The Niger Delta Conundrum

By Ray Ekpu

Quite a number of knowledgeable people have commented favourably on the 2018 budget recently presented by President Muhammadu Buhari to the National Assembly. In particular they are enthused by the size of the budget, N8.612 trillion, which is 30% over and above the 2017 budget. But the thrill lies more in the fact that N2.43 trillion will be devoted to capital expenditure. This is about 30.8% of the budget, a strong indication that the government is showing an equally strong commitment to the development of critical infrastructure.

 But this thrill is diminished by two factors (a) all our budgets always have a very low actual implementation regime. They end up as mere paper projects (b) the thrill is also diminished by the threat of the Niger Delta Avengers (NDA) to do considerable damage to our oil infrastructure because of the Federal Government’s failure to live up to the promises it made to the Niger Delta people. The Avengers who have the same acronym as the Nigerian Defence Academy, an institution for the training of Nigeria’s armed forces personnel, had observed a ceasefire for the past one year based on the optimism that was fueled by Buhari’s meeting with Niger Delta leaders on November 1 last year. The group called Pan Niger Delta Forum (PANDEF) led by such eminent Niger Deltans as Chief Edwin Clark, King Alfred Diete-Spiff and Obong Victor Attah had submitted a 16-point shopping list to Buhari for implementation.

Buhari, War And The Niger Delta

By Paul Onomuakpokpo  

It is mystifying that President Muhammadu Buhari has chosen to capriciously shatter the prospect of peace in the Niger Delta through his massive deployment of troops and weapons in the region. The deployment came at a time the agitators for socio-economic justice in the oil-producing region, especially the Niger Delta Avengers (NDA), have agreed to dialogue with the government.

Buhari and Army Chief, Buratai

The agreement came after much hesitation apparently because the agitators understood the remorseless penchant of successive governments to treat the issue of the ecological disaster and economic deprivation spawned by oil exploration in the region with disdain. Despite their doubts, the agitators have expressed their sincerity by suspending the bombing of oil facilities.

Of course, we should have known that Buhari considered war in the region inevitable. For while apparently leaving the option of dialogue open, Buhari has consistently threatened that he would deal with the Niger Delta agitators the way he crushed Boko Haram insurgents. Buhari may have drawn inspiration from the strident calls from some northern leaders for him to bomb agitators like Boko Haram insurgents. By their position, these northern leaders have lumped up the agitation in the Niger Delta in the same cauldron of misguided religious and blood-thirsty ideology of Boko Haram insurgents.
So what is unfolding in the Niger Delta is only a manifestation of a coveted agenda of Buhari that has escaped the veneer of  pretensions to foster peaceful dialogue to resolve the problems of the region. Buhari only wanted the agitators to lay down their weapons so that he could deploy his own in the region.

The fact that the agitators have declared a ceasefire has rendered the option of war patently chauvinistic. What is needed is for the government to continue with the option of dialogue. Buhari’s acceptance of the option of war amounts to blithely glossing over the fact that there are issues in the Niger Delta that need to be responded to appropriately. These are issues of socio-economic injustice in the region. Here are a people whose oil wealth has been used to develop other parts of the country while they have become impoverished. This has been the situation for over five decades.

The nation and its leaders have not deemed it necessary to engage in a comprehensive agenda to improve the environment, except some sporadic and facetious efforts. Now, the oil funds from the region are now being used to search for oil in the northern part of the country. If oil is found there, would the northerners allow people from the Niger Delta to be the prime beneficiaries? Would they allow them to be those that would lead supervisory agencies and dictate the terms for intervention in those areas where oil is produced in the north?

Niger Delta’s Achilles Heel

By Paul Onomuakpokpo  

 Beyond the declaration of a ceasefire, militants under the aegis of the Niger Delta Avengers (NDA) should prepare to win their war at the negotiating table. Notwithstanding the threats to crush the militants, the government has left open the option of ending the militancy in the region through dialogue. By making an allowance for dialogue, the government has obviously spurned those hankering for the bombing of the militants to submission.

It is now that the militants still have the sympathy of a large proportion of the citizens that they should make themselves available for talks if their agitation is really driven by the need to redeem the despoiled Niger Delta. The agitation is already on the cusp of being hijacked by some people who do not belong to the NDA. So, if the NDA members do not make themselves available, and the government succeeds in destabilising them by conquest or infiltration, it is these fringe militants who do not share the vision of NDA that would be the beneficiaries of any peace deal that may be reached.

