if it is known that a climate disaster can wreak damage worth several times more than that.
Interestingly, the basis of the visible and insidious disparities is often shoved out of sight. Exploitations traceable to slavery, colonialism, imperialism and related political and economic subversions are not often accepted as the basis for the persistent geopolitical inequalities.
It is obvious that many do not agree that we are all relatives.
Climate action and inaction provide pictures that help us see the difficulties we face in trying to build a consensus that the climate crisis is a global crisis and not a national crisis to be tackled by Nationally Determined Contributions as required by the Paris Agreement. The fact that the Paris Agreement has been applauded as a phenomenal attainment in climate negotiations cannot be denied. Neither can anyone deny the fact that it is the only global agreement on climate change that we have today. However, it also shows that the world is not yet ready to make the hard decisions by coming to terms with the fact that the pursuit of infinite growth on a finite planet is a false dream. Environmentally conscious politicians speak of green growth as though the word green is a magic wand that can extend the Earth beyond elastic limits.
To perpetuate the system that brought the world to the brink, we tell ourselves that it is okay to keep polluting because technology can capture or suck away the pollution. We assure ourselves that we can douse the fire of a burning earth by whitening the clouds, placing sunshades in the sky, seeding the ocean or helping trees be more efficient in carbon dioxide uptake in the processes of photosynthesis. Loaded with cash, we can pollute and carry on with business as usual while we pay some poor community somewhere to stay off their forests so that we may own the carbon in the trees and use them to offset our climate sins.
Carbon offsets of diverse sorts have birthed carbon slavery, carbon colonialism, dispossession, and land and sea grabbing. For Africa, there is a dash for continental grabbing, with as much as 10 to 20 per cent of the landmass of countries being grabbed for the global carbon stock exchange. To blunt the pain, different terms like blue carbon, green, blue, grey, turquoise, and other shades of hydrogen are being promoted.
Unlocking our imaginary
Rather than work on multiple transitions towards a post-petroleum civilization, the world is stuck with a sole focus on an energy transition. Even this energy transition is largely one of shifting from fossil fuel-based energy sources to what is termed renewable or clean sources. Without a common understanding of what is renewable, the expansion of sacrifice zones is being promoted in extracting critical minerals and displacing millions of hapless brothers and sisters in territories where lithium has been discovered or is being extracted.
Concerns have been raised in the so-called Lithium Triangle[iii] Countries of Latin America — Bolivia, Argentina and Chile where 60% of the lithium in the world has been discovered. With recent discoveries, Bolivia ranks topmost in the world for lithium deposits, with Argentina coming second with 22 million tonnes and Chile with 11 million tonnes. The reality is that this ‘triangle’ is also one of the driest places on earth, with less than 30 centimeters (12 inches) of precipitation a year, and lithium extraction requires about 1.9 million litres (500,000 gallons) of water per metric ton. What would be the consequences for our relatives there who need water for their agriculture and other needs but may not need electric cars that drive the search for this “white gold”.
In the same vein, the Democratic Republic of Congo has the world’s largest cobalt reserve and a significant reserve of lithium. Denouncing forced displacement of communities in DRC,[iv] Agnès Callamard, Amnesty International’s Secretary General, said, “Amnesty International recognizes the vital function of rechargeable batteries in the energy transition from fossil fuels. However, climate justice demands a just transition. Decarbonizing the global economy must not lead to further human rights violations. The people of the DRC experienced significant exploitation and abuse during the colonial and post-colonial era, and their rights are still being sacrificed as the wealth around them is stripped away.”
Congo sounds like an exotic far-off place that can be easily ignored except for its vast mineral resources. It is a country that has suffered conflict and instability and where its first Prime Minister, Patrice Lumumba, one of the foremost African political heroes, was murdered on 17 January 1961, shortly after the country attained independence. We readily ignore the massacres in the DRC and other sacrifice zones simply because we are numbed by our conviction of their otherness and the criticality of minerals needed for the energy transition. We recall what Malcom X said about this otherness when he criticized the destabilization of the Congo[v] by external forces when he spoke in Detroit, Michigan, on 15th February 1965 (a week before his assassination) on the tragic exploitative manipulations in the politics and economy of that country. He said, “You know, it’s something to think about. How do you think you would feel right now if some Congolese brothers walked up to you — they look just like you. Don’t think you don’t look Congolese. You look as much Congolese as a Congolese does.” We may not look like the Congolese, but we belong to the same family, the human family. And we should care that atrocious colonial exploitation persists to this day.
