The heartless, irascible child who keeps his mother awake all night long will himself not know sleep throughout the night. Yoruba proverb. In all the essential details, the Niger Delta in the last half of a century since Nigeria became one of the big oil exporting nations of the world remarkably resembles the Portuguese ad Belgian colonial possession in Africa in the heyday of Western imperial domination of our continent; in particular, the Niger Delta most especially resembles the then called Belgian Congo. Compared to the French and British colonies, in these Portuguese and Belgian colonies, Africans were far more exploited, far more arrogantly and brutally governed. In the economic sphere, the colonial territory was literally and effectively mined for all its most highly valued natural resources and nothing much was put back to develop there land and the people to whom it historically belonged. In fact, in most cases, the land and the peoples I these Portuguese and Belgian colonies were left far worse by the super-exploitation of the colonizers than they had been before the arrival of the colonial overlords and their mining and trading companies. In the political sphere, the kinds and levels of self-governance and self-rule that the British and the French gradually introduced in their colonies were near absent in the Portuguese and Belgian colonies; the only kind of self-rule that was tolerated was any kind that could make the exploitation of the land, the resources and the people more effective, more profitable for there colonizer. Any Nigerian who does not know that these are the same sort of things that have been happening in our Niger Delta in the last fifty years is grossly and tragically uninformed. In the last fifty years since oil prospecting in the Niger Delta not only became big time oil exportation but also became overwhelmingly the country’s main source of revenue, physical and environmental degradation of the region has risen to levels unknown in any other apart of the planet: much of the land laid to waste and made less and less available for arable farming; the waters and the air polluted; the villages, towns and cities made some of the rosst areas for infrastructures, employment opportunities and security of life and possessions in our country. And with regard to the sphere of political empowerment, since Nigeria struck it rich through the oil extracted from the region, the Niger Delta has remained one of the most marginal areas of the country in terms of effective distribution of power and influence within the nation’s political class. In some other aspects, our Niger Delta is also comparable to another colonial experience in Africa of the long night of the colonization of our continent, that of the so-called Bantustans of South Africa I the period of apartheid control of Black South Africans by the White minority Afrikaner and English communities. These Bantustans were the poorest areas of South Africa, with little or no infrastructures, little or no employment opportunities, little or no access to the economic and political centers of the national territory. Of course nothing like the forcible control of movement into and out of the Bantustans that the Whites imposed on Blacks in apartheid South Africa exist in the case of our Niger Delta, but there is a clear similarity, in each of these two cases, in the fact of severe economic, material impoverishment compared tot eh rest of the country. Considering all these details and realities of the shocking similarities of the Niger Delta to the worst cases of Western colonial exploitation and domination of Africa, it would seem both reasonable and justifiable that many individuals and organizations that are struggling for the just cause of the Niger Delta should –as they have done and no doubt will continue to do – use the term internal colonialism to describe the tragic experience of the region in the last fifty years. Which is why it is very surprising that many knowledgeable and progressive Nigerians from other parts of the country have either been indifferent or even hostile to the use of the term “colonialism” both to describe what has been happening in the Niger Delta in the last fifty years and to mobilize action to end it. What is implied, what is at stake in this indifference to or refusal of the term “internal colonialism” with regard to the Niger Delta, especially now that the region is in the explosive, violent epicenter of the nation’s struggles to come to terms with our crippling endemic political and economic crises and problems? How far, and with usefulness will comparisons between the Niger Delta and the worst cases of Western colonialisation of our continent take us? These are the questions I wish to address in a series of essays over the next few weeks in this column. I personally think the use of the term, together with the comparisons it enables with all those cases of Portuguese, Belgian and Afrikaner colonial possessions and practices in Africa re very, very helpful in that many things that are otherwise extremely baffling, extremely strange in the politics and economy of our country become comprehensible and therefore hopefully more amenable to progressive change once we clarify the grounds of the comparison. But I am mindful of the fact that, for many reasons, many Nigerians would find the comparison unacceptable. Since I believe that much is at stake and much will be gained if the issues involved in this comparison are clarified, it is with great seriousness and objectivity that I will explore some of the reasons for the refusal of, or the indifference to the use of the term “internal colonialism” with regard to the Niger Delta. Colonization, whether it is “internal”, external, or “neo” – as in neocolonialism – has been one of the most persistent and tragic economic, political and cultural means of domination in the modern history of hteneire planet in all its constitutive hemispheric regions in other words, colonization provides much of the explanation for why some nations and peoples became “developed” and “advanced” while others became “underdeveloped” and “backward” in the course modern political and economic history, Colonialism achieved its “classical” or prototypical form during the period of Western imperialist domination of the world, an age that is now clearly and effectively over, even if its ramifications and legacies are still very much with us. With the passing of that age, it has become far less easy or even logical to invoke the term “colonialism” in cases which seem to reproduce some of the essential or prototypical features in contexts other than Western domination of non-Western parts of the world as in the case of the Hutus and the Tutsis in Burundi and Rwanda, Darfur and in Sudan – and the Niger Delta in Nigeria. In next week’s column, I shall directly address some of the reasons why many Nigerians especially self-identified Nigerians, would be indifferent or hostile to the use of the term “internal colonialism” with regard to the Niger Delta. But for now, let me conclude this week’s essay with some observations on why the comparison is helpful and hwy therefore all progressive Nigerians should at least pay some attention to it. These are preliminary observations that I will give further elaboration and clarification in the course of the series. The over-centralised state, with its seat of ower in the almighty presidency in Aso Rock, is possible at all because of the super-exploitation of the Niger Delta. If this super-exploitation of this particular region ends, the over-centralised state which is so resistant to true federalism will not last one year, at the most. The over-concentration of wealth in a few hands in our country, one of the most extreme, obscene and unproductive in the world, is also dependent on the super-exploitation of the Niger Delta. How all this relates to the issue of internal colonialism will be the subject of next week’s column, together with all the objections of the comparison of the Niger Delta crises to all those abominable cases of Western colonialism at its very worst on our continent. Biodun Jeyifo