From what can be seen in the rabid jostle for the representation of the militants, it is not even these counterfeit militants who pose the greatest danger to the negotiation with the Federal Government. It is rather traditional rulers and other so-called leaders from the region who pretend to speak for the militants and the entire people of the area. While their so-called intervention lasts, we must remind them and their fellow travellers that they are not by any means needed on the journey to bring peace to the Niger Delta through dialogue between the government and the militants.

After risking their lives in the creeks fighting, the militants should not allow people who do not share in their sacrifices to represent them. The dialogue would fail and the sacrifices of the militants would be in vain if they allow these people to represent them. In fact, the traditional rulers and other so-called leaders of the Niger Delta should not be allowed to go near the venue of the discussion because they have contributed to the problems of the region. These are people who have been close to successive governments in the country. If they knew how to solve the problems of the Niger Delta why have they not done this since? These people were close to the immediate past government of President Goodluck Jonathan. If they could not persuade a president whom they considered their son to develop the region, is it Buhari they would be able to convince to do this? By now, the people of the region and other citizens have known that these people who parade themselves as the leaders of the region only want to negotiate for their own pockets.

Jonathan: An Unlikely Avenger

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.

*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. 

MEND After My Life – Jonathan

Press Release 

Our attention has been drawn to a malicious claim by a shadowy group which calls itself the Reformed Niger Delta Avengers (RNDA) to the effect that many notable Ijaw and other Niger Delta leaders and elders, especially those perceived not to be too close to the powers that be, are the alleged sponsors of the current crises in the Niger Delta.

For the avoidance of doubt, we are fully convinced that such an idiotic claim is too cheap a narrative, a facile contrivance so badly concocted that any discerning mind would easily see through its disingenuous and duplicitous nature.

*Jonathan 

Since it is not in our place to speak for all those named in the obvious fabrication, we are only intervening to the extent that its hidden intent poses a violent threat to the life of former President Dr. Goodluck Ebele Jonathan, GCFR, a committed patriot who the Almighty God has given the grace and good health to rededicate his life to the service of humanity, after serving his dear nation as President to the best of his abilities.

We are also not bothered by this baseless accusation, contented that we are not the only ones conversant with Jonathan’s widely-acknowledged sincere disposition to peace, non-violence and better human community.

We are however seized by the feeling of déjà vu occasioned by the resurrection of one dim character masquerading as ‘Cynthia White’, who had in the past served as the spokesperson for a notorious group that had all along shown its hand to be going after the life of Dr. Goodluck Ebele Jonathan.

Nigerians could recall that in 2007 when Jonathan emerged as the running mate to the late President Umar’ Yar’Adua in the People’s Democratic Party during that year’s presidential election, this very group invaded Yenogoa with hundreds of militants in an effort to assassinate him. Jonathan was only saved then by the spirited efforts of the combined forces of determined security men, who gallantly repelled the attack.

Let us also not forget that members of this same group later invaded and bombed Jonathan’s compound in Otuoke, Bayelsa State, on a night he was scheduled to attend to an important matter in his country home. He was only saved by the grace of God, who in His infinite mercy created intervening factors that prevented Jonathan from sleeping in his country home that night.

Do we need to remind anybody that the so called Cynthia White is the self declared spokesperson of the Movement for the Emancipation of Niger Delta (MEND), a violent and murderous underground group led by one Henry Orkah, which has not hidden its intention to destroy the former President?

The Avengers As Nemesis Of A Nation’s Hubris

By Alade Rotimi-John  

These are testy times for the Nigerian nation state. She is variously buffeted on all sides by the scourge of insurgency in her North-East geo-political zone, the murderous ogre of Fulani herdsmen in the north–central axis and in the southern states of Enugu, Ekiti, Oyo and Delta, the brimming militancy in the South-South exemplifying itself in incessant bombings of oil and gas pipelines in the Niger Delta, the revamped agitation for self-determination by restive youths in the South-East, an all-time low crude oil price, the irritable upsurge in price level, the plummeting exchange value of the national currency, unbridled unemployment and the abysmal failure or non-functioning of public infrastructure e.g. electricity, etc.

Of all Nigeria’s contemporary difficulties, however, the Boko Haram attempt to take control of the country by force to foist on her its own brand of rabid or unconventional Islamism and the Niger Delta militancy directed at the nation’s economic jugular have understandably taken the centre stage. Both militant agitations must be understood as natural human responses to a perceived unfair or unjust political or social order even as they are a stark reflection of how remiss successive administrations have been regarding the requirement to resolve the contradictions inherent in the Nigerian pastiche. Only half-hearted attempts have been made to interrogate the Nigerian national question.

