AFTER a 15-day lull, 69 militants from three armed groups in Rivers State yesterday embraced the amnesty offer of the Federal Government, surrendering their arms and ammunition.
Also yesterday, leaders and groups in the Niger Delta continued to point the way to accelerated disarmament by insurgents. They include the United Niger Delta Energy Development Security Strategy (UNDEDSS) and the Chairman of the mainly Ijaw-speaking Ese-Odo Local Council of Ondo State, Kennedy Ikantu Perete.
The amnesty committee has also urged Niger Delta Peoples Volunteer Force (NDPVF) leader, Mujahid Asari-Dokubo, to embrace the government’s gesture, warning that anyone who fails to do so would be left to his own fate beginning from October 5 this year.
Of the 69 militants, 47 led by one Prince Wisdom Amachree are alleged to belong to a splinter group of the NDPVF, 18 were headed by Mr. Solomon Ndigebera (a.k.a. Osama Bin Laden)) and the remaining four were said to be members of the “Norsemen” of Niger Delta.
Present at the Government Girls Secondary School, Okomgba, Ogoloma, in Okrika Local Council venue to receive the militants were the Assistant Inspector-General (AIG) of Police, Zone 6, Mr. Azubuko Udah; the state Commissioner of Police, Bala Hassan; the spokesperson of the Amnesty implementation committee, Dr. Timi Agari; the panel’s state co-ordinator, Mr. Bestman Nnwoka and other security services personnel.
Udah disclosed that the militants submitted 34 AK-47 assault rifles, 9,154 brand new rounds of ammunition and other lethal weapons. The elated police chief noted that with the 69 youths embracing the amnesty, their former cohorts who are still reluctant would know that the Federal Government was serious about restoring peace in the Niger Delta.
Udah said the leader of the Niger Delta Vigilante, Ateke Tom, was yet to contact the committee that he was willing to surrender his arms and embrace the amnesty. As for Asari-Dokubo, who had gone to court to challenge the inclusion of his name among those being considered for amnesty, the police chief said: “The amnesty is for him. We are waiting for him. Anytime he comes. he is free to take advantage of the amnesty and be documented. If he does not, he will be on his own.”
Shortly after the militants’ arrival, the process of documenting them began. The committee members disclosed that the militants would later be taken to the rehabilitation centre at Aluu near the University of Port Harcourt.
Agari said she had called Asari-Dokubo: “I am trying to advise him, because he is a father. He has siblings and I am pleading with him to accept the amnesty. I think, it is in his best interest to do so.”
UNDEDSS deplored a statement credited to the Minister of the Niger Delta Ministry, Ufot Ekaette, who was quoted to have said at a seminar in South Africa on Monday that the amnesty acceptance was progressing successfully with very many “rebels” handing in their guns and denouncing militancy. But UNDEDSS said that nothing could be further from the truth as his claim was a deliberate attempt to hoodwink the international community.
Mr. Tony Uranta , the Secretary General of UNDEDSS, said he could not understand what informed the minister’s declaration when there was basically nothing significant taking place in the disarmament centres or any where, almost half-way through the 60 days earmarked for the programme.
Uranta’s words: “As much as I respect Chief Ekaette, and I do want to say yes the amnesty is on course, I wonder how he came about his figures or what he would want us to understand by saying many.”
“The amnesty could be said to be on course depending on what expectations whoever is assessing the progress at any point had from the beginning. If the amnesty of President Yar’Adua were on course as the honourable minister was trying to sell to his South African audience, hundreds, if not thousands of militants, would have by now surrendered tens of thousands of arms, signed the undertaking to renounce militancy, and probably would have started being signed up for the reintegration process. To the best of my knowledge so far, less than 50 or about 50 so-called militants had given up themselves and far less than a hundred guns have been collected. This cannot in any way have been worth a trip from Nigeria all the way to South Africa by the minister to sell the government’s image.”
Uranta said the real reason that the militants were not coming out to embrace the amnesty is that they do not trust the President and his administration.
