From Otuabagi To The African Imagination: King Dakolo’s Journey Through History, Oil & Literature
By
The King, the Writer & the Search for Lost Time
KING Bubaraye Dakolo, the writer, came to the realisation of his literary calling rather late. Since making that discovery, however, he has pursued it with considerable determination. Within a period of six years, he has produced six books and risen to the distinguished rank of Fellow of the Association of Nigerian Authors, ANA.
For a man who believes he has so much to say, the pace is perhaps understandable. Yet, the writer and the king inhabit two different conceptions of age. Dakolo, the king, dislikes being called young. He considers himself one hundred and six years old, explaining that he is as old as the sacred stool upon which he sits.
That stool belongs to the paramount potentate of Ekpetiama Kingdom, Agada IV. As Ibenanaowei, he presides over the affairs of his people and, in addition, chairs the Bayelsa State Traditional Rulers Council. His royal position has therefore given him a prominent place in the traditional and public affairs of the state.
From the moment he became king, he brought energy and visibility to the council. He spoke with conviction, offered ideas freely and displayed a readiness to challenge the limitations of the present.
There is something almost evangelical about the way he approaches public responsibility. He recognises the power of knowledge and appears determined to share it rather than keep it to himself. In the language of Jesus Christ, he would rather place his light on a stand than hide it beneath a bushel.
For Dakolo, that light is the awareness that society can be better, that children deserve a more promising future and that every individual has a responsibility to enrich the lives of those who will come after him. His writing, activism and traditional leadership all appear to draw from this conviction.
The Making of a Soldier & the Pain of 1990
The king’s public identity is inseparable from his military past. Long before his colleagues in the Nigerian Army attained the rank of Major-General, Dakolo had already become Ibenanaowei of Ekpetiama Kingdom. Nevertheless, he has never attempted to erase his years in uniform.
He began life as a boy soldier and remains deeply attached to the experience. His second book carries a photograph of him as a young serviceman, wearing a stern and determined expression. That same image, reproduced as a gallant silhouette, adorns his office at the headquarters of the Bayelsa State Council of Traditional Rulers. It also features prominently at his palace in Gbarantoru.
The image is more than a decorative reminder of an earlier career. It represents a chapter of his life marked by discipline, ambition and, ultimately, a painful interruption.
In 1990, while Dakolo was a cadet at the Nigerian Defence Academy in Kaduna, the Major Gideon Orkar coup disrupted his life. His elder brother, Captain Perebo Abela Dakolo, was among those involved in the attempted coup.
The younger Dakolo became responsible for moving his brother’s family from Zaria to Port Harcourt in search of a safe place. He left the Academy on the morning of the coup. By nightfall, network news had announced the development, and the news initially appeared encouraging to him. Yet, the mood changed by noon the following day. The coup had failed, its principal actors had been arrested, tried and summarily executed.
Afterwards, the cadet returned to the Academy and attempted to continue his training. However, the loss of his brother left an emotional wound that he could not easily overcome.
As public discussion of the coup spread in the weeks that followed, his family connection became known. The Dakolo name was enough to identify him with the tragedy. A higher officer reportedly concluded that the young cadet could not be trusted to remain in the service after his brother’s execution.
Thus, in 1991, Dakolo was summarily discharged from the Army. His military ambition ended abruptly, leaving him to confront a future he had not anticipated. Even so, he displayed the resilience that would later become a defining feature of his life. He put the tragedy behind him as best he could and began searching for another path.
Rebuilding a Life Through Education & Public Service
Private business offered a temporary occupation after his departure from the military. By 1994, however, Dakolo had secured admission to the University of Port Harcourt, where he embarked on a new academic journey.
He obtained two degrees, first in Chemical Engineering and subsequently in Education. Between 1996 and 2001, he taught for the better part of six years at the University of Port Harcourt Demonstration Secondary School.
A further change came in 2004, when he returned to Bayelsa State during the administration of Chief Diepreye Alamieyeseigha. There, he became personal assistant to Oronto Douglas, the Information Commissioner at the time.
The appointment placed him close to the political ferment and environmental campaigns that were shaping the Niger Delta. He became involved in youth activism and the environmental rights movement associated with the formation of the Ijaw Youth Council, IYC.