Change is often painful, and the unwillingness to suffer discomfort has led people to resist any change from the status quo if they are benefiting from it. However, resistance to change often needs scapegoats. These are not hard to find as positions harden, ideologies become more extreme, and others are seen as usurpers of benefits that should be enjoyed by the disgruntled. This is why the rise of xenophobia and anti-immigrant postures has turned virulent in today’s world. Is this inevitable? Perhaps not.
Resisting change because one has the power to do so creates more fissures in society and pent-up anger eventually bursts in ways that are not desirable. We can see this happening in the debate about transiting from fossil fuels. For example, the proposals for a managed decline of dependence on the energy source have been resisted by those who insist that dirty energy will remain dominant beyond this century. The wisdom in such a position, including the politically beautiful claim that Africa must use fossil fuels to develop whether the West likes it or not, may not be for the long-term benefit of the claimants. In the words of Daniel Hoyer[vi], “If the past teaches us anything, it is that trying to hold on to systems and policies that refuse to appropriately adapt and respond to changing circumstances — like climate change or growing unrest among a population – usually end in disaster. Those with the means and opportunity to enact change must do so, or at least not stand in the way when reform is needed.”
On this note, we applaud President Gustavo Petro of Colombia for what he said[vii] when he considered the choice between life and dependence on fossil fuels at an event during COP28. He said, “We are confronted with a struggle between fossil capital and human life, including the life of our planet. And we must choose a side. And any person, anywhere in the world, would understand that the only stance to take is in favor of life. Therefore, like the President of the Republic of Colombia, even though our nation still relies on oil and coal and we are striving to transition away from them, I have no doubt about the stance we must adopt. Between fossil capital and life: we unequivocally choose life. Today, within the broader scope of humanity, being on the side of life means being alongside you: the peoples who are on the verge of disappearing on the islands due to extensive carbon consumption by a small elite of humanity.”
Today, the narrative of climate action is wrapped around the attainment of “Net Zero” and decarbonization of the economy. Net zero gives extended life to polluters because they can show by some mathematical equations that they are taking steps towards carbon abatement that is equal to their unending pollution. It is a procrastinator’s paradise. With this clever device, nations and industries applaud one another with signposts suggesting that they will attain a carbon zero-sum in two, three or four decades. However, we must look beyond this device that hands polluters a lifeline and insist that, at best, what is needed is confronting of the inequalities of wealth and power, not merely cutting emissions through acts of decarbonizing the economy or production activities.
If we agree that we are all relatives, then it should be clear that multiple systemic transitions covering the economic, political, social, cultural, technological, and other spheres are urgently needed.
The Two Ends of the Pipe
What should be our actions considering our objective realities? My response to this question is that we must first be critically aware of our individual realities and, from there, examine our collective realities. The words of Stephanie Mills in her book Tough Little Beauties resonate with me here. She wrote that, “Where one is greatly influences who one is, for better or worse. Degraded places sap souls.” She captured the harsh reality that we can only ignore to our peril.
It has taken great determination for me to ensure that my soul is not sapped by the criminal degradation of the environment of our communities by corporations and governments in the pursuit of power and profit. Every pipe has at least two ends, but our narrow vision of the world often constrains us to look at only one end of the pipe. This is the case when it comes to the things that bring imaginaries of comfort constructed by advertisement, convenience and even greed. So, concerning climate change, we are hooked with debates on carbon molecules in the air, deaf to the cries of the oppressed and blind to the blood-soaked communities and fields where oil, gas and coal are extracted. In same way, the world permits impunity and ignores human rights, cares little of the rights of Nature and permits the annihilation of fellow humans as though they were dots on the screens of video games. Territories, once designated as world heritage sites, are now fair game for despoliation and trashing. Places like Yasuni in Ecuador, Albertine Graben in Uganda, Okavango in Namibia/Botswana and the Saloum Delta in Senegal must be desecrated simply because we have convinced ourselves that crude oil and fossil gas must remain our primary energy sources.
