Could it be that the Nigerian nation is on a collision course with insurgents in the Niger Delta or that the path to peace, which has for long eluded the restive region, is witnessing concurring sojourners? Whatever the answer, the coincidence of both the federal government and the antagonistic Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta (MEND) offering windows of opportunity for the resolution of the conflict in the oil rich region is a fundamental lesson in strategic thinking and constructive engagement.
Despite their differences on the modus operandi to achieving lasting peace in the region, at least the federal government and MEND are accommodating each other’s opinion, even if it is to a lesser degree and with apprehensions. As it were, there are at least 60 militant camps spread across the six states that make up the Niger Delta Region. Though many militants have come out to embrace the federal government’s offer of amnesty, there is still a large number that are afraid to come out in the open to benefit from government’s gestures.
Dr Timiebi Koripamo Agary, media co-ordinator of the Presidential Panel on Amnesty and Disarmament of Militants in the Niger Delta, told Sunday Trust at the weekend that the militants were still scared. Though government had opened its arms to embrace them, they still feared for their lives.
Apart from the fear that the Joint Task Force (JTF) may come after them, some of the militants are afraid of fighters from rival camps who may want to take a pound of flesh for previous conflicts.
At the beginning of the week, without harbouring anger against MEND for overstepping its shores and taking its ‘biblical’ warfare to Lagos state, the federal government’s chief law officer, Michael Kaase Aondoakaa, on the instruction of President Umaru Musa Yar’adua, entered a nolle prosequi action which vitiated the federal government’s interest in pursuing the case against suspected arms purveyor and MEND leader, Henry Okah. Just like a magic wand, the nolle prosequi action wrote off the 62 count charge, including treason and gun running, against Okah who was arrested in Angola in 2007.
However, MEND’s list of demands seems taller than what the government can comfortably handle. Afterall, the quantum of loss it has suffered may be quantified, but in terms of integrity quotient, the group has taken government for too many a ride. Its barrage of attacks on oil installations has put the nation’s refineries out of circulation for a couple of days. Similarly, no fewer than N100 billion has been lost in oil revenues accruing to the federation. Yet MEND’s demands have not dwarfed. They want fiscal federalism. They want 5 percent of all proceeds from oil explorations carried out in the coastal regions of country. They want displaced persons from Gbaramatu to be allowed to go home and live without ‘molestation’. They want JTF out of the region completely. They want a constitutional review that will ultimately see the region controlling its own resources. They want more states. Their governors, perhaps with the exception of Liyel Imoke of Cross Rivers, whose state has been de-listed as an oil producing state by some federal agencies, want 50 percent instead of the current 13 percent derivation they are getting.
In addition, to this breath taking list, MEND wants to meet with President Yar’adua one-on-one. Their reason for this demand, according to Commander Tek, one of their leaders, is to intimate the President that there are some Judases inside Aso Rock and around Abuja, who feed like vultures on the carrion of the misfortune that is Niger Delta crisis. Another demand which has been refused the Ijaws, which also irks them, is the refusal of Anglo-Dutch oil giant, Shell, to pay them a compensation and reparation of $1.5 billion for its damage and degradation of their environment in its six decades of operations in the area. The 107-point petition of the Ijaw Aborigines of Bayelsa state has been scrutinised by a committee headed by former Chief Justice of the federation, Muhammad Bello and found to be valid. The National Assembly ordered that the compensation be paid but Shell went to court against the order. It lost. It has since appealed the case twice without any tangible outcome for the petitioners. This type of judicial foot-dragging is what MEND loathes. That is why, according to Jomo Gbomo, the group spokesman, it has not opted for litigation or dialogue, as both are time-consuming and their results unsatisfactory. Instead, the group believes in the potency of its dual opening gambits: attacks on oil installations and dialogue through a process and actors they recommend.
The agitation for the development of the Niger Delta dates back to the 1950s when the Henry Willinks Commisssion advocated for ‘special’ attention to be given to the region on account of its ‘difficult terrain’. The main recommendations of the Willinks Commission were centred on the creation of new administrative units, akin to states today, within the existing framework of districts and provinces in the former Eastern and Western regions. The search for a formula for the equitable distribution of national resources to the people of the Niger Delta multiplied in the early post-independence era. In 1962, the Niger Delta Development Board (NDDB) was set up to serve in an advisory capacity and provide government with information that would lead to the alleviation of the plight of the area in conjunction with the Development Act of 1961.
