NIGER DELTA: YAR ADUA AND CRISIS MANAGEMENT:

NIGER DELTA: YAR ADUA AND CRISIS MANAGEMENT: By Chris Okafor

Nowadays reading Nigeria Newspapers or watching either AIT or NTA International through cables is becoming some sort of disturbing phenomenon.

Over the last few years here in Ireland, I have cultivated an unprecedented habit as a ritual to wake up as early as possible in the morning even when my family are still in bed, to devote at least one hour to read Nigerian Newspapers through the Internet and another 45 minutes to watch two of the aforementioned television stations. This is normally what keeps me abreast of what is happening in Nigeria but then I realized that I often get uncontrollable headache doing this which sometimes triggered my blood pressure and so I have taken an advice from my GP to stop.

On 13th day of May, 2009, there was an unforgettable twist to the above decision. I was taking the kids to their respective schools when my phone rang. I advertently ignored the caller. It is against the law here to make or answer phone while driving but the caller continued unabated. I pulled out of the road, stopped and answered the call. I was actually expecting the normal telephone pleasantries but this was, indeed, missing. It was rather a question: Chris where are you? I have reiterated by asking the caller who the hell are you but it is of no use. The following message was apt and to the point: Check out Nigerian Newspapers or Television stations when you get home to see how irresponsible your government in Nigeria are.  Be fore I could utter a word, the phone went dead. Irresponsible?  Of course, the caller was one of my close pals, a Kenya from greater Dublin area. But what right does he have to call Nigeria government irresponsible? I tried immediately to call him back and take him on but my instinct warned me and so I hurriedly started the car and drop the kids in their various schools and rushed back home.

What I read on the pages of Nigerian Papers less than one hour after that call surpassed my widest imagination and I agreed, without doubt, that President Musa Yar Adua government, like his predecessors has been completely irresponsible most especially in crisis management in Nigeria. It is hard to believe that in 21st century that a President of a country well above 120 million people could order his buccaneer military to kill defenceless civilians in course of searching for militants.

The reason for that carnage, from what I read in Newspapers is the killing by the militants of some soldiers which I abhor and condemned in its totality but I do not believe that this was enough to kill innocent people and razed communities. There were other excuses that the militants have been involved in kidnapping and extortion, illegal bunkering, pipeline vandalism which is more than an understatement.

The following day, as I continued to search for news of what must have compelled Yar Adua and his PDP led government to this obnoxious action, there were more than six different video clips of civilian casualties in Niger Delta on my facebook apparently sent by some of my friends in United States with a curse on Yar Adua. It was an eye saw. I was moved to tears when one of the people interviewed on these clips said that he have not seen his wife and 4 children and he believed they must have been killed and I realized what it meant for one to live without his love ones.

The Nigerian Army have really had a fun filled day in Niger Delta. What with the artillery bombardment, killing of the innocent civilians and setting ablaze of different communities in course of searching for a handful of men. This is the worst criminality of human kind that I have ever lived to witness. Nigeria army since its establishment have never been involved in any single war. The only war they have fought and continue to fight is among Nigerians and unfortunately for them, the era of: This is the voice of Major General.......of Nigeria Army is over.

In August 1990 when the then military head of states, Gen. Ibrahim Babaginda sent some peace keeping force otherwise know as ECOMOG to Liberia what follows at the end of that war was a disaster. Some of the soldiers according to unconfirmed reports upon returning to the country did not bother to return their guns and ammunitions to the barracks. The resultant effect was a sharp and proportionate rise in arm robbery in Nigeria. Now, at the end of JTF unceremonious exercise in Niger Delta, have they been able to mend MEND?. The answer is NO.

Unfortunately, we are only interested in most problems without finding its root cause and thus the Niger Delta issues will continue to hunt Nigerian government until the dilemma and suffering of people in that region is unconditionally addressed.

During the 60s, an undergraduate student of Chemistry and student union president at the University of Nigeria, Nsukka named Isaac Adaka Boro left school to lead an armed protest against the exploitation of oil and gas in Niger Delta areas which benefited mainly the Federal Government of Nigeria and a remote Eastern Nigeria regional government.