For over 30 years of work in the human and environmental rights field, it has become clear to me that denying any human right is a threat to life. I have also come to see that environmental abuse deeply negates our right to life. My journey in the struggle for justice was birthed in the autocratic reign of military dictatorship in my country, Nigeria. The inexorable move into the struggles for socioecological justice grew from an awareness that our individual liberties mean little when our relationship with Mother Earth is shattered by pollution of our water, land and air. It was with this realization that Ken Saro-Wiwa, the pioneer and foremost environmental justice campaigner in Nigeria, wrote the memorable lines in a poem titled Keep Out of Prison[viii], which he wrote in prison:
‘Keep out of prison,’ he wrote
‘Don’t get arrested anymore.’
But while the land is ravaged
And our pure air poisoned
When streams choke with pollution
Silence would be treason
Punishable by a term in prison.
Ken Saro-Wiwa and eight other Ogoni leaders (Saturday Dobee, Nordu Eawo, Daniel Gbooko, Paul Levera, Felix Nuate, Baribor Bera, Barinem Kiobel, and John Kpuine) were executed on 10 November 1995, after a dubious trial by a kangaroo tribunal set up by then Nigeria’s maximum ruler following the murder of four top Ogoni chiefs in May 1994. The events that led to that bloody Friday were preceded by a presentation of the Ogoni Bill of Rights to the government in 1990 and the subsequent expulsion of Shell from the territory in 1993 through non-violent popular mass action. The shutting of oil operation in Ogoniland drew the ire of the dictatorship, with a military siege to the territory as one of the responses. With over 2000 persons killed, and others exposed to diverse indignities, many Ogonis went into exile for their safety.
Major Dauda Okuntimo, then commander of the Internal Security Task Force (ISTF) sent to pacify the Ogoni people, boasted that he knew 200 ways of killing people and that the fleeing Ogonis should emerge so that some of the techniques may be applied to them. He also claimed that the Ogoni people should be grateful to him for his mercies. A memo said to have been sent by the commander of the ISTF to Shell stated, “Shell operations are still impossible unless ruthless military operations are undertaken.” The memo also recommended “wasting targets cutting across communities and leadership cadres, especially vocal individuals.”[ix]
When Okuntimo appeared before the Human Rights Violations Investigation Commission (generally known as the Oputa Panel after its chairman), set up by the Nigerian government to investigate atrocities committed between 15 January 1966 and 28 May 1999, he claimed that he was “convinced that he had saved the Ogonis from themselves.”[x]
Why was terror unleashed on Ogoniland, and why was Ken Saro-Wiwa and the other leaders executed? The simple answer to this question is that colonial extractivism does not care about the people and the environment, does not consider the consent of the people and, most importantly, does not tolerate resistance. Extractivism, to adapt Kwami Nkrumah’s summation on imperialism, is exploitation without responsibility. The Ogoni people lit the light of dissent and had to be smashed with a sledgehammer.
Inspiration from Ken Saro-Wiwa, the devastation of Ogoniland and the unrelenting assault on other communities in the region honed my conviction and shaped my decision to stand with communities in their fights for socioecological justice.
The complaints of the Ogoni people, as outlined in the Ogoni Bill of Rights (OBR), included economic and political marginalization, lack of benefits of oil extraction from their territory and most poignantly, the ecological devastation they suffered through oil spills and gas flaring. Declarations[xi] in the OBR included the following:
- That in over 30 years of oil mining, the Ogoni nationality has provided the Nigerian nation with a total revenue estimated at over 40 billion Naira (N40 billion) or 30 billion dollars.
- That in return for the above contribution, the Ogoni people have received NOTHING.
- That the Shell Petroleum Development Company of Nigeria Limited does not employ Ogoni people at a meaningful or any level at all, in defiance of the Federal government’s regulations.
- That the search for oil has caused severe land and food shortages in Ogoni one of the most densely populated areas of Africa (average: 1,500 per square mile; national average: 300 per square mile).
- That neglectful environmental pollution laws and substandard inspection techniques of the Federal authorities have led to the complete degradation of the Ogoni environment, turning our homeland into an ecological disaster.
- That the Ogoni people lack education, health and other social facilities.
- That it is intolerable that one of the richest areas of Nigeria should wallow in abject poverty and destitution.