The socio-economic injustice in the Niger Delta finds unrefreshing or disturbing parallel in the criminal neglect of the fortunes of children and young persons in many parts of Northern Nigeria. Generally, the Nigerian state manifests smug indifference to the plight of her people even as the people are consequently provoked to question the legitimacy or appropriateness of those who have been put in authority over them to resolve the crisis of the status of their stake-holding.

Self-help is resorted to as government marshals state security and military resources to combat the “audacity” of the aggrieved people. For instance, the hubris or overweening pride of the state often displayed by her power wielders defines the response of the state to the people’s protestation of the environmental degradation or ecological scandal that is the plight of the residents of the Niger Delta. Troops are promptly mobilised and deployed just to put out or “crush” any protest. 

The people may be quietened but the rumbles remain loud. The Adaka Boro and Ken Saro-Wiwa memorabilia fore-shadowing today’s restive agitations in the Niger Delta region offer a ruminative opportunity for the present occupiers of state offices. The impending battle in Oporoza is the a la carte or regular response of government: make no distinction between the culpable and the innocent, the young or aged; lump all together for violent punishment or mauling as they have not been able to restrain their children or wards from becoming threats to the national economy. Afterall, “All have sinned…”

Buhari: President Of Northern Nigeria?

By Temitope Oriola

 The Vanguard newspaper reported the visit of a delegation of Northern leaders to the then president-elect Muhammadu Buhari on May 11th 2015. The delegation was led by Alhaji Maitama Sule. Sule told Buhari: “You are the president of Nigeria; you are not the president of Northern Nigeria by the grace of God”. Maitama Sule was someone you had to take seriously.

*Muhammadu Buhari 

I ruminated over the story for several minutes and wondered why the acclaimed orator felt the need to publicly ask Buhari to be a president for the whole of Nigeria.

We now know why and the underpinnings are quite ugly. The president needs to demonstrate that he is willing to trust Nigerians who neither speak Fulfulde nor Hausa. My assessment is that his skewed appointments speak to a lack of trust, rather than outright clannishness. The president needs to realise that he is president of the whole of Nigeria and millions of Nigerians from the streets of Kano to the parks of Lagos genuinely wish him well in office. His success is our success. No one should make light of the efforts that go into each political appointment. I do not think the president sets out to spite anybody but the idea that he is appointing people on merit despite the lopsidedness is no longer funny. If President Buhari sincerely believes that his appointments so far have been based on merit, then with all due respect, his future is in standup comedy.

The president’s inner circle seems to lack not just adequate representation but also depth and rigour. Buhari did not think he would win the elections as he did not expect President Jonathan to concede defeat. Therefore, President Buhari assumed office grossly unprepared and lacking the scintilla of a plan for governance. He had become habituated to losing elections and did not do his rudimentary homework on Nigeria’s many problems. This is quite problematic given that he contested for over 12 years. Why exactly was he running for office? Did he think he was simply going to manage oil wealth?

There are no new problems in Nigeria. Many of the problems have increased in intensity and metastasised but none of the problems is entirely new. Consequently, a diligent presidential candidate would have prepared. The president simply assumed he could show up and his “body language” — whatever that means — would keep people in check and all would be well. His command and obey personality type has not helped matters. I have a lot of respect for the military but Nigeria is not an overgrown military barracks. By personality type, temperament and proclivity, Buhari is unsuited to the rather frustrating guiles of democracy and demands of civil society.

Buhari Working To Be Nigeria's Last President

By Brady Chijioke Nwosu

A king that transformed a jungle to a city will forev­er be remembered, at the same time, a king that turned a city into jungle forever would not be forgotten.

The way things are going, it is obvious that many nations are likely to emerge from Nigeria. When the histories of such na­tions that were hitherto Nigeria would be written, one name that would be scrolled in bold prints is President Muhammadu Buhari for presiding and writing the epi­taph of ones a country.

In this vein, There Was A Coun­try, the last book of late literary icon, Prof Chinua Achebe be­comes prophetic.

When in the early 2000, it was alleged that the American Cen­tral Intelligence Agency (CIA) had predicted that Nigeria would fragment in 2015, there was pal­pable tension in the country es­pecially in the face of the gen­eral election that generated so much acrimony and hatred and the country was polarized along ethnic and religious divides. The election came and gone, many heaved sighs of relief, believing the worst was over.

True to their thoughts, the worst could have been over if the winner of the election, Presi­dent Buhari was interested in the unity of the country. He could have embarked on reconcilia­tion and unification across the country so that the grievances and disappointment that attend­ed the election would be forgot­ten. Instead, he started to posi­tion people from one section of the country and equally started promoting his religion, while he saw the rest as conquered people, who should not impugn his au­thority even in a democracy.

