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Niger Delta : From Militancy to Insurgency

Vanguard (Lagos)
COLUMN
January 27, 2006
Posted to the web January 27, 2006

By Pini Jason

A Moroccan refugee was asked where he got the courage to embark on a rather
perilous quest for life in Europe as a stow-away and he simply answered:
poverty! Poverty is certainly the ammunition for the crisis in the Niger Delta,
but it has since acquired other arsenals like injustice, political
marginalisation, official insensitivity, government naivety and hypocritical
local leadership. All of these have snowballed into a paradigm shift in the
restiveness in the Niger Delta.
We have all along been talking about militancy, ethnic militias etc and talking
about them lightly too. We lump violent OPC, armed insurrection in the Niger
Delta and the MASSOB armed with no more than bulging biceps all together. This
confusion, it seems to me, has prevented the authorities from knowing when
militancy in the Niger Delta has become full-blown insurgency. Last week,
several oil installations belonging to Shell were blown up in Benisede,
Ogbotobo, Opukushi and Tunu in Ekeremor Local Government in Bayelsa state. A
yet to be confirmed number of people, including soldiers were said to be
killed. But we know for certain that four expatriate oil workers, a Briton,
Bulgarian, Honduran and an American, were taken hostage.
If this did not compete as sensational with the Ladoja-Adedibu comedy in
Ibadan, it can be understood. We are getting so familiar with news of naked
women taking over oil flow stations, oil pipelines vandalization and blowups,
hostage taking and ransom demand in the Niger Delta to the point of ennui. But
this time, the militants have upped the ante. They are not particular about
ransom. They still threaten to continue to blow up oil installations till their
demands (about that later) are met. But above all, one of the hostages, Patrick
Landry of USA, was reported to be gravely ill and the militants said should Mr.
Landry die, they would kill the other three hostages! And that sounds desperate
for a reason. If the sick American dies, the government will blame the
militants and come down heavily on them.
What has been the response of the government to this evolving insurgency? The
predictable. In Nigeria, when there is a problem requiring urgent and
intelligent solution, just call a conference! A conference of stakeholders was
thus called, where the President must have, as usual, thrown his weight around:
"You are talking nonsense!" "Don"t insult me with that!" "Sit down! You people
are the problem!". After which he appointed a committee under Gov Goodluck
Jonathan of Bayelsa. As it where, set an Ijaw man to catch Ijaw insurgents!
Well, the committee has been meeting in the usual Nigerian manner, burning
money! Neither the committee nor the government knows either the true identity
of the kidnappers or their location.
Whereas Tom Ashby of Reuters has established phone contact with the hostages
and their captors, the Federal Government has not, as I'm writing (Monday 23
January)! The President was reported to be visibly embarrassed and angry "that
the militants can hold the entire nation to ransom due to their insatiable
greed and criminality." What is he talking about? Is this the first and only
time this nation has been held to ransom? Nigeria has constantly been held
hostage by whoever can muster the instrument of violence to do so. Wait a
minute Mr. President; has the PDP not been holding the nation to ransom since
1999? Are Anambra and Oyo States not held to ransom by rent-seeking chieftains
of the PDP? The President should rightly be embarrassed and angry for not being
able to do a thing about the crisis in the Niger Delta.
The reason is that the government seems not to have an understanding of what
confronts it in the Niger Delta. And it does not seem like it wants to face up
to it. I think it is naïve today to simply dismiss the militants as "greedy
criminals." These guys have speedboats. They are dangerously armed. They
operate with military precision and tactics that appear superior to, or has at
least eluded the intelligence of the Nigerian military. They are very
articulate (ask the foreign correspondents).
They demonstrate acute political awareness. They are not afraid to take on the
Federal might. And they don't seem fazed by the experience of Odi or Zaki Biam!
Now how do we correctly read this? Who arms them? How do they get their
funding? Who supplies them logistics? First, the Federal Government should
climb down its high horse if it has do deal with this problem. To lash out, as
