Goodluck Jonathan's former Special Adviser on Media and Publicity, Reuben Abati, who is a columnist for The Guardian, has written yet another interesting piece to Nigerians.
Niger
Delta Avengers is the name of a new group of militants in the Niger Delta who
claim to be different from the former agitators and militants who operated
between 2006 and 2009, largely under the umbrella of the Movement for the
Emancipation of the Niger Delta (MEND). The title of this group may well serve
as the thematic and definitive umbrella for the resurgence of low-level
insurgency in the Niger Delta, for in the last month alone, more groups have
joined the NDA to wage war against oil installations, the Buhari government,
and the Nigerian state. These include the Isoko Liberation Movement and the Red
Egbesu Water Lions. The groups are working in concert with the Indigenous
People of Biafra (IPOB) led by detained Nnamdi Kanu.
The
NDA runs a website (created in February 2016) where it posts news items and
statements; and in terms of rhetoric, and activities, there is no doubt that
the various groups are indeed on “a vengeance mission”. They are angry over
what they consider the continued marginalization of the Niger Delta, the unjust
allocation of oil mining licenses to persons from non-oil producing areas, the
hounding of officials and associates of the Jonathan administration by the
present administration (hence General Torunanawei, coordinator of the Red
Egbesu Water Lions issues a seven-day ultimatum calling for the release of
Colonel Sambo Dasuki, and the de-freezing of the accounts of ex-militant leader
Government Ekpemupolo). There is also some concern about environmental
pollution, the scrapping of the Maritime University at Okerenkoko and
undisguised discontent with the Buhari administration.
More
than any of the emergent groups, the Niger Delta Avengers have used their
online resources to articulate the basis of this vengeance mission in such
posts as “Operation Red Economy”, “We
shall do whatever is necessary to protect the Niger Delta interest” and “Keep
your threat to yourself, Mr. President”. Their statements are written in
halting, extremely poor English, but their various strike teams, which they
boast about, have proven to be deadly through recent attacks on oil
infrastructure creating a global oil supply crisis, and bringing down Nigeria’s
daily oil production from 2.2 million barrels to just about 1.4 million.
Shell
has had to shut down its Forcados terminal. Chevron’s Escravos operation has
been breached. ENI and Exxon Mobil have declared “force majeure”. Shell and Chevron are moving their staff out
of the Niger Delta. The avengers claim they are not into kidnapping, or the
killing of people and soldiers, but no one is sure yet about the depth and
extent of this new phase of Niger Delta insurgency, and of course, the oil and
gas multinationals have since learnt not to trust either the Nigerian
government or the criminals who target oil infrastructure to make political and
ethnic statements. But the question is:
why vengeance? The reason this question is important explains the seeming
indifference to the crisis, at least for now, within the larger Nigerian
community and why the avengers have so far been dismissed, to their dismay, as
“empty heads” and “criminals.” Not a few persons have asked: what else do Niger
Delta militants want?
Recall
that in 2009, late President Umaru Yar’Adua introduced an amnesty programme to
end Niger Delta insurgency. Two years earlier, the architects of Nigerian
politics had also deemed it necessary to allocate the Vice Presidency to the
Niger Delta, and by sheer providence, the occupier of that slot, Dr. Goodluck
Jonathan soon became Acting President following the death of his boss, and
later in 2011, he won the Presidential election and became President.
For
about seven years, under this programme, introduced by President Yar’Adua and
sustained by President Jonathan, Niger Delta militants were demobilized and
disarmed. The top hierarchy soon became security consultants to the Federal
Government, monitoring pipelines, and helping to check oil theft. The middle
cadre was placed on a monthly stipend while those who could be trained were
sent to technical colleges and universities in Southern Africa and Eastern
Europe. The militants became rich and gentrified, and with their kinsman in
office as President in Abuja, the people of the Niger Delta began to feel a
sense of ownership and belongingness that no one in that region had felt since
1960.
But
what is now happening clearly shows the limits of the politics of appeasement
that Nigeria has played since independence. No country can be successfully run
on a short-term basis and through the assignment of tokens to aggrieved parties
within the union. It was mere delusion to have ever imagined that the people of
the Niger Delta could ever be successfully appeased with a pacifying short-term
amnesty programme and a shot at the Presidency. Even under President Jonathan,
there were protests about the distribution of amnesty largesse, and
disagreements among the former militants, who practically relocated to Abuja to
take advantage of their brother’s ascendancy. The quarrel was all about who got
what and it was only a matter of time, before those who felt short-changed
would stage their own drama, which they have now started, in the hope that they
may be luckier this time around and get their own share of appeasement. This is
the sub-text of the deliberate distancing by the new boys from the old guard of
militants.