There has yet to be a direct response from the Nigerian government to the demands made by the Ogoni people in their Bill of Rights. However, by 2006, the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) was commissioned by the Federal Government of Nigeria to carry out an assessment of the Ogoni environment. Shell Petroleum Development Company (SPDC) and joint venture partners underwrote the cost of the exercise in the spirit of the Polluter Pays Principle. With over 4000 samples collected for analysis from over 200 sites, the outcome of the exercise was made public in August 2011 and confirmed the complaints of the people. Among other things, the report[xii] revealed that
“Ogoniland is widespread and severely impacting many components of the environment. Even though the oil industry is no longer active in Ogoniland, oil spills continue to occur with alarming regularity. The Ogoni people live with this pollution every day… At 41 sites, the hydrocarbon pollution has reached the groundwater at levels in excess of the Nigerian standards as per the EGASPIN (Environmental Guidelines and Standards for the Petroleum Industry in Nigeria) legislation. The report also stated that “The most serious case of groundwater contamination is at Nisisioken Ogale, in Eleme LGA, close to a Nigerian National Petroleum Company product pipeline where an 8 cm layer of refined oil was observed floating on the groundwater which serves the community wells.”
With regards to the pollution at Nisisioken Ogale, the UNEP report stated that “Of most immediate concern, community members at Nisisioken Ogale are drinking water from wells that are contaminated with benzene, a known carcinogen, at levels over 900 times above the World Health Organization (WHO) guideline.” UNEP called for emergency action ahead of all other remediation efforts.
A year after the publication of the report by UNEP, the government set up an agency to clean up Ogoniland with a budget of $1 billion to be spent in remediation and restoration efforts over five years. That agency was moribund until it was repackaged, and some life was breathed into it in 2016. As highlighted by the UNEP report, the extent of hydrocarbon pollution in the Niger Delta is astonishing. In that light, the cleanup exercise at Ogoniland ought to be seen basically as a laboratory of learning, a preparation for the cleanup of the larger Niger Delta.
While the cleanup of Ogoniland drags on, the government of Bayelsa State, a state in the Niger Delta, set up a Bayelsa State Oil and Environment Commission (BSOEC) to examine the impacts that oil exploration and exploitation has had on the state. The Commission, made up of top range academics and researchers, issued a report of their study in May 2023 with the apt title of Environmental Genocide[xiii]. That report highlighted the extreme pollution that the state has suffered and is still suffering. The BSOEC report highlighted the causes of environmental pollution in the state, such as oil spills, gas flares, waste effluents, operations and destruction of artisanal refineries and divestment. Records from the National Oil Spills Detection and Response Agency (NOSDRA) indicate that 25 percent of oil spills in Nigeria happen in Bayelsa State. The report also showed that the state experienced one oil spill every 12 hours between 2005 and 2018 or for 14 years. The state has a per capita crude oil spill of 1.5 barrels. Overall, using official figures generally known to be understated, experts believe that in the 50 years leading to 2009, between 9 and 16 million barrels of oil had been spilled in the Niger Delta.
One incident that happened in November 2021 was a well blowout on Santa Barbara River in Nembe, Bayelsa State. That blowout went on for six weeks, spewing an estimated 500,000 barrels of crude oil into the river and swamps before it was stopped. I went on a field visit to the location with two boats full of environmental professors, a traditional leader, civil society members and the media to see things for myself. The military refused us access and kept us floating and tossed about on the creeks for over two hours. The militarization of oil fields and communities is primarily to protect crime scenes and to scare the people. Gas flare locations and oil spill sites are well protected, and you could get arrested by attempting to take a photo of a gas flare. I once suffered that indignity even though I was visiting a gas flare site in the company of some diplomats.
It should be mentioned that the first oil wells in Nigeria were drilled in Bayelsa State. Recently, I went on a field visit to six of those oil wells, which were drilled in the 1950s and abandoned in the 1970s after they had literally come to the end of their productive lives. Although the wells were abandoned in the 1970s, they have not been decommissioned or kept in good condition. For these reasons, the abandoned wells remain toxic installations in the forests and continue to leak crude oil and contaminate the area. Sadly, thousands of such wells around the world remain veritable time bombs simply because oil companies would not carry out the fundamental duty of decommissioning old oil wells and making the environment where they are located suitable.
A recent health study conducted on women in the communities where these first oil wells were drilled showed that 100% of the women examined had hydrocarbons in their blood. Common ailments in the communities include young women attaining menopause before the age of thirty. Cases of congenital disabilities, miscarriages and diverse cancers are rife in the communities.
