The Niger Delta and the presidency: Of craven vandalism and pyro-terrorism
Strategic violence manifests in various forms. The oppressed may desire a pound of the flesh of the oppressors’ anatomy. The victorious side may also have its vengeance against the oppressed for daring to seek a redress in the face of an age-long injustice. There may be tit-for-tat pattern of murder, expulsion or persecution of various retaliatory dimensions.
During a recent peace talk which was part of the peacebuilding initiative by the Zamfara State Government, last December, a top commander of the armed gang known as Alhaji Beti was reported by Daily Trust (December 25, 2016, p. 45) “to have shocked the peace mediators when he said that every true Fulani settlement in Zamfara forest had at least an assault rifle”. According to him, the activities of the vigilante groups in the state forced them to acquire such rifles, saying “we make contributions to buy rifles, and no household is without at least one...We are being hunted and slaughtered by the vigilantes. They invade our settlements and markets and hunt for innocent members of our families to kill”, he alleged. Tola Adeniyi recently lamented this precarious condition, “The Fulani herdsmen were carrying AK47 rifles...Havoc! There of course are instances of Federal Government’s insensitivity in various parts of the country. In Southern Kaduna, the Government’s initial lethargic dispositions to acts of banditry and criminality that were exploited by some community and leaders and political desperadoes who are bent on having Kaduna State consumed totally by conflagrations, has caused incalculable damage.
A vivid historical flashback reveals that the Niger Delta struggle started in the 1960s when it took a peaceful dimension. Three decades after, it advanced to the level of environmental and minority rights activism targeted at persuading the Federal Government and Oil Companies to kindly pay some attention to improving the condition of the region which has been the sustenance of the Nigerian economy as it accounts for about 90% of the revenues generated yearly by the Federal Government. It is in the public domain that the foreign exchange earned by the country through oil and gas has been the livewire of the national economy in the last four decades.
The Government’s failure to respond meaningfully to the clamour by the Niger Delta activists is not without some catastrophic effect on the economy. For instance, the country which was the highest producer of oil and the largest exporter of the product in Africa, having exceeded the extraction capacity of 2 million barrels per day, through its operations in the region, lost its enviable place, by dropping to the abysmally low production capacity of 800,000 barrels per day. It was indeed in a bid to prevent such an economically unfavourable consequence which may be too calamitous to cope with as we are now witnessing that President Umaru Musa Yar’Adua of blessed memory declared his Presidential Amnesty Programme in 2009.
The President’s action in this regard was precipitated by some of the recommendations by the Ledum Mittee-led Niger Delta Technical Committee which was charged with the responsibility of recommending to the Federal Government paths to the realization of sustainable peace, human and environmental security in the oil-rich region. The Committee, in a report submitted in November, 2008, recommended among others the declaration of Amnesty for all Niger Delta militants. Yar’Adua, a listening President with no element of belligerency or bellicosity in his dispositions, embraced the recommendations and therefore prepared a good ground for the enthronement of peace and security in the region.
It is of great value to note that President Yar’Adua did not act just sheepishly. He too once attempted to rid the country of the bad rubbish constituted by the Niger Delta militants when, early 2009, they issued an ultimatum to oil companies operating in the region to evacuate their employees and shut down. Sola Adebayo had chronicled in the Saturday Punch of May 16, 2009 (p. 14), how “Twenty-four hours to the end of the ultimatum issued by the Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta...the Federal Government...launched a major operation to dislodge the militants. MEND had on Wednesday engaged the troops of the Joint Task Force in a fierce battle in which several soldiers were feared dead and their weapons seized. The militants also took 15 foreign hostages.” Infuriated by the development, President Yar’Adua ordered a total clampdown on the militants and in a jiffy, two warships and 14 gunboats were deployed to the region, alongside four helicopter gunboats in the spirit of total warfare and militarism.
Concerning the present dispensation, President Muhammadu Buhari was reported (Thisday 13th January, 2017) to have pursued the military force option by “deploying hundreds of the Nigerian troops to smoke out the militants blowing up oil facilities in the region” before realizing that he could not win the war thereby embracing the idea of dialogue earlier proposed by the Minister of State for Petroleum, Mr. Ibe Kachukwu.
According to the report, Kachukwu, acting on a presidential directive, later facilitated a meeting of the Federal Government with a high-power delegation of the Niger Delta. “At the meeting, President Buhari condemned the destruction to the Niger Delta oil facilities, describing it as criminal”. He added that the Niger Delta leaders - who were meeting with him - knew the criminals and where they were, and therefore directed them to go back and talk to them. The visitors who themselves were not favourably disposed to the pervasive violence in the region were reliably reported to have pointed out that the militant actions were products of “well-founded anger and legitimate calls for a greater share of revenues generated from their lands.” The delegation identified improved quality of living in the region as central to their demands and later presented their 16-point demand to the President. Pronto, the President became annoyed by the affront of the delegation to make such demands of him.
Yet, one wonders why the President failed to explore the dialogue option to the fullest, having earlier pursued the military option without success. One must not fail to underscore the accuracy of President Buhari’s characterisation of the sabotage of the Niger Delta oil installations as criminal.
The fact that no single infrastructure saboteur has been thoroughly investigated and subsequently prosecuted in connection with destructive militancy or militant vandalism, leaves much to be desired. That however is a subject for another day.