By Paul Onomuakpokpo
With an air
of imperial finality, President Muhammadu Buhari has ruled out the possibility
of holding a dialogue on how to resolve the crises in the Niger Delta. From
initially pretending to support a dialogue with the leaders of the region,
Buhari has moved to declaring that there are no credible leaders to talk with
in the region and now finally that a dialogue is not even necessary. He says
the problems of the region are already known.
The position of the
president which was articulated by Vice President Yemi Osinbajo during his
visit to the Niger Delta seems to be only about the oil-rich region. But it
actually reflects the stance of Buhari concerning the whole country. Buhari
does not want any dialogue; all he wants is for the citizens to be quiet, wait
patiently as he hands them a roadmap for the development of the country. But
this approach of Buhari is not acceptable to the citizens simply because he
cannot be trusted to take the right decisions on their behalf. Any roadmap for
development that Buhari contemplates can only be tilted to suit his askew sense
of development and equity.
As regards the Niger
Delta, Buhari can only end up like his predecessors whose sense of development
without the input of the people from the Niger Delta has paved the way for the
gleeful allocation of oil blocks to people from other parts of the country
while the indigenes of the region are neglected. Past governments were aware of
the despoliation that has resulted from oil exploration in the region, yet they
failed to take any significant step to address the situation. From Isaac Boro
to Ken Saro Wiwa, the agitations by the people of the Niger Delta for
development of their oil-ravaged region have often been met with brutal
responses.
Or can the
people really trust the president when he has failed to begin the process of
the development of the Niger Delta almost two years after he came into office?
And now it was not even the president, but his deputy, who went to the region
after so much prodding. If the president were really sincere, he should have
gone to the Niger Delta himself to understand the urgency of looking for
solutions to the problems of the region. And he should have done this earlier.
Rather, he has been preoccupied with how to crush agitators in the region. There
is a good reason to suspect that what Buhari is doing is just verbal
pacification to secure a peaceful environment for him to get more oil to run
his government. With the history of Buhari’s lackluster responses to injustices
in different parts of the country, the people of the Niger Delta have good
reasons to be skeptical about his avowed developmental roadmap for the region.
These responses have perpetually diminished our humanity, collective and
individual, and thus we are obliged to be eternally vigilant in accepting his
promises.