I imagine it would, because the Americans and the British are on its back will
not get us anywhere. That is not to say the nation should surrender to the
blackmail of militants. The first point is to recognize that those who
articulate the anger in the Niger Delta are not the village women who are used
as cannon fodder at flow stations. They are not illiterate mobs either. From
Isaac Boro, Ken Saro-Wiwa to Alhaji Asari Dokubo, the articulators of the anger
of the Niger Delta have always been the literate elite. The starting point for
solving the problem of militancy in the Niger Delta is to confron t the
hypocrisy of the leaders in the area, including the governors! The problem of
the Niger Delta is development.
Who are those who milked OMPADEC dry without anything to show in the Niger
Delta? How long shall we resist the temptation to ask the governors in the
Niger Delta to account for the billions they have received? How come it is
acceptable for some highly placed officials of the NNDC to be visibly
preoccupied with their governorship ambitions instead of providing development
in the area? Where is the money to fund such ambitions coming from? What has
the President done about that? Secondly, until we thoroughly investigate and
block the source of arms and logistics for the militants, it makes no sense to
throw soldiers at them.
The terrain is native to the militants and strange to the Nigerian soldiers. It
is not always easy to defeat insurgents on their own turf. In addition, the
President has to be serious about the corruption in the oil industry. The
stories coming out from that sector, and those that are visible as the direct
beneficiaries from the oil industry are enough to encourage militancy in the
Niger Delta. If this oil were to be in other parts of the country, people from
those areas would not allow others to come and lord it over them. There is an
inexcusable alienation of Niger Delta people in the oil sector. That is why the
educated elite articulates the anger in the area. Let all the oil companies
publish the list of their staff and contractors, and let the government publish
the names of those who lift crude oil, import refined products and own oil
blocks! It may well turn out that the "insatiably greedy criminals" are located
outside the Niger Delta!
And that brings me to the demands of the militants that Alhaji Asari Dokubo and
Mr. DSP Alamieyeseigha be released. Alhaji Dokubo was charged with treason and
his case is in court. Alamieyeseigha is also standing trial, but particularly
for stealing the money meant for the development of the Niger Delta and
laundering it abroad. I think the Ijaws should be asking for his head instead
of his release! Ijaws make a mockery of themselves if they try to enlist us to
accept the corruption in their states by their own sons and daughters while the
corruption in the oil industry and at the Federal level is used as
justification to hold us to ransom. The logic of "Ijaw man chop Ijaw oil money;
what is the problem?" which was used by some Ijaw demonstrators in 1993 when Dr
Edmund Daukoru and other NNPC directors were standing trial at the Igbosere
magistrate court cannot hold water.
Until Ijaw becomes a sovereign nation, the wealth from oil will continue to be
used with a standard acceptable to us all. The Federal Government should be
circumspect in arresting and detaining so-called dissidents. It may cut off the
moderates while it finds itself dealing with hardliners. Secondly, and worse,
it may find nobody to negotiate with, as seems to be the case now. Except the
vituperations in the MASSOB radio, which I believe really riles the President,
I do not see any tangible reason for the manhunt of Igbo youths in the guise of
a crackdown on MASSOB. They are not armed. They are not violent. They are the
ones the Nigeria Police shoots at random when they cannot extort money from
them. Yet any group of Igbo young men and women is vulnerable to police arrest
as MASSOB members.
Finally, intelligent solution is what is required for all these tensions. It is
unfortunate that rather than address the structure of the nation which
automatically makes it an unjust and corrupt society, the political elite who
have held this country to ransom are goading the President to a senseless
elongation of his tenure. As I have said a million times, Nigeria is a fragile
society, made fragile by its roly-poly kind of structure. Until we free
Nigerians from the captivity of the insatiably greedy political elite and their
hangers-on every other palliative will fail us, and militants will continue to
exploit Nigeria's fragility.

   

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