He remarked: “They do not trust the process because the process has not unveiled what post-amnesty plans this administration has either for the region or even for the young men and women coming out from the creeks. It would be sad if Yar’Adua ends up throwing tens of thousand of young men and women trained in the art of wielding arms into shanties that look like concentration camps and expect that they will blend into the whole process of nation-building and peace-making. It would be exactly like the case of what happened when the South Eastern States just summarily dismantled the Bakassi Boys that created the level of armed robbery and high armed incidents of crime in the region.”
As far as he is concerned, the few that had come out so far did so because of the trust they reposed in Timi Alaibe, the President’s Special Adviser on Niger Delta matters.
“We of UNDESS and personally I believe that President Yar’Adua have not really approached this from the right angle right from the start. He has put the cart before the horse, but even with that, we all in the Niger Delta have accepted that we will embrace the amnesty process consciously while we will call the President to retrace his steps, and do the right thing by say publishing the white paper on the Niger Delta Technical Committee report which will hopefully let us see what is his holistic intent towards the region.
“We have said repeatedly that the success or otherwise of search for peace must be based on trust. It will fail unless the President announces post-amnesty plans that will address the fundamental issues that brought about agitation in the first place. So far, the President has not, but we hope and expect that sooner than later, he will come to realise that it is in his best interest to do so.”
And the failure of the Federal Government amnesty offer to militants operating in the riverine areas of Ilaje and Ese-Odo of Ondo State, who despite the commencement of the process of disarmament have not surrendered a single weapon, has been attributed by Perete to the location of the arms collection centre, which concerned stakeholders alleged is too far from the creeks.
The council chairman was reported on a state-owned media outfit that the location of the collection centre at Ode-Aye in Okitipupa Local Council is an impediment on the success of the disarmament offer as repentant militants are finding it difficult to go there.
Located some distance from the two coastal oil-producing councils base of the militants, Ode-Aye, a sleepy community on the mainland was said to have been chosen by the Presidential Committee on Amnesty and Disarmament as a suitable alternative could not be found for the two nationalities of Ilaje and Ijaw who allegedly maintained a level of mistrust for each other because of the recent Ijaw/Ilaje communal crisis.
National Co-ordinator of Ijaw Consultative Forum, Suffy Eleitu-Uguoji, who called for the relocation of the centre from its current location, said in a statement yesterday that “the process would certainly fail unless a venue closer to the creeks is chosen because many of the militants would not want to travel that distance.
“The location of arm collection centre at Ode-Aye in Okitipupa Local Council Area is hindering the envisaged prompt response of militants in Ese-Odo and Ilaje Local Government Councils to the amnesty offer. That is why up till now, not a single rifle has been laid down.”
He said suspicions among the militants as to their security and genuineness of government commitment to the whole process should not be ruled out because “the centre which is very far from the coast is giving the militants an erroneous belief that the government is trying to trick them into an area where they would be arrested. I think they don’t see any sense in carrying their arms and travel that distance.”
According to him, “the argument of the Presidential Committee on Amnesty and Disarmament that they could not pick a location in either Ese-Odo or Ilaje LGs due to the past crisis between the Ijaw and Ilaje was not tenable as that one is not an issue at all in the present circumstance.”
Eleitu-Uguoji however appealed to the committee to consider two locations in the two riverine councils to aid repentant militants in surrendering their weapons with suggestions that the venues could be located between Bijimi in Ilaje Council and Akpata in Ese-Odo, two communities located in the creeks but with easy accessibility to the mainland through the waterway.
He also urged the militants to surrender their guns quickly without waiting for the October 4 deadline given by President Umaru Yar’Adua, saying this would allow the Federal Government to begin the development programmes it had pledged for the oil-rich but volatile region.
He added: “My appeal to the youths in the region is that they should surrender their weapons. Since they claimed to be involved in militancy to emancipate the people of Niger Delta from years of abject poverty and oppression, I think the best thing to do now is to lay down their arms and watch what the government will do.”