•Communities kick against Usman Katsina’s son

Oil blocks owned by Hassan Katsina in the Anambra basin strike the Igbo cold. OPL 205 and OPL 905 revive memories of the massacre of Easterners in the North in 1966 which presaged the civil war.
Hassan, son of the late Lt. Colonel Usman Katsina who presided over the murders, was awarded the OPLs by his cousin, the late President Umaru Yar’Adua, who also gave a shipload of oil to his son-in-law, Isa Yuguda, as a wedding gift.
Investigative reporter, EMMANUEL MAYAH, digs into an oil and gas acquisition raising hairs in the South East 47 years after Usman Katsina said the North would overrun the region in a scorched earth policy.

Uzor (left) with community leaders in Onitsha.

Weeks after Fulani herdsmen attacked and killed two farmers in Anambra State, another conflict is brewing in the oil-rich Anambra basin, the South East’s equivalent of the Niger Delta. An oil and gas deal quietly sealed in the days of the late President Umaru Yar’Adua has run its course of secrecy, exposing shadowy dramatis personae and dark memories of ethnic massacre.
Years after the largest gas field in Anambra was acquired by the son of the late Usman Katsina, South Easterners, particularly survivors of the massacre of the Igbo in Kaduna in 1966 – a pogrom that precipitated the civil war in 1967 – are for the first time getting to know the identities of the owners of the gas field right in their backyard.
Industry operators know about OPL 205 and OPL 905 with their rich oil and gas reserves. Oil blocks in OPL 205 cover an area of 1,300 square kilometres in the Anambra basin, and in OPL 905 an area of 2,600 square kilometres.
OPL 905 is owned by Gas Transmission and Power Limited (GTPL), whose shareholders are listed as Abubakar Joda, Ahmadu Joda, Hassan Katsina, Makoji Aduku and Eteyen Edet.
However, the principal figure and driver of GTPL is Hassan Katsina, son of the late military Governor of Northern Nigeria, Usman Katsina, a Lt. Colonel whose combined actions and inactions decided the fate of hundreds of thousands of Ndigbo in the North in the aftermath of the 1966 coup led by Chukwuma Nzeogwu.
Not only was Usman Katsina accused by the Igbo of supervising the pogrom against Easterners in the North, he was a key figure in the civil war that left over one million Igbo dead.
Forty-seven years after the massacre in Kaduna, the acquisition of the gas field by his son is fueling bitter emotions across Igboland, seen as hostility and provocation synonymous with hosting the swastika on the doorstep of Jews.

A genocide revisited
In his book Genocide, War & The Leopard’s Claws 1966-7, Ezenwa Ohaeto recalls the pogrom leading to the civil war, saying the Igbo were victims of “organised riots” beginning in the North and spreading to other parts of the country.
One page reads: “The coup was also used as an opportunity to attempt to wipe out all the military officers from Eastern Nigeria. It was a merciless, devastating and comprehensive slaughter.
“The officers were killed in their homes; they were shot at the airport or the railway station or as they were fleeing; some of them were enticed from hiding with an announcement that the situation had been brought under control, only to be murdered.
“A large-scale massacre of citizens of Eastern Nigeria living in other parts of the country had ensued. The Eastern Nigerian army officers were slaughtered; among them Achebe’s cousin; then ordinary soldiers from the same part of the country were killed; then the massacre extended to senior civil servants, ordinary workers, teachers, business people, technicians, traders, medical personnel and students.
“The tales ranged from pregnant women with stomachs cut open to men, women and children locked inside houses that were subsequently set on fire. It was a mad August (1966).”
Peter Enahoro, then Editor of Daily Times, described the atrocities thus: “Two friends drove up to the house and gave me a first-hand account of the Northern revolt in progress. Ibos were being abducted from offices and taken away to 3rd Battalion Barracks.
“There were roadblocks on the two routes out of Lagos. They had seen Ibo policemen being marched off by Northern troops and they were scared… A woman ran into my house. She was hysterical. She had been among a group of people walking past a roadblock; suddenly one of the soldiers called to them to line up.
“They obeyed. They were asked what part of Nigeria they came from. Those who said ‘East’ were separated from the others. Then, right before their eyes, the ‘Easterners’ were gunned down… Abductions were being carried out by marauding soldiers and executions were going on all the time.
“A burst of machine gunfire exploded so loud it seemed to have come from the sitting room downstairs. The fighting was literally at my doorstep. My house was situated in an isolated area and my only neighbours – white employees of a Dutch firm – had evacuated their complex of bungalows the previous day.
“Some fleeing Ibo soldiers had hidden in the garage of one of these bungalows. The Northerners conducting a search-and-destroy operation, found the Ibos and calmly fed ammunition into their bodies.”

Umaru Yar’Adua’s cousin
Not much is known about Hassan Katsina beside being the son of Usman Katsina. He is said to be a cousin of the late President Umaru Yar’Adua. In 2003, he made an unsuccessful attempt at politics, declaring his intention to vie for Katsina Central seat in the House of Representatives.
The ease with which he sought and acquired the large gas field in Anambra is attributed to his family connection with Yar’Adua. Aside Hassan Katsina, several members of the immediate and extended Yar’Adua family are known to have huge interests in Nigeria’s oil and gas sector.
Industry players can hardly forget how Yar’Adua easily dispensed favour, giving out oil blocks in the South as though they were supermarket items to family members, friends and cronies without due process.
When a sitting Governor, Isa Yuguda of Bauchi State, married Yar’Adua’s daughter, the late President could not think of a better wedding gift for his new son-in-law than a shipload of crude oil.
Yuguda, a former Aviation Minister, was beside himself as he sought experts to help him convert the crude to cash.
In the same Yar’Adua family business is a company called Intels. Originally owned by Yar’Adua’s elder brother, Shehu – but now supervised by his eldest son, Murtala – Intels (which also has links with former Vice President Atiku Abubakar) manages oil terminals and oil services zones in Port Harcourt, Calabar and Warri.
Murtala Yar’Adua is also an executive at Independent Energy, which teamed up with Afren, chaired by former Petroleum Minister Rilwanu Lukman, in financing the marginal Ofa field won by Independent Energy.
Hassan Katsina teamed up with the Indian-Russian group, Suntera, on OPL 905.