MEND is not alone in demanding the overhauling of the country’s constitution. Other groups, in common parlance regarded as cultists, but who see themselves as insurgents, are also cashing in on the current situation. The Okoloma Ikpangi is one such group. Their leader, Orieneme Hart, was arrested by the State Security Service (SSS) in Port Harcourt. He was paraded by the service on May 15, 2003. His offence was that he spearheaded the dreaded group, the antecedents of which had left many residents and visitors of Bonny Island in Rivers state in despair. Its activities included sea piracy, rape, murder, armed robberies, kidnapping and other crimes.
The Okoloma Ikpangi is a charms and arms ensemble who became outlaws on Bonny Island because they felt the traditional institutions had entered into an unholy alliance with the multinational oil companies operating there, a situation that has left the youths without any meaningful alternative. Since its formation, Okoloma Ikpangi has been striking at the heart of Africa’s biggest oil industry.
They control Bonny Island, home to an export terminal operated by Royal Dutch Shell which produces around 400,000 barrels per day when operations are normal. Other partners include France’s Total and Italy’s ENI. It also houses the Nigerian Liquefied Natural Gas (LNG) facility, one of Africa’s biggest single industrial projects, whose stakeholders include Shell, Total and ENI.
Though its fighting force is below 300, Okoloma Ikpangi is feared by both the locals and the expatriates. But now it has mellowed down. It is willing to accept amnesty from government. It wants the government to release its leader and one Ben Wilcox. The scribe of this group , Mr Dawari Brown, told our correspondent that if MEND has declared a ceasefire, then every one of the militants should demobilise, disarm and make peace with their respective communities. “Our focus should be on how to reconstruct our ravaged communities”, he said.
“We show appreciation to government for the amnesty and release of Henry Okah. We are ready to disarm. However, dropping arms does not mean anything. We will not abandon our struggle for resource control”.
Buster Rhymes, the lieutenant of the MEND leader in Rivers state, where the four cells of the movement, Elem Tombia, Elem Minima, Elem Ifoku and Elem Bakana, are found, had identified amnesty as a miranda of politics. He however condemned recent statements by the Inspector General of Police that nobody would go to the creek to redeem the militants and their arsenal. “We are not happy about the unwillingness of government agents, including Niger Deltans Timi Alaibe and Chief Ufot Ekaette, to visit us in the creeks and by so doing appreciate the suffering of the ordinary Niger Deltan”, he quipped.
According to Rhymes, the MEND cells in Rivers state are already party to the amnesty. He said they were looking up to the three tiers of government to come up with concrete means of rehabilitating them. “We want to come out and never to go back to the swarm again. That is why we are working with the Association for Non Violence in the Niger Delta to make this a reality”, Rhymes pointed out.
He said since MEND was the umbrella group and it had issued a ceasefire statement, other smaller groups would disappear. He however wanted the government to offer them the role of policing the creeks considering that they knew the terrain better than any other persons or groups who were not indigenes.
The MEND cell commander, also wanted some opportunities for the militants. These include jobs in oil companies, overseas training for those of them that are qualified and transparency and sincerity in the entire amnesty, expressing fear that they may be arrested and detained after they give up their arms. “We don’t need money. If our proposals are met, we are ready to come out”, Rhymes emphasised.
Kennedy Tonjo West, coordinator of the Association for Non Viloence in the Niger Delta, a group working closely with the militants to rein them in, told Sunday Trust that if the ceasefire MEND was offering complemented the amnesty in a positive manner, then by the date of expiration of both declarations there would be little or no camps left in the troubled region, particularly in Rivers state where the four cells of MEND and their affiliate, Okoloma Ikpangi, had embraced the amnesty. “The inhabitants of the camps would have moved to the amnesty rehabilitation camps”, West suggested.
His reservation about the whole process was that some fundamental issues had not been addressed by the government. He saw the need for infrastructural development, equitable distribution and express implementation of some of the recommendations made by the Lidum Mitee-led Technical Committee on Niger Delta. He also wanted government to revisit the unconcluded issue of 25 percent derivation that was mooted by Niger Deltans during the Obasanjo administration. Other observations made by West are: pragmatic approach to the amnesty by state and local government areas in the Niger Delta, harnessing of the region’s environmental potentials and the creation of avenues for the advancement of the socio-economic spaces of communities in the coastal areas.
