IN Erema community located in one of the South-South Local Government areas of Rivers State called Onelga, people not only practice Christianity as their religion, traditional worship with shrines and worship grounds in the community is also strong. Some of the shrines seem also to be responding to modernity as bottles of coca-cola and Fanta, Five-Alive and other assorted foreign gin and wine bottles are seen displayed at the feet of the shrines as offering to the gods and the spirits.
The annual New Yam festival called the Egwu-ogba festival provided evidence that accounts for how the Erema people are still close to their traditions and roots. The festival, which has fire carrying as its major effect, is a source of spiritual purification for the people and the entire land. During this festival, confessions are made, evil practice renounced, sacrifices are offered and promises by the people to live peacefully and happily with one another through the year are made.
Anama-Oji
THE Anama-oji (Village Square) is a very important cultural and political space where the community meets to discuss and take major decisions as a people. The space is symbolic because it serves both political and cultural purposes. Any case decided at the Anama-oji becomes binding on the people. It is traditional democracy as the case may be. The Civic Centre, which is a space for community interaction and other community activities, is also a dominant feature in the community. Most of the community leaders are not comfortable in accepting ‘visitors’ to attend the community meetings held at the Anama-oji.
The Anama-Oji is the proverbial equivalent of the National Assembly of Nigeria at Abuja. However, in the case of the Erema people, the decisions taken at any meeting of this ordinary looking but hallowed turf is binding on all members of the community. Indeed, it is correct to say that most of the members accept and believe in the power of the Anama-Oji and its mystical significance.
Doing TFD in Erema
IN October 2008, Cordaid (Netherland) awarded a grant to the Nigerian Popular Theatre Alliance (NPTA) to conduct training on participatory drama, specifically Theatre for Development (TFD) and Participatory Video (PV) as part of the grant activities in the Niger Delta area. The overall purpose of the grant was to strengthen the participation of ordinary people in the Niger Delta communities in non-violent civic action, advocacy, and peace promotion initiatives. The strategy was for the project to work with various NGOs who were working at the ground level in the Niger Delta.
The mandate was to engage with community groups using TFD and other Participatory Learning Approaches (PLA) resources to discuss community issues and how to carry along all community members on board in a horizontal and participatory way towards solving community problems and facilitating peaceful coexistence and violence-free resolution of conflicts, especially amongst the youths as they respond to elders and oil companies.
In actual sense, the entire journey of the project began from the training organised for the participants from the Niger Delta area. The training was conducted at the Drama Village, Ahmadu Bello University, Zaria, from March 16-25, 2009. Within the project activities, and according to the implementation schedule, the first main activity was the training of SDN programme staff and leaders of NGOs that SDN works/collaborates with in the Niger Delta. The training was conducted by the Theatre for Development Centre (TFDC), the research and training unit of the Nigerian Popular Theatre Alliance.
It was attended by fifteen persons drawn from SDN and ten other NGOs/CBOs from three core States (Bayelsa, Delta and Rivers) in the Niger Delta region. The training in Theatre for Development (TFD) and Participatory Video (PV) was to offer a hands-on training to the participants in the techniques of TFD and PV. To take the participants through the process of collectively devising drama with community members; To coach the participants in the techniques and processes of story-boarding through to shooting a video of their stories; To provide advocacy techniques that would be useful in community work; To embark on community visits that exposes the participants to the practice of TFD in communities; to impart facilitation techniques.
Community Issues
The community work phase of the project threw up critical issues bothering the community chief of which is leadership. The Erema community participants explained during the presentations that there was apparently no control over leadership positions in the community as every person who has made some money and garnered some influence imposes himself on the community as leader. This has caused a lot of friction in the community over the years and has given rise to camps emerging as members of the community align with the various leaders.
They observed that the situation is as a result of lack of a coherent document or process of people ascending to power. This situation has implications and the only way out is to resort to producing a document that will guide the election or selection processes of the leadership in Erema community. According to their report, there is already an existing machinery set up to make this work facilitated by a Senator from the community. However, it has not produced results as the community people have become suspicious of the sponsorship and control of the project. The community people believe that there is a presence of some personal interest in it.
Participants also hinted that other institutions like the CDC, Youth and women group all operate their various constitutions. However, there is no central constitution that holds the various divides of the community together.
In an exhaustive interaction with some of the stakeholders in the community who were visited during the advocacy exercise in the community, the problem was emphasized as very pressing in the community.
There are also issues around the negative treatment of women in the community, which manifested loudly in the challenges experienced by widows in Erema community. Fortunately, this is an issue already being tackled by the Stakeholder Democracy Network (SDN) in their work in the community with women. The women complained of relegation to the background and usually have no say in the community in spite of the organized women group with the women leader at the helm. Widows are especially subjected to hardship by being denied essentials of livelihood by the families of their dead husbands even in terms of portions of land to farm in order to fend for their children. They are also ‘encouraged’ or forced to remarry into their late husband’s family. This has become endemic and a source of frustration for the women. This scenario cuts across in terms of women’s participation in civic responsibilities in the community.
At the end of the performances and the post performance discussions, the community came to some tentative agreements on the issues of leadership, widowhood practices, treatment and participation of women in community affairs, etc. For instance, the community agreed to conclude the process of reviewing and fashioning a constitution acceptable to all that will regulate the activities of everybody in the community.
There was also the agreement on the need for the fairer treatment of women with some misgivings. Could this be the reason why the men vehemently refused that the performances and post performance discussion should not take place at the Anama-Oji? While the women had no problem with this, the men insisted that the performances and post performance discussions should happen at the civic centre constructed by Shell Petroleum Development Company. Will the men respect decisions reached at the civic centre like that of Anama-Oji? Only time will tell!
Prof. Oga Steve Abah, the leader of the Nigerian Popular Theatre Alliance/Theatre for Development team, said he was happy with the outcome of the project: “Our original intention was to use the tools of video and drama to give voice to the voiceless in the Niger Delta; to enhance their ability to take positive action devoid of violence. How do you get women, youths and the men to start talking about their common problems and finding solutions without resorting to armed struggle that has become the hallmark of the Niger Delta crises recently?
“In some respects, we succeeded. But the water hyacinth issue, which is one of the several issues the project unearthed, has brought home not just the environmental crisis but the disproportionate nature of the sufferings of the different groups in the Delta and this time, the scale is tilted against the women”.
At the end of the day, the project ‘Local Voices’ helped to bring to public arena the voices of the women, the problem of the teenage girls, the increasing inability of the men to handle family and community issues and the drifting of the youth away from support for their community.
The project also trained members of the Community Development Committee (CDC) on leadership. The project team concluded that if what they heard from the women and men were anything to hold on to, then the project had made impact. As the project came to an end, Prof. Jenks Okwori and Samuel Kafewo who were part of the facilitating team said: “We have worked enough over these past three years with the CDC and community members for them to take the issues forward.”
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