Indeed, the concerns that animated these movements had occupied him long before he entered government service. Even as a young man, he was preoccupied with the future of the Ijaw people and the question of how the region could secure a fairer place in Nigeria.
At the Academy, his political discussions had already distinguished him from many of his contemporaries. He argued with maturity and preferred reason to aggression. Rather than resorting to insults or physical confrontation, he sought to persuade through logic.
His understanding of politics remains firmly rooted in accountability and public service:
“I’m okay with politics so long as politicians remain true to their manifesto and their mandate. I have problems with politicians who default on their promises. It never goes down well with me.
“We live in the twenty-first century, not in medieval times. We should do things like civilized people. Life is too short to tell lies, and much of politics is about how good you are with lies. That is a very unfortunate legacy to bequeath to the future. Politics does not have to be an exercise in violence either. I’d rather settle for peace. Politics, for me, true politics is about service that would bring about happiness amongst the citizenry.”
Humility, Infrastructure & the Responsibilities of Leadership
Those convictions also shape his view of the Bayelsa government under Governor Douye Diri, who had been in office for six years at the time of the tribute.
Dakolo regards Diri as a humble leader whose performance has been remarkable. He describes the governor as a people-centred servant and points particularly to his efforts to improve access to the swampy interior of Bayelsa.
The Nembe-Brass road provides one of his examples. He recalls that the project once appeared in the federal budget with an allocation of four million naira. Today, its cost runs into billions, yet he commends Diri for finding the political will to pursue it because of the wider benefits it could bring to the state.
Equally significant, in his estimation, was the governor’s decision to address pension obligations early in his administration. Dakolo notes that Diri set aside seven hundred million naira monthly to meet the needs of pensioners and retirees.
For a traditional ruler who repeatedly insists that politics should serve the people, such measures provide a basis for judging leadership. His assessment is therefore not simply an expression of political loyalty. It reflects his stated belief that public office must produce practical improvements in people’s lives.
Otuabagi, the Oil Industry & a Childhood in the Niger Delta
Dakolo’s attachment to the Niger Delta is rooted in his birthplace and childhood experiences. Born in the mid-1960s at Otuabagi, the community where the first commercial oil well in Nigeria was drilled, he has repeatedly drawn attention to the significance of that location in his books.
The issue is personal as well as historical. He is offended by what he regards as a longstanding misrepresentation of the location of the country’s first commercial oil well. In his view, Nigeria has continued to attribute that distinction to Oloibiri when the well in question is actually situated in Otuabagi, his mother’s village.
His paternal home is Gbarantoru, where he lives along the banks of the River Nun. The community and its surrounding landscape have been part of his life since childhood. He survived the great flood of 1969 and experienced the fierce fighting that engulfed Ekpetiama during the Nigerian Civil War.
The end of the war in 1970 brought another chapter. Dakolo moved with his father and siblings to Shell’s residential quarters at Alesa Eleme in Rivers State. His father had just become an employee of the Nigeria Petroleum Refining Company, NPRC, in the post-war period.
At that age, the young Dakolo could not fully appreciate the dangers associated with petroleum infrastructure. He and his playmates regularly walked along exposed oil pipelines on their four-kilometre journey to and from Ibuluya-Dikibo State Primary School in Okrika.
From the rear of the school, he watched sea-going vessels moving petroleum products from the nearby refinery jetty on the Okrika peninsula towards the Western world. Those childhood observations brought him into direct contact with the machinery of the oil economy.
In later years, the same experiences would inform his writing about the relationship between petroleum wealth, environmental degradation and the marginalisation of oil-producing communities. The industry was not simply an economic subject for him. It was part of the landscape in which he grew up and the history of the people whose future he wanted to defend.
The Black Leaders Who Shaped His Worldview
The young Dakolo’s intellectual development also took place against the background of African liberation struggles and the wider Black freedom movement.
During his teenage years, he became familiar with the lives and ideas of Marcus Garvey, Malcolm X and Martin Luther King Jr. Their struggles introduced him to questions of racial dignity, political independence and collective self-determination.
His admiration extended to the early African nationalists who fought against colonial domination. Kwame Nkrumah, Patrice Lumumba, Ahmed Sékou Touré, Julius Nyerere and Kenneth Kaunda all became important figures in his intellectual landscape.
