THE uproar over the appointment of Professor Ibrahim Gambari as steering committee chairman of the planned Niger Delta summit has compelled the Presidency to begin a search for his replacement, The Guardian learnt last night.
A source said the outcry rendered the appointment of the United Nations’ envoy “dead on arrival as he has become the issue instead of the issues he was meant to resolve.”
Besides, it was also learnt that a Senior Special Assistant (SSA) to the Vice President in charge of the Niger Delta desk is being blamed within The Presidency for allegedly misleading him and bungling events leading to the summit through unilateral actions and lack of consultations with stakeholders including officials of Dr. Goodluck Jonathan’s office.
Some governors, elders, other political leaders and organized labour and groups have indicated they would not attend the Summit if the United Nations envoy chaired it.
At a meeting hosted last weekend by Vice President Jonathan, the leaders had tabled their rejection of the UN diplomat and asked that the Federal Government implement the resolutions of past summits on the Niger Delta.
As a follow-up, President Umaru Musa Yar’Adua, who is already in Japan for the G-8 Summit, met with the governors and was able to secure their support for the Niger Delta parley. In return, the President bowed to their demand that Gambari be dropped.
Facts also emerged yesterday on how the Vice President signed on to the recommendations of a committee headed the SSA, believing that the name of Gambari had already been approved by all the stakeholders in the region.
Faced with the Niger Delta issue being on the front burner of the agenda of the government, the SSA was saddled by June 2007, with the day-to-day burden of collating views and making recommendations to the Vice President on the modalities for the summit, stakeholders to be invited, reaching out to them and reaching a consensus on all other issues involved.
The SSA is now being accused of unilateral actions involving the summit of misleading Jonathan and bungling events leading to the summit through lack of consultations with stakeholders including officials of the Vice President’s office.
Speaking on the issue at the weekend, Cross River State governor, Mr. Liyel Imoke said the governors and elders were waiting for the president to give the direction on how the summit should go.
He also said that the governors and elders from the region did not have any particular person in mind as he warned that they would like to avoid making any mistake.
Imoke said: “We have not had any consultation yet as to who may chair the summit. I think it is more appropriate to get some direction from the Federal Government in that regard. We don’t want to just present any person after the last experience. I think there is a need for us to consult extensively and agree on that before any presentation.”
He, however said that what the people were looking out for was somebody with integrity and an appreciation and the understanding of the region.
Such a person, the governor stressed, “could be found in the country. As a matter of fact, the most important thing is integrity, an appreciation, an understanding of some of the issues that relate to the Niger Delta. There are some arguments against the internationalization of the issue by bringing in a non-Nigerian, I believe we can find some very capable Nigerians who can chair and participate meaningfully in the summit.”
Also, Professor Julius Ihonvbere, former adviser on Project Monitoring and Implementation to the immediate past President, Chief Olusegun Obasanjo, criticised the Federal Government’s insistence on Gambari’s appointment despite opposition from the people in the zone.
He attributed the protest to the fact that there was no consultation with the stakeholders before the appointment.
Speaking to journalists at Uromi, in Edo State at the weekend, Ihonvbere said that the Vice President should have consulted with stakeholders and leaders from the zone before the announcement of Gambari.
However, Ihonvbere said that it was not late for the government to embark on wide consultations with all the stakeholders from the area on the appoint. He recommended the appointment of a vice chairman from the area to assist Gambari if this matter was ever resolved.
Ihonvbere added: “It may not be too late, they can still do it with sincerity but if the people are absolute with their rejection, Gambari is a busy man; he has a lot to do outside; he can simply say I am sorry, I am busy outside, I cannot come and he can appoint somebody else. If the Niger Delta people insist – stakeholders, non governmental organizations, militants, women’s groups, youth groups – they are bound to change him and put some body else.”
Relatedly, the Action Congress (AC) has warned that “the kind of reckless and unguarded comments being made in certain quarters about the Niger Delta in recent times can only inflame passion and worsen the crisis in the tense region.”
In a statement in Abuja yesterday by its National Publicity Secretary, Alhaji Lai Mohammed, the party also said the situation in the oil region cannot and should not be reduced to a sectional issue, saying the crisis has a far-reaching implication for the Niger Delta, the country and the world as a whole.
It, therefore, urged caution in the way people, especially those in position of authority and leadership, react to the situation in the Niger Delta so as not to worsen things.
AC said the comments attributed to former Governor Bukar Abba Ibrahim of Yobe State – now a Senator – and the Arewa Consultative Council (ACF) on the Niger Delta were provocative, unnecessary and ill-advised, at a time that efforts were being made to find a lasting solution to the crisis.
“Turning the blame on the victims of many years of neglect of the region that provides the bulk of the country’s resources is tactless, reckless and thoughtless,” the party said, stressing that it was even more so when such comments have been coming from a section of the country.
“We are baffled by such comments, and cannot stop wondering what they are meant to achieve,” it said.
AC reiterated its call on the Federal Government to work with the real stakeholders in the Niger Delta – the oil communities – to urgently develop the area, saying no other approach will work to restore peace to the region.
It went on: “While we condemn the criminal acts in the Niger Delta – especially the kidnapping of innocent people like children and old men and women for ransom – we make bold to say that those who are genuinely agitating for a better deal for the region have a strong case in their favour.
“This is because all over the world, oil producing areas benefit from rapid and massive development, including putting in place of all social infrastructure necessary for good and healthy living. The exponential metamorphosis of Dubai in the United Arab Emirates is just one of many such cases, and the Niger Delta cannot and should not be an exception.”
It advised the Federal Government to, in line with a well-worn clich�, mobilise the bulldozers to the Niger Delta to begin the development efforts, instead of concentrating all its energies on planning another summit, as a way of showing the aggrieved oil communities that it has finally hearkened to their cries.
“The failure to implement the findings of previous summits, conferences and workshops on the Niger Delta has made the people of the region to lose confidence in such gatherings. What they want now is action, and that is what the government should give them,” AC added.
Also, a group of indigenes of the Niger Delta in the Diaspora has rejected the summit, dismissing it as a “jamboree in futility, an unnecessary waste of scarce public fund that would do the nation and the region no good.”
In a statement in New York, the President of Redemption Voice Ministries Inc and coordinator of the Coalition of Niger Deltans in Diaspora (CONDIDIA), Reverend Jerry Odugala Eziomano, said: “If Gambari is not removed soon and the position of Niger Deltans about the nature of the summit taken into consideration, we shall embark on a series of mass protests to the United Nations and Nigerian embassies worlwide.”
Opposition since the government announced Gambari as the chairman of the Steering Committee has been strident and wide spread among all Nigerians.
The people of the Niger Delta, including militant groups, said they would not accept Gambari to chair the Summit because he had called Ken Saro-Wiwa a common criminal in 1995 during the trial and killing of Saro-Wiwa and the other Ogoni eight by the Gen. Sani Abacha administration. Gambari spoke then at the United Nations where he was Nigeria’s Permanent Representative.
Saro-Wiwa and his Ogoni eight had opposed the Federal Government and oil companies for their neglect of the environment in the oil exploration and exploitation activities in Ijaw land.
Only last week, Dr. Frederick Fasehun, the founder of the Oodua Peoples Congress, had advised the government not to foist Gambari on the Niger Delta people and went ahead to propose three eminent Nigerians he felt could steer the summit.
Civil society groups, other eminent Nigerians at home and in the Diaspora had spoken in similar vein.
The Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta (MEND), the deadliest militant group in the region, in its opposition of Gambari’s headship of the Summit, proposed either Kofi Anan of Ghana or United States former President Jimmy Carter.