Ubuntu and our Work in Community
The life of an earth defender is bound to the life of the communities they work in. The essence of the African philosophy of Ubuntu is central to our work. A great definition of this concept by the late Archbishop Desmond Tutu is that “A person is a person through other persons.” A further elaboration by the sage adds flesh to this crisp definition. “ person with ubuntu is open and available to others, affirming of others, does not feel threatened that others are able and good, for he or she has a proper self-assurance that comes from knowing that he or she belongs in a greater whole and is diminished when others are humiliated or diminished when others are tortured or oppressed, or treated as if they were less than who they are.” – Desmond Tutu Quotes.[xiv]
Ubuntu connotes kindness, humanity, and greatness of heart. It underscores the sociality of personhood rooted in relational spatiality. Based on this philosophical understanding, the fundamental platform of our work is Ikike, a learning and knowledge sharing space. Ikike is a word in Ibibio and Igbo (two Nigerian languages) that speaks of reasoning power, intellect, and rights. We learn with the consciousness of our embeddedness in the world, including the historical, spiritual and cultural structures that shape our horizons. This consciousness flourishes in humility and a deep appreciation of the state of the air we breathe, the land on which we walk and the water we drink. In my culture, the most treasured possession is a good name that projects a good character. We call it Eti Uwem or good living. This good life or good living is not measured by the material things we may have accumulated. It is not measured by our power to exact vengeance from the less powerful: it is not an air of superiority but one of connectedness and wholesomeness. Eti Uwem requires a consciousness that the dividing line between the material and the spiritual is slim and demands that we approach the generous gifts of Nature in the spirit of stewardship, of trusteeship. Eti Uwem seeks communal sufficiency and not mere self-sufficiency. This is a proverb that says, “when there is room in the heart, there will be room in the house”. We must make room in our hearts!
An understanding that the web of life is so intricate helps us understand that we are not apart from Nature and that we do not own any bit of her. We belong to the Earth. We are the land, we are the water, and we are the mountains. We belong to the community of beings. We are all relatives and should honour every being on Earth, visible and invisible, outside and within us. This is why we stand solidly against destructive extraction and the presumption that we can make Mother Earth more efficient in her natural processes and cycles.
The vision of my organization, Health of Mother Earth Foundation, is to see an ecologically just world where all beings live in harmony with Mother Earth. To drive towards this vision, we work to build ecological knowledge, propagate re-source democracy and support wholesome socio-ecologically cohesive communities where people live in solidarity and dignity.
Whether in our work of hunger politics or fossil politics, we are continually standing for the common good and in solidarity with the oppressed and those denied the right to justice. We begin our actions from diagnostic dialogues through which we learn from indigenous or local knowledge of our peoples, highlight what must change, share capacities through our embeddedness, collect and analyze actionable evidence and set out a pathway for righting wrongs and seeking reparation.
Our work highlights our connectedness to the Earth, our communities, and all beings. Standing apart never works in sustain-able and enduring ways. The lack of respect for our connectedness has given rise to a twisted and narrow national consciousness to promote exclusionary or xenophobic nationalism. The spirit of selfishness builds individualism, projects a curious sense of otherness, and blunts relationality. The obvious outcome is that humanity is drifting out of our collective minds and losing our sense of memory as beings sharing a finite planet, a blue speck floating in space. A sense of our connectedness would show the inanity of expending close to $3 trillion in armament and warfare and why we cannot agree on actual joint actions to tackle global burning, and global hunger and halt our genocidal bent.
Our core knowledge sharing space is our Schools of Ecology (SoE) where youths, academics and others get to learn about the components of the polycrisis confronting our world. They offer us platforms to interrogate the roots of problems rather than the symptoms. They help instigate and build a corps of activist academics and intellectual militants. To overturn the oppressive and destructive systems require sharpened imaginations and the schools provide the tools for making this happen. To further that path we seek collaborations and exchanges with credible institutions such as yours.
I should not end this discourse without mentioning one regional initiative that arose from our school of ecology effort. In 2022 we hosted the maiden Niger Delta Socioecological Alternatives Convergence (NDAC). This convergence brought together all social forces – youths, women, politicians, academics, traditional leaders, civil society and others to interrogate the roots of the crisis confronting the region. At the end of the day a Niger Delta Alternatives Manifesto was adopted for advocacy and for action. Three editions later the movement is getting stronger and the demands of the manifesto is guiding debates as well as advocacy for change. In June 2024 we elevated the NDAC to the national level when we hosted the first ever National Socioecological Alternatives Convergence (NSAC). This convergence took hard looks at the diverse socio ecological challenges in Nigeria and came up with a National Charter of demands. While these streams of work will continue, we are in consultation with brothers and sisters in other African countries to birth an African Socioecological Alternatives Convergence for a transformation at a pan African level. This is essential because geographies must not be permitted to divide us or expose us to unbridled exploitation and ecological devastation.