Furthermore, the revolutionary writings of Walter Rodney and Frantz Fanon helped shape his understanding of exploitation, colonial power and the struggle for liberation. Nelson Mandela and Steve Biko subsequently strengthened his pan-Africanist outlook.
Dakolo often reminds people that he was born two decades after Marcus Mosiah Garvey’s death. His birth came during a decade in which Black nationalists in Africa and the Americas faced ruthless assassination. At the same time, African countries were gaining independence from colonial powers, only to encounter new forms of external control and economic exploitation.
He sees the period as one of immense contradiction. Political independence was advancing, but the struggle to control Africa’s natural and human resources remained far from over.
As he explains:
“It was a decade which saw western powers reluctant to let go of the Africa they were milking dry, a continent suffused with diamond, gold, platinum, uranium, plutonium and vast deposits of petroleum. It was a decade that witnessed the mindless plunder of beans, cocoa, coffee, and the open exploitation, rape and wastage of human life so long as it was African. Although the slave trade was over, other ways were devised to exploit the resources of Africa.”
That historical consciousness has become a recurring element of his literary identity. Dakolo regards his generation as one that inherited the unfinished business of African liberation. Having survived the upheavals of his time, he believes he has a responsibility to challenge injustice and confront inequity.
Living Beside the Oil Industry’s Environmental Cost
The environmental dimension of that responsibility is especially clear in Gbarantoru. The community lies within approximately 500 metres of a multi-billion-dollar onshore facility operated by Shell. The installation has a gas production capacity equivalent to 60,000 barrels of crude oil per day.
Since 2008, Dakolo has witnessed poisonous gas emissions and the environmental damage associated with them. For him, the proximity of such a major industrial operation to his community makes the issue impossible to ignore.
His response has been to challenge the situation through writing and advocacy. Rather than treating oil production simply as a source of national income, he examines the cost borne by the communities where extraction takes place.
That concern runs through his books, particularly The African Voice, the third work to emerge from his royal pen.
The African Voice & the Echoes of a Continent
In The African Voice, Dakolo combines historical reflection with surrealist imagination. The story begins with a young king at the waterfront of the River Nun, contemplating the vast inheritance handed down by his ancestors.
During this reflective moment, a voice note appears on his phone without any accompanying message. The mysterious recording gradually develops into a recurring motif, drawing echoes from the lives and ideas of prominent activists and leaders across Africa, Black America and the Caribbean.
Consequently, the book becomes a meeting place for the author’s historical heroes. Marcus Garvey, Martin Luther King Jr, Kwame Nkrumah, Julius Nyerere, Nelson Mandela, Fidel Castro, Bob Marley and Fela Anikulapo-Kuti all feature in its imaginative world.
Yet, among these figures, Dakolo reserves a special place for Mansa Musa. He openly identifies the celebrated warrior potentate of the Mali Empire as his model king in African history. At times, the Agada of Ekpetiama comes close to presenting himself as Mansa Musa reborn in the Niger Delta.
Beneath the historical allusions, however, the book also unfolds as an adventure story set against the background of a recent pandemic.
The narrative takes the author to Accra, Ghana, following an invitation to a literary festival prompted by the controversy surrounding Riddle of the Oil Thief. That earlier book examines what Dakolo considers the criminal neglect of the Niger Delta and exposes an elaborate network of saboteurs within the oil and gas industry.
The festival therefore offers more than a literary outing. It gives the king an opportunity to speak about the meaning of African identity and the responsibilities that come with belonging to the continent.
At its emotional centre, The African Voice is also a love story between a son and Mother Africa. The relationship crosses borders, particularly between Nigeria and Ghana, and takes on a personal dimension through Abena, a woman the author regards as a kindred spirit and his saving grace. Their connection suggests the possibility of a deeper relationship, although the opportunity for its fulfilment depends on whether they can give it sufficient time and attention.
Between Gabriel Okara & Camara Laye
The book’s literary ambition becomes more apparent when placed alongside two influential African classics.
Its engagement with the River Nun recalls The Voice by Gabriel Okara, the celebrated poet whose treatment of the river continues to speak to readers. At the same time, its sense of discovery and awakening evokes The African Child by Camara Laye, a work remembered for its innocent curiosity and encounter with a new reality.