How can somebody be pissing on your head and be telling you that it is raining?

Events the last one year gave rise to the frenzy of self determi­nation by various ethnic groups. Before it was only MASSOB in the Southeast and right now more groups have sprang in the region all working in synergy to­wards self determination.

Then, like a joke, another up­rising is going on in the Niger Delta region. It started with Niger Delta Avengers (NDA), and now many other groups have come out working in the same direc­tion for self- determination. They are holding the nation to its jugu­lar and their persisted attacks on oil facilities in the region has re­duced the nation’s crude oil ex­port from 2.2 million barrels to about 1.2 million.

The reason is that Buhari saw the Southeast and the South-south as conquered people. He has been accused to have an agenda to Islamise the country and his actions and body lan­guages lay credence to such ac­cusation.

Talking With The Avengers

By Paul Onomuakpokpo  

Although the struggle to halt the ecological degradation and wanton appropriation of the oil resources of the Niger Delta has resulted in the gristly end of agitators like Isaac Boro and Ken Saro-Wiwa at the hands of the state, there has been no dearth of such  benign moments when the  Federal Government spared a thought for the people of the region.

Indeed, through the setting up of the Niger Delta Development Board (NDDB), Oil Mineral Producing Areas Commission (OMPADEC), Niger Delta Development Commission (NNDC), Ministry of Niger Delta, the amnesty programme and the payment of derivation funds, successive governments have attempted to ameliorate the imperiled existence of the people of the Niger Delta.

But government’s interventions are largely self-serving and this is why the results they generate do not last. Whenever there is a resurgence of militancy in the region, the government moves to restore peace not for the sake of the people of the region but because of the need to protect its interest in the oil resources of the region. Oil remains the economic strength of the nation as long as it has not developed other sources of revenue.

 The government’s move for negotiation with a new set of militants who call themselves the Niger Delta Avengers (NDA) derives its validation from the fact that the country cannot exist without the oil from the Niger Delta that sustains the economy. If there must be peace in the Niger Delta for the nation to access its prime source of revenue, the government should not listen to those who are opposed to negotiation with the militants. While one does not support a resort to armed struggle, those who are affected by the ecological ravages in the Niger Delta region have a genuine reason to call the attention of the world to their plight if their own government and the oil companies making billions of dollars from the region are not willing to develop the region. Besides, it is clear by now that the military option is not workable not only because it has not stopped the militants from destroying oil facilities but also because it is innocent  people who are often brutalised by the troops.

Buhari And The Niger Delta

By Ken Agala

On Thursday morning news broke that President Buhari had cancelled his trip to Ogoni due to threat to his life from the Niger Delta Avengers. This is a very wrong move as the President must have handed over the required impetus to the militants and thereby emboldened them.

*Buhari

Even Jonathan’s ‘chickening out’ of going to Chibok at the peak of the Boko Haram insurgency, is less of a ‘Chickening out’ than this. But I know a President can’t move against his security report and I wrote about this when Jonathan was called names for cancelling his Chibok trip.

While Nigerians were shocked to read a report that our oil production has gone down from the agonizing 1.4 million barrels to 1.1, a few days ago the Avengers bombed three more crude oil wells even when the military carried out an invasion of Gbaramatu kingdom and other Niger Delta communities.

With the Presidents action, the Niger Delta Avengers have received credible endorsement as a group to be respected and I believe many conscripts will begin looking for how to join them .

Frankly speaking it is despicable to be talking about cleaning up some Niger Delta communities while more environmental degradation is strategically perpetrated by Niger Deltans.

But there is a law called The Law of cause and effect. Every effect is the result of a cause and every cause must have an effect

When President Buhari in his brutally frank manner told his US audience last year that he can’t in all honesty treat regions that gave him 95% votes equally to those who gave him 5%, I expected that his party men from these 5% regions would have openly protested and forced him to withdraw the statement. That statement was very wrong from a President who has a mandate to treat everyone equally.

I expected Mr. Presidents media team to tactically twist that statement in way that it’d give some form of confidence to people from the 5% region but they rather coined the name ‘wailers’ for these 5 percenters .

Buhari In The Summer Of Sectional Discontent

By Louis Odion, FNGE

Ten years ago, yours sincerely received an unforgettable call on a certain Sunday afternoon. It was the ebullient Jimoh Ibrahim that was on the line. The youthful billionaire, though already a friend, was in a combative mood over the day's edition of this column published on the back page of Sunday Sun which I edited then. His beef stemmed not necessarily from the substance of my thesis, but lumping him among those he considered a tribe of the "unlettered".