He believed that the people of the area deserved fairer shares of proceeds of oil wealth. He formed the Niger Delta Volunteer Force constituting mainly his fellow Ijaw ethnic group. They declared the Niger Delta Republic in February 23, 1966 and gallantly battled the Federal Forces for twelve days but were finally routed by the far superior Federal power. Boro and his compatriots were jailed for treason. However, the federal regime of Gen. Yakubu Gowon granted him amnesty on the eve of Nigeria civil war in May, 1967. He then enlisted and was commissioned as a major in the Nigeria Army. He fought on the side of the Federal Government but was killed under mysterious circumstances in active service in 1968 at Ogu (Okrika) in Rivers State, after successfully liberating the Niger Delta from the Biafran Forces

Successive Nigeria government with their myopic ideologies had thought that that would be the end of an era but they were dead wrong. Again, early 90s saw the emergency of Kenule, Ken Beeson Saro-Wiwa (October 10, 1941-November 10, 1995) a Nigerian author, television producer, environmental activist and winner of Goldman Environmental Prize. Saro-Wiwa was a member of Ogoni people, an ethnic Nigeria minority whose homeland, Ogoniland in the Niger Delta has been targeted for crude oil extraction since the 1950s and which has suffered extreme environmental damage from decades of indiscriminate oil waste dumping. Initially as a spoke person and then the president of the Movement for Survival of the Ogoni People (MOSOP), Saro-Wiwa led a nonviolent campaign against environmental degredations of the land and natural waters of Ogoniland by the operations of multinational oil companies especially Shell. He was also an outspoken critic of the Nigerian government which he viewed as a relunctant to enforce proper environmental regulations on foreign oil companies operating in the area.

At the peak of his nonviolent campaign, he was arrested, hastily tried by a special military tribunal and hanged in 1995 by Nigeria Military Government headed by Gen. Sani Abacha all on charges widely viewed as entirely politically motivated and completely unfounded which provoked international outrage and resulted in Nigerian suspension from the Commonwealth.

In November 20, 1999, Obasanjo led government ordered the Odi massacre. The Odi massacre was an attack carried out by the Nigeria military on the predominantly Ijaw town of ODI in Bayelsa state. The attack came in the context of an ongoing conflict in the Niger Delta over the rights to oil resources and environmental protection. Prior to the massacre, twelve members of the Nigerian police were murdered by a gang near Odi, seven on November 4 and the remainder in the following days. In revenge, the military invaded, exchanged fire, and then proceeded to indiscriminately attack the civilian population and the town's buildings. Every building in the town except the bank, the Anglican Church and the health center was burned to the ground.

Adaka Boro was killed in mysterious circumstances and Ken Saro Wiwa was hanged by Abacha junta and yet that have not stopped the problems of Niger Delta. The activities of the Movement for Emancipation of Niger Delta otherwise known as MEND was and still is, to the best of my knowledge, a formidable strategic to draw the attention of the world, Yar Adua and his deaf and lunatic treasury looters.

The question is: don’t they have a right to voice out their unresolved and endless marginalization? Isn’t it sad that a particular region that make Nigeria the 6th largest oil producing nation in world cannot boost of electricity, good roads and other social infrastructures? Is there no systematic approach to apply in order to resolve this unending conflict rather applying force and at the end killing innocent people. Yar Adua by this singular action has shown that he is not capable of ruling Nigeria neither does he understand the evolution of crisis management. For this reason, Yar Adua should apologise to Nigerians and resign peacefully. My sincere judgement is that Nigerian government have driven these youths to the edge of precipice and were left with no other option than act the way they are doing now in order to save their beleaguered people.

Jonathan Goodluck will, unavoidably go down in history, as the Vice-President of Nigeria and an astute son of the said Niger Delta who kept mute and said nothing while his people were being massacre in Niger Delta for daring to fight for their right. He is one of the people that have betrayed these youths just like the councillors, the Kings, the Local Government Chairmen, the Governors, the House of Representative Members and Senators from this region. From time to time, the Federal Government continued to place certain criminal-minded individuals who are after their own selfish purpose as representatives of Niger Delta and who they can easily manipulate without questioning and as far as they can have their own share to the detriment of their people.

Today, politicians and aspiring politicians are springing up just like creation of local government and States courtesy of the oil in Niger Delta. They are all waiting for 13% Federal Allocations.

Since the inception of these conflicts, no Nigeria President has ever made a surprise visit to this region to see things for themselves. They only rely on foreign media for information.

In early 2007, a South African based CNN reporter named Jeff Koinange surfaced in Niger Delta in one of the most dreaded expository and investigative journalism I have ever seen. This did not go down well with Obasanjo regime. The then Information Minister, Frank Nweke cried foul and concluded that the reporter paid the militants to put up a show. Jeff, upon admission of some unethical practices as regards the coverage was unceremoniously and subsequently fired by CNN six months later. How many of our journalists have ever visited Niger Delta? Apparently none because a lot of them are busy chasing contracts or plots of land in Abuja.

I learnt a great lesson from this fracas most especially reading Nigerian papers and television reports. I realized that if the said oil were to be anywhere in the north, the country would have divided by now. Whether all the people in Niger Delta are exterminated or not, Nigerian Government would never know peace until that region that everybody is relying on is properly developed.  The truth is that there is time for everything under sun; time to live and time to die, time to be sad and time to be happy but what the Bible did not add in the book of Ecclesiastes is that there will be time to be united and time to be divided. This is inevitable.

Chris Okafor

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