Chief Dr Judith Burdin Asuni (the Omotoyibo Rovie of Ughelli Kingdom) is the executive director Academic Associates Peace Work, a nongovernmental organization. She has been in Nigeria since 1971 and has been actively involved in driving the peace process in the Niger Delta region. In this interview, she argues that until some fundamental issues are addressed in the region, lasting peace might continue to elude the area.
She also called for a review of the post amnesty programme for it to effectively achieve its goals of reformation and rehabilitation.
Excerpt
You have been at the forefront of the drive for peace in the Niger Delta. At the moment there is an amnesty programme in place for ex militants. What is your assessment of the exercise?
I think the amnesty was a good initiative in trying to bring peace to the Niger Delta region. You remember when late President Yar Adua started it, there was high rate of kidnapping, bunkering, oil production was very low, the income to the country was very low the idea was good. There is an international standard of how to deal with DDR process. Unfortunately a lot of these steps were not followed.
Until you address fundamental issues in the Niger Delta, you are never going to achieve sustainable peace.
I was watching Aljazeera television in 2009 in Washington and I saw Ateke Tom standing there in a disarmament exercise with late President Yar Adua. And I remember October 1st 2004, Ateke Tom standing with former President Obasanjo in a disarmament process. So I think it shows that we should address the fundamental issues. If not, the problems are going to keep reoccurring.
What are these fundamental issues?
Well MEND listed a number of their demands and basically, they fall into four categories. One is greater political participation of the region. The people have very few senior people in political offices. The second thing had to do with lack of participation in oil and gas industry. And even though that has improved a bit since 2006, it still remains an issue that most of the positions and contracts do not go to people in the Niger Delta, they go to other people.
The third issue is socio economic development. As you know, if you travel around the Niger Delta, you see that the level of development is extremely low compared to the income into the region. The major road in the region is in a terrible condition. The fourth demand had to do with demilitarization of the region.
You talked about raising participation in the oil and gas industry. Don’t you see the amnesty committee achieving this with the type of training the body is giving to repentant militants overseas in the oil and gas sector?
The oil industry is not in any way labour intensive. You only have a few one hundred or one thousand employees for these firms. So, the chances of being able to absolve all these trainees are very slim. You have to need highly technical skill to work in the industry. I think one of the major problems is that nobody had actually looked at the positions available before they started training these people.
You have to do opportunity mapping, what kind of opportunities do these ex combatants have once they have left armed conflict? Where are the jobs? What are the skills, what are the gaps, how do you fill up the gaps?
There is no point in training people when there will be no jobs for them later. We know that some of the trainees are beginning to return back from overseas and if there are no jobs waiting for them, this may lead to a process of disgruntlement.
You also talked about the East West road. Are you aware work is ongoing on the road?
The road between Ughelli and Warri was better five months ago than it is now. When I went from Warri to Ughelli about July, I said the road was wonderful, in good shape. But now there are huge pot holes again. You don’t just pile up sand on a road and expect the road to last. The force of the water coming down during the rains will wash off the road.
You quarreled with the method in the post amnesty programme. What are areas you expect attention to be given to?
One, give attention to the militants before you start. You need to know who the groups are, how many members are in each group, what are the issues, the type of arms they have they have. This will help you do an effective disarmament process; you will know the number of weapons you are to take in. We started this in 2007 with governor EmmanuelUduaghan of Delta state. We had done for him the inventory of the militant groups in the state and their weapons as part of the DDR process
You also faulted paying off the ex combatants in the region
I believe that MEND started with some ideological process. Unfortunately, because people are paid off to come out of violence,violence became lucrative. This is something I am concerned about. The fact that the militants from Niger Delta are being paid consistently for more than two years now only encourages other people to go into the business. Let’s look at 2003 when a lot of arms were taken in Bayelsa and later in Delta, as the hostage payment went up, negotiators and mediators began taking a cut in the hostage payment. It became a lucrative process. The more you involve money in it, the deeper the process gets.
They should have been engaged in the first place. You disarmed people between August and October 2009 and yet there was no training programme, no orientation programme almost a year after. They will go back to the old business.
Let me say this; I think they should not have been paid in the first place. They should have been constructively engaged in other ways. If you continue to pay people , others will want to join. You don’t pay money for guns. Provide training and job opportunities. This is the standard best practiced anywhere in the world. United Nations has the DDR handbook that tells how it should be handled.
How do we get out of the woods in the region?
Address the fundamental issues in the region. Address the issue of political participation and participation in the oil and gas industry, address the socio economic /development problem of the area and demilitarize the region. And above all, what is more important is good governance.
Let me say this; people should select good leaders and hold them accountable. I will like to make one comment about the last April election. For the first time, previously marginalized groups like the youths had a stake in the election. They came out in their large numbers. That is a new trend. My goal now is to engage the youths constructively where they have to make the state succeed.