Summary
The Grand Alliance of the Niger Delta has threatened to attack the region’s oil infrastructure should its demands for resource control not be met. While the militant group does not pose an imminent threat, the underlying issues it is tapping into could provide the popular support needed to transform it into a credible threat.
Analysis
The militant group Grand Alliance of the Niger Delta said it would attack oil installations in Nigeria should the Abuja government not comply with its demands for natural resource control.
The new group, which issued its threat at a Sept. 18 press conference in Nigeria’s oil capital, Port Harcourt, does not pose an imminent threat. It is addressing popular grievances that could provide it support needed to make its threats credible, however.
Nigeria has struggled to rein in militant violence in the country’s Niger Delta region. Since 2006, militant groups — led by the Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta (MEND) — have carried out a campaign of high-profile attacks against oil personnel and facilities. They have disrupted oil output significantly in the process of pursuing their political and financial goals. MEND largely has been quiet since the May 29 inauguration of President Umaru Yaradua and Vice President Goodluck Jonathan, the latter being an ethnic Ijaw with Niger Delta political credentials who owes his position in large part to MEND’s militant campaign. Even so, the threat of violence in the Niger Delta remains high.
The Grand Alliance of the Niger Delta first surfaced at a news conference in Port Harcourt on Sept. 5, at which its leaders, Abiye Toru and Samuel Ebiye, made threatening demands for greater employment opportunities for the region’s youth at oil and natural gas companies. Its Sept. 18 news conference also included demands for greater natural resource control and for the Rivers state government to stop attacking suspected militant hideouts in the Port Harcourt environs. The duo is not believed to come from the leadership ranks of MEND. Since MEND itself is an umbrella organization with several factions, however, it is very likely that the new group will be able to draw on young militants from throughout the Niger Delta who remain unemployed and — more important — well-armed.
While the new militant group has aired longstanding popular socioeconomic grievances, its threats are not yet credible. There is very little popular support in Port Harcourt for a return to militant violence. In fact, the general consensus is for the Abuja government to continue its army and police deployment for anti-militant gang operations in the region. The Yaradua administration continues to prioritize resolving issues in the Niger Delta, promising to hold high-profile energy summits involving the oil region’s stakeholders, for instance, as a means of keeping Niger Delta politicians focused on a political and economic settlement for the region.
Despite efforts by the Yaradua government to redress Niger Delta issues, it will be unable to meet the remaining high-profile demands emanating from the region — namely, boosting the region’s portion of oil revenues from the current 13 percent to 50 percent. The Yaradua administration simply could not survive the opposition this would arouse in other regions of the country, particularly the North. A minor increase in the Delta region’s share of revenues can be expected, buying the government some time from the militants. Even so, a return to militant violence — as a proxy for state and local politicians disgruntled over not being paid off — is essentially inevitable.
Demanding justice for socioeconomic grievances has long been a tactic for Niger Delta politicians and the militant groups they support to achieve prominence — and through that to achieve self-interested financial gains. Redistributing these proceeds toward the general population has, on the other hand, never happened, despite the few hundred million dollars that flow into Niger Delta state government coffers each month.
The Grand Alliance of the Niger Delta and its leaders are thus announcing that they, too, want a seat at the Niger Delta political settlement table. Holding public press conferences to issue militant threats raises their profile — though those threats are a double-edged sword in that Abuja holds the upper hand in combating them right now. But addressing impossible-to-resolve socioeconomic grievances does mean the Grand Alliance militant group cannot be ruled out as a long-term threat, however.