 Now we must turn to question the phenomenon of militancy and the spiral of violence in the Niger Delta in a more objective and systematic manner. Why is the region today the hot bed of militancy and violent crimes? Is this what the Niger Delta issue was designed to achieve? This discussion will attempt to draw attention to the need for remedial actions that flow only from a deeper analysis of the challenge. Our contention is that it was not possible to do so in the past eight years because of the fundamental character of Nigeria ’s oil economy. Its dynamics sets out to corrupt our leaders and to alienate them from us by investing them with “total power”, relative to where they are located. This total power which confers on them unquestioned control of state revenue and its disbursement, makes the warfare to capture or to retain political power “a do or die” affair. Every other priority is channeled into or manipulated to achieve this.
Militancy as described by the BBC English Dictionary is the behaviour or attitude of people who are active in trying to bring about political change, often in ways that may be unacceptable to others. When we relate this definition to our experience in Nigeria , we can add that such militant behaviour was not always aggressive, coercive or violent. In 1957 the Rivers Chiefs and People’s delegation to London , were on a militant mission to bring about change. But after nine years there was little or no improvement in the condition that gave rise to the people’s initial demand.
A Niger Delta hero emerged in Isaac Adaka Boro who put his life on the line to vent the injustice and frustrations visited on the Niger Delta, by the nation’s infant oil economy. States were created and the Niger Delta got three. But state creation was primarily to enable the Federal Government rally the ethnic minorities of the Niger Delta and the Middle Belt, to win the Nigerian civil war. State creation was not designed to address the fundamental injustice against the Niger Delta people which led Boro to a violent form of militancy. The people were still excluded from effective participation and commensurate benefits from oil and gas operations in their land.
By 1979 when General Obasanjo handed over to President Shagari, this injustice had become compounded. By virtue of the Land Use Decree, General Obasanjo’s regime dispossessed the people of the Niger Delta not only of their right to effective participation but also the ownership of their land whose oil and gas revenue had become the mainstay of all sectors of the nation’s economy. From then the story became a mediocre argument about how much percentage of revenue to allocate to the Niger Delta and what machinery to create to “bring development” to the people e.g.
OMPADEC & NDDC. It was no longer about correcting the injustice on a region which was bearing the heavy consequences of the oil economy, without effectively participating in the oil and gas industry as a catalyst to direct its own development.
This was the vision of change that informed the demands of the Movement For The Survival Of Ogoni People (MOSOP). In his book “Managing Youth Unrest In Nigeria “ a former governor of Bayelsa State Chief (Dr.) D.S.P Alamieyeseigha quoted late Ken Saro Wiwa’s prophetic call for the return of the Derivation Formula to revenue allocation with the vital addition that: “Citizens from oil bearing areas must be represented on the boards of directors of oil companies prospecting for oil in particular areas; and communities in the oil-bearing areas should have equity participation in the oil companies operating therein. Finally the Delta people must be allowed to join in the lucrative sale of crude oil. Only in this way can the cataclysm that is building up in the Delta be avoided. Is any one listening?”
It turned out General Sani Abacha and the conservative clique he represented, were listening but with a diabolical twist. To them the Niger Delta people cannot but remain at the mercy of those who control political power. So they put Ken Saro Wiwa to death through a contrived trial that was aptly described by Mr. John Major (the Prime Minister of Britain at the time) as “judicial murder”.
By May 1999 when the current civilian dispensation was inaugurated, the challenges in the Niger Delta were quite glaring. One looming challenge was a ready army of young men and women across the region, who had been exposed to violence and could be hired to kill. There major sources accounted for such a development. Several intra and inter communal clashes had brought youths into possession of firearms in defense of their communities or their ethnic group. The incidents include the Ogoni-Andoni , the Okrika –Eleme, the Ogbakiri all in Rivers State ; the Ogbolomabiri- Bassambiri or Oluasiri- Odioma in Bayelsa; the protracted Ogbe-Ijo clashes in Ondo State ; the Ijaw- Itsekiri-Urhobo in Delta State as well as the Akwa Ibom-Cross River . The second factor is cultism in our universities. In a summary report Alamieyeseigha disclosed that past military regimes had quietly infiltrated campuses and turned them into training ground for killers. By 1999 they had become centres of intimidation, kidnapping and killings. And the last was the impact of kingship tussles in different Niger Delta communities (e.g. Okrika, Kalabari and Ataba -Andoni) as documented by Dr. Sofiri Joab-Peterside in his study titled “The Militarization Of Nigeria’s Niger Delta”.