We are surrounded by relatives. Those invisible beings can keep us awake when we distort the natural balance that requires that we respect each other’s space. My poem[xv] was written during the COVID-19 pandemic and showed our interdependence of all beings, including the invisible ones. The poem also gave us the title of this lecture. Permit me to read it:
I see the invisible
I hear the inaudible
I feel the intangible
I’m everywhere in no time
Floating on memories of strained futures
Aloft on lofty hopes
Sliding on rugged dreams in truncated nights
I see the invisible
I hear the inaudible
I feel the intangible
Ears on the ground we tremble
At the departing footsteps of
Departed elders at marketplaces
I see the invisible
I hear the inaudible
I feel the intangible
Eyes on the past we see the future
Cluttered by discarded viruses and their angry relatives
Hands glued to our sides social distances narrow to a kilometer apart
I see the invisible
I hear the inaudible
I feel the intangible
We have never been closer now we are apart
Finally, nature’s tiny beings shake sleep away
We are relatives and can have a good day
If we don’t scoff and cough in each other’s face
Humans need to be humble, recognize our connectivity, break down apartheid walls and be grateful for the privilege of sharing the same planet. We must stand together in solidarity, learn from the selfless services of Raoul Wallenberg, immerse ourselves in struggles for liberty, dignity and life of our relatives. Together, we can break walls, march forward using cultural tools, share laughter even amid storms and by so doing, optimize these universal tools for erasing pain.
Today, I pledge to continue working for power from below and stress the urgent need to globalize social justice because we cannot build this needed change one territory at a time. I thank you for permitting me to remind us today that we are all relatives. Yes, we are relatives.
#Ends
Notes
[i] https://seas.umich.edu/news/memoriam-bunyan-bryant-1935-2024
[ii] Fadhel Kaboub (July 2024) Decolonise to Decarbonise. https://www.globaljustice.org.uk/blog/2024/07/decolonise-to-decarbonise/
[iii] The Lithium Triangle: How three countries in South America will determine our future. July 2024. https://www.verdict.co.uk/lithium-triangle-chile-argentina-bolivia/#:~:text=The%20Lithium%20Triangle%20is%20an,Triangle%20struggles%20to%20extract%20lithium
[iv] Amnesty International. September 2023. Democratic Republic of the Congo: Industrial mining of cobalt and copper for rechargeable batteries is leading to grievous human rights abuses. https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/news/2023/09/drc-cobalt-and-copper-mining-for-batteries-leading-to-human-rights-abuses/
[v] See DemocracyNow, https://www.democracynow.org/1997/5/19/excerpt_of_a_speech_malcolm_x
[vi] Daniel Hoyer (February 2024) History’s crisis detectives: how we’re using maths and data to reveal why societies collapse – and clues about the future. https://theconversation.com/historys-crisis-detectives-how-were-using-maths-and-data-to-reveal-why-societies-collapse-and-clues-about-the-future-218969
[vii] Fossil Fuel Treaty (Dec 6) Colombia’s President Gustavo Petro calls for a Fossil Fuel Treaty at COP28. https://fossilfueltreaty.org/blog/petro-full-speech
[viii] Ken Saro-Wiwa (2018) Silence Would Be Treason. Daraja Press
[ix] The Flames of Shell: Oil Nigeria and the Ogoni. https://berkeleycitizen.org/boycott/boycott2.htm
[x] Matthew Hassan Kukah (2011) Witness to Justice. Bookcraft, Ibadan. P134
[xi] Ogoni Bill of Rights. https://bebor.org/wp-content/uploads/2012/09/Ogoni-Bill-of-Rights.pdf Accessed 2 September 2024
[xii] UNEP (August 2011). Environmental Assessment of Ogoniland. https://www.unep.org/topics/disasters-and-conflicts/country-presence/nigeria/environmental-assessment-ogoniland-report
[xiii] BSOEC (May 2023) An Environmental Genocide – The human and environmental cost of Big Oil in Bayelsa, Nigeria. https://report.bayelsacommission.org
[xiv] https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/165597-ubuntu-speaks-of-the-very-essence-of-being-human
[xv] This is the title poem in my collection of poetry, I See The Invisible (Daraja Press, 2023).
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