“Most of the multinational oil companies do not have a workable, acceptable memorandum of understanding with communities. The chiefs have formed themselves into a cabal that colludes with these companies to pilfer the resources of these areas”, West said.
According to him, there were people committing criminal activities that even MEND or its affiliates could not control. Such groups, he suggested, were the ones that preoccupy the JTF.
There are also worries in many quarters that there are some persons in state and local governments within the region who are not encouraging the process of amnesty.
There are also militant elements like Government Ekpomupolo, aka Tompolo, who has openly said he has an axe to grind with the JTF. West said about him.” Unless there is a superior force to counter his own, he is bent on taking his pound of flesh”. He appealed to Niger Delta leaders to swing into action and tame their wayward sons and daughters, so that the region and Nigeria do not plunge into a protracted crisis.
Tompolo is a bitter man now. Before May 13, he was the lord of the manor in Delta state, the hotbed of MEND’s insurgency. Patronised by Governor Emmanuel Uduaghan, whose administration’s policy of accommodating militant groups rather than antagonising them, Polo was given the franchise, through his brother, to police the state’s waterways. As a matter of fact, it is alleged in some quarters that through the Delta Waterways Security Committee (DWSC), Polo was given a juicy N6.7 billion oil pipeline contract. The effect of this high profile patronage was that Polo grew super rich by Nigerian standards. A BBC profile of him chronicled that: “One man who negotiated for months to buy a 15m naira ($102,000, £64,000) property in Warri was gazumped by a militant (Polo) who paid the owner in cash from a box in the boot of his car. Other journalists who have been with militants (Polo’s boys) in clubs and bars say that they think nothing of spending $2,000 (£1,254) on a bottle of cognac available in other bars for a fraction of the price”. All these affluence and influence have evaporated after JTF started its offensive against the militant leader. He was chased away from Gbaramatu and his estate set ablaze by the Nigerian soldiers.
It appears that there is a crack in the consanguine affinity of the Ijaws as they seem to have started throwing barbs at each other over the sanctity of Polo’s audacity or otherwise. During the outgoing week the Warri – Ijaw Peace Monitoring Group exonerated Tampolo from Sunday’s attack on the Atlas Cove jetty but the Ijaw Youths Campaign for Peace (IYCP) queried its sincerity, asking where was it when Tampolo ignited the problems that almost engulfed aged men, women and children in the region.
“We are saying that he (Tompolo) was the cause of the crisis in the region, whether good or bad. Hence, Tompolo remains a defector and should be ready to accept the truth which is bitter most of the time. We are not in any way condemning our brothers, but rather we should tell ourselves the gospel truth in all matters that have to do with our well being as a people and a nation, because sentiments and cover-ups wouldn’t take us to the next level of development”, the IYCP said.
The executives and members of IYPC are happy with the recent release of the leader of MEND, Mr Henry Okah, from prison and freeing him from further prosecution, in the spirit of amnesty. The group commended the federal government and said they are now convinced of the sincerity of the government of Nigeria.
“This singular action from the federal government shows that it is steadfast in the renewed move to solving the Niger Delta problem of marginalisation and lack of development. We are convinced now and we want our compatriots in the region, especially the freedom fighters and their respective commanders, to feel the same and embrace the peace initiative through the ‘Olive Branch’ to all of our brothers.”
They appealed to MEND to halt all forms of economic sabotage presently going on through Hurricane Moses, because the development being yearned for can never be achieved in the face of hostilities.
“It is time we reciprocated the present government’s stand on Niger Delta by thinking positively, otherwise our long era of struggle would degenerate into hatred among Nigerians and even the international community against our tribe or region”, the IYCP spokesman, Pere Ajuwa, pointed out.
The IYCP opined that the ceasefire period MEND offered was worth but hinted that the request for the total withdrawal of security agents from the various communities in the region “might not be seen by a reasonable person as normal but that which has some obnoxious attachments, which in the long run benefits nobody but a few”.
It said it totally believed that security operatives needed to be in place in all the communities, including Gbaramatu Kingdom, for maintenance of law and order when peace returned.
Informed observers now concur that, that although the amnesty is a vital signpost for addressing the problems of the region, there are still memories of negative realities brought forward from the past. The efforts to treat these malignant tumours of yore that are still prevalent requires high stakes that are at once private and public. It remains be to seen how the current drama will be resolved.