These connections invite the reader to consider Dakolo’s place within a wider African literary tradition. His work draws on the landscape, history and political consciousness of the continent, while attempting to bring them into a contemporary narrative.
He may well have produced a radiant book capable of taking its place between Okara’s The Voice and Laye’s The African Child. Such a comparison is ambitious, but it reflects the breadth of the literary conversation into which Dakolo has chosen to enter.
The Oil Thief: A Persistent Argument Against Powerful Interests
One argument runs through almost every book Dakolo has written. It is a conviction that the real oil thieves in the Gulf of Guinea, including the creeks of the Niger Delta, are not simply the militants who extract crude oil from small camps.
Instead, he points towards powerful interests operating far above the creeks. In his account, the major beneficiaries are influential figures who control licences for ocean liners and sea-going vessels while exercising control over oil wells far from the polluted communities where petroleum is produced.
The argument receives attention in Riddle of the Oil Thief, Once a Soldier, The African Voice, Pirates of the Gulf and the Kingfisher. Across these five books, Dakolo remains the principal character and the dominant narrative voice.
There is a clear consistency in this approach. His books return repeatedly to the political economy of oil, the inequalities of the Niger Delta and the relationship between resource extraction and power.
Nevertheless, the pattern also presents a literary challenge. Having written extensively about his own experiences and convictions, could Dakolo now test his creative potential through a work of pure fiction in which he does not place himself at the forefront?
Such a departure could open another dimension of his writing. His experience, imagination and knowledge of the region offer ample material for stories that extend beyond his personal identity.
Gateway to the Atlantic: A Journey into the River’s Origins
Meanwhile, the king has moved on to another literary undertaking. His sixth book, Gateway to the Atlantic, takes him beyond the familiar landscape of the Niger Delta and towards the source of the River Niger.
The inspiration came partly from the devastating flood of 2022, which placed Dakolo and his family in dangerous circumstances. The experience prompted him to investigate the river’s origins and understand the geographical journey behind the floods that periodically overwhelm his homeland.
In the spirit of Mungo Park, he embarked on an expedition to the Foutah Djallon highlands in Guinea. There, he reached the Tembi Stream, from whose waters the river system begins, and drank from its cool, calm flow.
The discovery gave him a striking sense of connection between distant places. The stream travels through a vast and changing landscape before its waters eventually reach the Niger Delta. By the time they arrive, the river system has become a powerful geographical force capable of contributing to the floods that cause widespread hardship.
Dakolo’s journey differed from that of the nineteenth-century explorer in one important respect. He travelled by private aircraft, tracing the river’s course towards its terminal source in the Foutah Djallon mountains. From above, he enjoyed a sweeping view of the West African landscape.
Throughout the journey, he remained attentive to the people and places he encountered. His observations capture the scenery in thoughtful passages, while his account follows each stage of the expedition with a sustained sense of curiosity.
The journey therefore becomes more than a geographical investigation. It is also a personal response to the flood disaster that affected his family and community, and an attempt to understand how the natural world connects distant African landscapes.
The Crown & the Pen
Six books into his literary career, King Bubaraye Dakolo has established a distinctive identity at the intersection of traditional authority, political engagement and creative writing.
His life has taken him from the Nigerian Defence Academy to the classroom, from youth activism to the palace, and from the environmental struggles of the Niger Delta to the wider literary conversation across Africa.
The experiences have given his writing a strong personal foundation. Military tragedy, historical memory, African nationalism, oil politics, environmental concerns and the responsibilities of leadership all find expression in his work.
There is also a discernible urgency behind his literary productivity. Having discovered the writer within himself rather late, he appears determined to use the remaining years of his journey to communicate as much as possible.
The result is a body of work that reflects a man unwilling to separate his personal story from the fate of his people and continent. Whether he is writing about the oil economy, revisiting the struggles of African heroes or tracing the River Niger to its source, Dakolo approaches literature as an extension of his public responsibilities.
Perhaps that is the most revealing feature of the writer as king. The crown gives him a traditional platform, but the pen allows him to reach beyond the boundaries of his kingdom. Through both, he seeks to preserve memory, challenge injustice and contribute to the future he believes Africa deserves.