Another and perhaps the most fundamental problem was unemployment which had reached crisis proportion. Several of the educated hands that found themselves doing odd jobs for political leaders to capture political power in 1999, expected to be rewarded with appointments or career type jobs. But this was not the priority of our governors. Investments in productive sectors to create employment, did not happen. The expectations of our youths soon turned to frustration.
Neither governments of the Niger Delta states nor the oil companies initiated any joint investments in productive sectors to absorb the increasing labour force that was kept idle. Rather Obasanjo’s regime manufactured a full warehouse of new millionaires (according to Chief Onyema Ugochukwu in a recent newspaper interview) through reforms and all kinds of new formulations that excluded oil producing communities or states from participation in the oil and gas industry.
Poverty and desperation became enlarged on the faces of people. It manifested in the increase of sabotage incidents recorded by the oil industry. Also community disruptions of work by companies for all kinds of claims, became rampant. The loss to Nigeria from damage of oil pipelines and theft of crude oil had grown to about N10b per month according to naval authorities quoted by Alamieseyeigha. In the circumstance the Nigerian state swung into action with what Oronto Douglas described as dollar-driven security mentality (“CASS Newsletter” Vol 12 No 3-4, 2004). It placed more emphasis on the show of raw power (militarisation of relationships) which alienates people rather than make the society more humane. But as Claude Ake had argued in one of his last books “ Democracy And Development In Africa “(1996) the way our governments present themselves at local, state or federal level shows that from independence: “state power remained essentially the same: immense, arbitrary,
often violent, always threatening”.
This is because in our political environment since independence, actual or potential violence is needed as an instrument to capture power or to retain it for accumulation of wealth and advantages. To talk about reducing militancy without reducing the show of arbitrary force and the easy money in the hands of those in power, will not make the effort credible or attainable.
Resource Control Campaign and Militancy as has been argued by different authoritative quarters, the past eight years of civilian rule have not improved socio-economic conditions of the people of the Niger Delta. If anything, our living conditions have worsened. This fact is contrary to the self-serving claims of oil companies, governments and agencies in the region. The Federal Government under Obasanjo at least cannot be accused of any claim of seriousness about the development of the Niger Delta.
It did not even try, except to antagonise local and foreign media as well as other opinion groups who tried to point at the time bomb that was ticking in the polluted swamps and farmlands of the Niger Delta. Indeed the current situation of violent crimes in the region would seem to be serving the best interest of certain quarters that could not wait for this to happen.
It is being used as a reason to divert new business or to relocate existing businesses away to Lagos and other parts of the country. OK-NLNG went to the South-West under Obasanajo. Now a refinery is proposed for Lagos state. Yet Lagos is reported to be suffering from the same problem of insecurity as the Niger Delta.
But that is not to miss the salient fact that some people manipulate the increasing deprivation in the Niger Delta for personal gain. It is important to understand that after Adaka Boro’s heroic stand for the rights of the Niger Delta people, demands for change in the Niger Delta became louder only in the 1990s. This was a period when different military regimes pretended they had any interest in’a transition to some form of civilian rule. Ethnic associations and Non Governmental Organizations became prominent. For instance MOSOP & MOSIEND (Movement For The Survival Of Ijaw Ethnic Nationality), were loud in their demands about the Niger Delta.
Such demands as a form of militancy, served most of the leading Niger Delta politicians well. They used such militancy (agitations, demands and demonstrations) to negotiate positions of power with their “masters”. From Ake we can understand that leaders considered as friendly by the mainstream political establishment are those who accept the negative view of their people and culture. It is by so doing that they engender their sense of inferiority and self alienation.
