By Amanze
Obi
I am fascinated by the brewing
effort by the authorities to package and sell our ex-president, Goodluck
Jonathan, as an avenger. A section of the media had reported that the former
president was involved in the formation and ongoing activities of the Niger
Delta Avengers (NDA). The story was not speculative. It was declarative enough.
If your imagination, like that of many Nigerians, has been saturated with the oddities
that change has inflicted on us, you cannot but see the new image being foisted
on Jonathan as comical, and therefore, fascinating. It will provide us with the
opportunity to be treated to some more histrionics.
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| *Jonathan and Buhari |
According to the newspapers
that carried the ‘scoop’, the story is the product of an intelligence
report. The report claimed that Jonathan started meeting with the
avengers before the 2015 general elections. The militia group, it said,
was put in place to respond in prescribed ways should Jonathan lose the
elections. One such way was to do what it is doing at moment. The renewed
militancy in the Niger Delta region is, therefore, believed to be the product
of Jonathan’s loss. That is the story before us.
But we must note that before
its recrudescence, militancy has been an issue of concern in the region. The
return of civil rule in the country after many years of military interregnum
brought with it a new fervour. It provided the citizenry the opportunity to let
off steam. The military muzzled free speech. Civil rule was the obverse of that.
It was in the wake of the new order that some elements in the oil-rich Niger
Delta, who felt that they were not getting their due from the oil exploration
and exploitation in their domain began to raise voices of dissent. They queried
the situation where the goose that lays the golden egg is being starved. Their
repudiation and rejection of this state of affairs eventuated in the agitation
for resource control. That was the political angle to the agitation.
But it also had a military
wing. Some angry youths, who do not have the patience for verbal engagements
resorted to brute force. Many took to oil bunkering. They needed the proceeds
from the crude to line their pockets and feel a sense of belonging. If they
could not share in the oil wealth legitimately, they can, at least, help
themselves with the crumbs. It was in this way that some of them seized
oil and gas installations and bombed them at will. Those who stood in their
way, especially foreign nationals, were taken hostage and freed only when some
handsome ransom was paid.
As should be expected, the
unwholesome activities of the militants pitted them against the government. But
it took ex-president Umaru Yar’Adua’s amnesty programme for some level of sanity
to return to the region. The Jonathan administration, being an offshoot of
Yar’Adua’s, also enjoyed relative peace from the Niger Delta militants.
But all of that have changed under the Muhammadu Buhari regime, owing largely
to the disposition of the president to the Christian South. The president’s
actions and inactions, so far, give the impression that he wrested power
forcefully from an enemy and, as such, the enemy must be stigmatised and
punished.