They
seem to have been further provoked by the arrival in Abuja of “a new Pharaoh
who does not seem to know Joseph.” President Muhammadu Buhari has approved
funding and payments under the Niger Delta Amnesty programme, he has also
appointed a Minister of Niger Delta and a Special Adviser on Niger Delta
Amnesty, in addition to extending the amnesty initiative, beyond the initial
December 2015 deadline to December 2017. But there is no programme of
patronage, the type that channels money into the pockets of Niger Delta
militants, warlords or foot-soldiers, and since Abuja also seems to have become
wasteland for the once-triumphant Niger Deltan, the Jonathan crowd, and the
fisherman’s cap, the informal patronage that turned many Niger Deltans into
king’s men and women, has vanished. The emergent militant groups also have
other selfish reasons why they are angry not just with President Buhari but
also with the Nigerian state, for in the end, after the 2009-2015 period,
position, cash and contracts appeasement has not in any way resolved the core
problems of existential and environmental crisis in the Niger Delta. Nigeria
merely postponed the evil day and unless we deal more forthrightly with the
vexatious issues of equity, federalism, justice and citizenship driving Niger
Delta and Biafran nationalism, those who throw tokens at the problem can only
do so in vain.
The
bad news is that President Muhammadu Buhari doesn’t seem to be in a hurry to
address these fundamental issues. He probably has every reason to be angry, and
he may even raise such questions as: what is wrong with these Niger Delta
avengers? What exactly do they want to avenge – their kinsman losing election?
Do they think they can blackmail government even when the amnesty programme has
been “magnanimously” extended? These may sound emotional, but they are serious
questions, signposting how access to power at the centre and survival in that
space has become a victim of deterministic ethnic rivalry. The emerging trend
that whoever becomes President of Nigeria now has to worry about the
possibility of being sabotaged by an aggrieved ethnic group or groups is
dangerous for our democracy.
Recall
also that after the 2011 Presidential election, the people of the Niger Delta
while certainly elated about one of their own emerging as President, were also
painfully aware that in the course of the feverish politics of succession in
2010, leading up to the nominations for 2011, certain interests and voices from
the North had threatened that should Dr. Jonathan become President, Nigeria
would be made ungovernable for him. And as promised, the Boko Haram threat,
which had been an issue before 2011, soon got worse and from 2011-2015, the
Jonathan administration had to struggle endlessly with overt national security
challenges designed and delivered in the North East, and other parts of the
North. The Boko Haram crisis and the abduction of the Chibok girls eventually
became key negative factors for the Jonathan campaign in the 2015 Presidential
election.
It
is also similarly on record that before and during the 2015 elections, certain
Niger Delta elements also threatened that should President Jonathan lose the
election, Nigeria would be made ungovernable for President Buhari. And again as
promised, the South East and the South South, President Jonathan’s main support
centres, have thrown up major security threats since President Buhari won and
assumed office. When governance and politics are thus reduced to a game of
thrones, democracy and sovereignty are endangered. Already the Niger Delta
Avengers have announced a plan to declare a sovereign state of Niger Delta in
October 2016. Nigeria sits on a precarious balance.
There
is no justification however, for President Buhari, in dealing with these
challenges, to also play the game of vengeance. Speaking in China, recently, he
directed the military to crush the new Niger Delta militants and indeed there
has been a scaling up of military operations in the region. A military solution
to a crisis such as this, as has been learnt with the Boko Haram, and much
earlier in the Niger Delta, ultimately proves to be inadequate; instead there
should be a return to the core issues of making Nigeria a country that works
for everyone regardless of extraction – religious or ethnic. President Buhari
is a livestock farmer; it should not be too difficult for him to understand how
the chickens are now going home to roost in the Niger Delta. In the face of unemployment rate hitting
12.1%, youth unemployment, 42.24%, the GDP recording a negative growth of
-0.36%, inflation standing at 13.7%, crude oil accounting for 90% of exports
and 70% of national revenue, crude oil production dropping to low levels, and
the country facing recession, a foreign exchange and power supply crisis, and
financial insolvency, renewed restiveness in the Niger Delta, and threats by
avengers who want to cut off Nigeria’s key source of revenue, can only further
deepen the people’s agony, and place the country on danger list.
President
Buhari may deal with the impunity and criminality of the avengers, but Nigeria
must address the more ideologically original parts of their protest, and how
particularly, the politics of appeasement has made the country far more
vulnerable than imaginable. Preventing the country from imploding so
dangerously, on so many fronts, as is currently the case, should be considered
a matter of urgent national importance.
About
the Author:
Reuben
Abati is a columnist in The Guardian and former Special Adviser on Media and
Publicity to former President Goodluck Jonathan.
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