Sixteen years after massacre, Odi residents want Obasanjo’s apology (Pictures)

His legs were tucked under the purple plastic chair he was sitting on in a hut near the riverside, patiently beholding the gentle waves as they splashed across the water in front of him. He was quiet and alone – lost in thoughts – until a man tapped him on his shoulders.

It was through the same water he escaped the killings carried out in Odi, Bayelsa State in 1999. He counted himself, wife and children lucky to be alive, having escaped through his speedboat; however, some of his friends and relatives were not. They all perished.



Soldiers, numbering hundreds, had reportedly on the order of former President Olusegun Obasanjo invaded Odi community on Saturday, November 20, 1999 to revenge the killings of their colleagues reportedly carried out by armed militias from the community. It was during the era of militancy when militants reportedly kidnapped and disrupted the activities of oil company workers, fighting against the Nigerian Army in the process, while killing some soldiers.

Timi has since kept two pots Red Cross gave him after the incident

Busting with anger, the soldiers reportedly killed hundreds of the residents of the community — until they were satisfied.

So many innocent lives were lost.

Sixteen years after the incident, 53-year-old Michael Timi recounted how he survived. “Anytime I sit here in front of my house to relax, I tend to remember the incident clearly. I was in the house on that Saturday when I started hearing gunshots everywhere. It was terrible. It was as if they were throwing bombs. It was a sort of war. I couldn’t go out because I was afraid.

“Suddenly, I saw people running helter-skelter, with many people wailing. ‘They are killing our people,’ a friend of mine who ran to my house told me. I was terrified. Thank God my wife and children were all in the house. If they were not at home, maybe I would not be saying this today. There was no mobile phone then to have called them to come home.

“We quickly left the house and entered my boat, from where we escaped to another community very far away. The soldiers did not want to know whether someone was innocent or not; their target was to wipe out all the men in this community.

Culled from Punch