*Buhari 

In the piece, one took potshots at the fierce infighting among the emergent club of Obasanjo oligarchs. It would seem, one surmised, that whereas OBJ mentored them on the art of making cheap money by being the biggest beneficiaries of an opaque privatization programme, they had failed themselves by not imbibing the apostolic virtue of peaceful co-existence. 

At the end of his friendly fire that lasted several minutes, Araba characteristically teased: "My yeye friend, I'm sure you took a strange coffee before writing that. Well, hold on for General."
To my biggest shock, what echoed next in my ears was the clipped, unmistakable voice of General Muhammadu Buhari: "Louis, I just read your article now. Very, very interesting and humorous. In fact, I read and reread some portions that were most humourous. Like the part where you said some went to the university of buying and selling. Keep it up."

I recall the memory of that phone encounter today to partly dispel certain myths about President Buhari and, more crucially, underline the urgency of remedial steps needed by a leader needlessly buffeted by rising dissent from sections of the country on account of what seems a self-derailment or gradual abandonment of habits that had served him so well. 

Fleeting as our conversation was that day, I was left with the portrait of not the implacable ethno-religious bigot which his then political rival, OBJ, had splurged fortune to project over the years; but a genial grandee at home anywhere in the country. From my findings later, the phone call was made from the home of Ibrahim, a full-blooded Yoruba from rural Igbotako, a riverine community in Ondo State. Of course, Araba happened to be one of the young Turks of ANPP, Buhari's party then. 

After the 2003 presidential polls which OBJ notoriously won by a "moon slide", not only did the negative profiling of Buhari become official policy, ostracization of any business tycoons suspected of ties with him also commenced pari pasu. Indeed, a good number of the northern business/political elite who seem in a hurry today to form an ethnic ring around him were the same characters Obasanjo had recruited to lead and sustain that dirty campaign. 

It was therefore from such a narrow circle –  pan-Nigerian nonetheless –  who refused to be intimidated or blackmailed that Buhari had to draw for emotional balance and funding of his protracted legal battles against those who "cheated" him in the 2003, 2007 and 2011 polls. Among that fraternity was Tam West-David, a decorated professor of virology, who would cap his cult-like loyalty by writing and launching a book in his worship at personal cost when no one was yet sure Buhari could become a president. 

Fulani Herdsmen: Fayose Bells The Cat

By Bola Bolawole

Governor of Ekiti State, Ayodele Fayose, has trod where angels would fear to tread: he has banned the medieval practice of grazing cattle all over the place in the state. He has promised to send draft legislation to this effect to the state House of Assembly to be passed into law. When this is done, both cattle and herdsmen caught on the wrong side of the law will be sanctioned. The beasts will be confiscated while the herdsmen will cool their heels in goal.

*Gov Ayodele Fayose 

Not only is the practice of itinerant rearing of cattle archaic, it also negates the giant strides that Mankind has made from the Stone Age. Grazing cattle in an unruly and unorganised manner over farmlands, destroying the means of livelihood of law-abiding citizens and trampling their inalienable rights is an affront to the legal order and an unwarranted assault on those at the receiving end of the bestiality of both beast and herdsman.

All over the country are strident cries against the callousness of the herdsmen who not only feed their cattle on, and as a result destroy, farmlands, thereby complicating the problem of skyrocketing prices of foodstuffs in the land; they also main, rape, and kill innocent indigenes of the communities they traduce to the bargain. They kidnap and torture, they demand and collect ransoms before releasing their victims. Most times, the victims still get killed even after ransoms have been paid.

Cattles have been known to cause fatal accidents on the highways. The increasing wave of armed robbery attacks in many of the rural communities has also been traced to herdsmen who wield AK-47 in broad daylight in flagrant violation of the laws of the land, which frown at the proliferation of small arms. The authorities look the other way while these atrocities are perpetrated across the country.

The latest bus stop of the audacious bestiality of the herdsmen was Ekiti State, at a community called Oke-Ako in Ikole Local Government. Not less than two residents lost their lives instantly while scores of others suffered varying degrees of injuries and the community as a whole was sacked. Reports said it was a reprisal or vengeance mission by the herdsmen, in that earlier; the community had repelled a similar attack and got some of the assailants arrested by law-enforcement agents; even though they were reportedly left to go scot-free soon after.

As if they expected the community to simply fold its arms and do nothing, the herdsmen returned penultimate week to teach the Oke-Ako people “a lesson”. The community got wind of it and alerted the security agencies but for reasons, which bother on complicity, duplicity, and dereliction of duty, the appropriate authorities failed to act.