Spitting on the grave
Umuoji community leader in Anambra State, Ekwulu Ejiofor, said the acquisition of the gas field by Usman Katsina’s son is literally spitting on the graves of victims of the Kaduna massacre. Ejiofor, who lost both parents to the pogrom, said Usman Katsina made him an orphan, paving the way for years of misery, starvation and agony.
His words: “My parents and one of my sisters were killed in the Kaduna massacre under the watch and supervision of Usman Katsina, who was then a Lt. Colonel in the Nigerian army and military Governor.
“My family lived in the Tudun Wada area of Kaduna. It is on record that during the war that followed the mass murder of Igbo, Katsina ordered that every male Igbo child above three years should be killed. It was a miracle that some children like us survived.
“My parents and sister must be turning in their graves since the news came that Katsina’s son is the owner of the biggest oil well and gas field in Anambra. This is most insensitive. Whoever conceived and executed this deal has questions to answer. This is evil and a wicked mockery.
“They are spitting on the graves of all the massacred Igbo. They are also spitting on the living, especially the survivors who have had to bear so much trauma.
“Recently, we were told that the North controls over 85 per cent of oil wells in the South. Couldn’t he [Hassan Katsina] have gone for another oil well? Must it be the one in Igboland, the same people his father and the Northern mobs he controlled subjected to genocide?
“After the civil war, they came up with 3Rs for the Igbo – Reconciliation, Reconstruction and Rehabilitation. Ironically, it was not the Igbo that received reconstruction or rehabilitation. The compensation went not to the victims but to the people who carried out the atrocities.
“I can’t imagine the son of Heinrich Himmler or any of Hitler’s Generals given ownership of a gold mine in the land of the Jews. This is unacceptable.”
From Umuoji to Awka, Onitsha to Aguleri, condemnation is the reaction against OPL 905 and its owner, Hassan Katsina.
A youth leader, Elias Akwekwe, said all the host communities were kept in the dark over the rich gas field. He questioned the morality of giving out the most important natural resource in the entire Igboland to a people who ordinarily should answer for war crimes.
“Since the 1966 massacre,” Akwekwe stated, “the Igbo have been treated as a conquered people. As far as the owners of OPL 905 are concerned, the gas field in Anambra basin is another war booty.
“It is okay to shout ‘One Nigeria’ when it comes to natural resources in the South.”
“The same mineral resources, especially solid minerals, are found in the North but these are mined by private individuals who are Northerners. I can’t imagine an Igbo man being given ownership of a gold mine in Minna. I can’t imagine the North allowing an Igbo man to mine limestone or gypsum in Sokoto or coloumbite in Nasarawa.
“I can’t imagine President Goodluck Jonathan giving licence to an Igbo man, ceding a kaolin reserve in Katsina to him or ceding a gemstone mine in Kano. They will never allow it.”
Emeka Umeagbalasi, the Board Chairman of International Society for Civil Liberties and Rule of Law, argued that the ownership of OPL 905 negates the principles of international social justice. For years, his organisation has worked for the advancement of democracy, good governance, security and safety in Anambra and the entire South East.
In his view, OPL 905 is an affront on the sensibility of the Igbo, and the collective well-being of the people of the South East.
“The fact that this gas reserve was acquired without the knowledge of the host communities is itself criminal. The people were not even told the size of the natural resources in their land.
“It is shocking and it goes to show that the process under which the OPL was given out like a Sallah gift by the government of the late Umaru Yar’Adua was questionable and immoral.
“As a matter of public interest, since the process is questionable, there is no way it can represent the collective wish of the people. In the interest of peace, the process must be reversed without delay.”
A youth coalition in Anambra State has risen in protest against Usman Katsina’s son and OPL 905. Led by Uzor A. Uzor, President General, Igbo Integrity Forum, and Chairman, Campaign for Democracy South East, the coalition has issued a 14-day ultimatum to Abuja to annul the ownership of OPL 905.
Uzor described the deal as rubbing insult into injury: “It calls to question the value the federal government places on the people of the South East. I have made calls to several Igbo elders. Not one of them is aware of this huge gas field and the owners.
“If such a thing had happened in the North, the 19 Northern governors would have met and declared the deal unacceptable to the North. So, the owners of OPL 905 must be joking if they think the Igbo would find this acceptable.
“Curiously, Usman Katsina’s son has no presence in Anambra State. So, it would be safe to say the people would not be benefitting anything from his company’s activities in the state. Not even corporate social responsibility (CSR).
“It is on this backdrop that I, on behalf of Campaign for Democracy South East, give the federal government 14 days to revoke the licence. It is unacceptable.”
A medical practitioner, Okey Umeano, said while he is not opposed to a Northerner prospecting oil and gas in the South East, the process must be done with some conscience so that thunder does not strike twice in the same place.
“It was the same Usman Katsina who declared that the North would overrun the South East within 24 hours in a scorched earth policy. If Usman Katsina had a chemical weapon, he would have used it against the Igbo,” Umeano added.
“Giving to his son, by whatever process, about 3,000 square kilometres of oil field as his fiefdom, is waging an economic war from where his father stopped.”
TheNiche made several visits to the corporate headquarters of GTPL at Plot 515 Usuma Close, Maitama, Abuja. But efforts to speak with Hassan Usman were stonewalled.