This makes them always anxious to please Abuja or the conservative interest group that people refer to as the “North”. It gives such leaders a bragging right about how they enjoy a ready embrace from those quarters. But of course such embrace comes at the expense of their people’s fundamental interest. This was evident in the campaign for resource control from 1999. The truth is that there was a long campaign but it was truly not for resource control. There was no common definition of the Niger Delta issue and no common agreement on what goals would serve the people’s interest best. In fact there were no such goals which the people subscribed to. Rather the campaign served to advance the personal agenda of each of the governors, as they struggled to become the adopted heir-apparent of former President Obasanjo. So each governor defined resource control to suit his mood, audience and personal aspiration, leaving enough room to bargain his political future.
The strident chorus of the campaign was very useful. It brought together a militant arm into the pay roll of some of the governors. With militancy in the air, discerning members of society swallowed their opinions. They either joined the chorus or went to sleep. No ordinary person could dare stand to query the expenditure of oil revenue received in the LGA, to the hearing of a local government chairman. It was impossible to contemplate doing so in the governor’s court or those of his agents. For the immediate environment of governors became in Claude Ake’s words “immense, arbitrary, often violent, always threatening”. The militancy of resource control campaign thus foreclosed public reaction to the steady looting of LGA and state funds.
The mystification of executive power becomes the way the governor is perceived by the public. Political power is seen as personal to him. He is described as “Executive Governor”, (or Executive Chairman) even when such a statement makes no sense in our present system of government. Unlike in the military regime, no governor now can make laws and implement them. The House of Assembly (Legislature) makes the laws, with the Judiciary adjudicating. They are separate arms of government from the executive arm. But the claim underscores what Ake meant by “immense” in his description of those in power. Each governor is recreated in the perception of the public as “all-knowing”. His every word no matter how arbitrary or crass, is not only seen as law but above the law. It springs from the defining characters of our oil economy. It makes Nigeria increasingly unproductive, impatient with an inclusive view of society, places all premium on political power and encourages even angels to see political power in the words of Ake, as not only “the access to wealth but also the means to security and the only guarantor of general well-being”. The fact that the governors who are facing investigation by various anti corruption agencies were never questioned by the Houses of Assembly in their respective states, shows that these governors had them all under control. Why is it so? Monopoly of access to accumulation of wealth by mere “privatisation” of allocations from oil revenue, tempts each governor to play God in his state.The impact of the situation is best captured by the title of Nobel Laureate Wole Soyinka’s book “The Climate of Fear”(2004) . He warns that those in our situation stand the risk of raising children who “often develop anxiety and a fatalistic approach to their own lives”.
Conclusion: Time To Campaign For Niger Delta Issue From the foregoing our political parties can see that in the last 8 years they have been part of the problem rather than the solution. Our political institutions and politicians sold us out. They were to function to provide effective platforms for building a vision and taking fundamental measures to address the “Niger Delta issue”. If they had done so or even understood the challenge, we would have come close to removing “panic, anger and fear” from our people. Because they did not, that is why we are here.
But there is hope. We can correct the past by taking the right steps now. Political parties and various stakeholder groups should join hands to encourage the present governors and Houses of Assembly not to follow the pattern set by their predecessors. Let them open up the policy space for fresh ideas and options on how best to bring our people to realize the dreams of equal economic opportunity and competitiveness. This was behind what our fathers saw as the “Niger Delta issue”. Let us engage the oil companies for joint investments to quickly create jobs for our people as well as to secure fair compensation for damage from oil pollution. Together the region can develop an agreed “oil industry support services” blueprint, that makes a stronger case for the relocation of industry corporate offices to the region. Our share of excess funds from sale of crude oil should provide equity to set up refineries, nitrogenous fertilizer plants, oil servicing companies, maritime facilities and integrated agro-industries across senatorial zones.
Without such productive sectors, there will be no effective demand for high quality expertise from model tertiary schools which must be built or the manpower to support projected international level hospitals in our region. Governor Chibuike Rotimi Amaechi of Rivers State got it right when he articulated a vision to raise the quality of schools and hospitals to international standard. But we can work with many existing ones, if rehabilitated and well equipped. We do not need costly new structures to announce the status of our hospitals. Niger Delta governors, legislators, political parties, professional groups, market women, Labour and students’ groups should create platforms for regular debate on a common vision for the region. Above all, we must work together to demystify political power and the culture of “easy money” or “sudden wealth” that is robbing our region of capacity for decent work and a life free from fatalism.
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