Niger
Delta Avengers is the name of a new group of militants in the Niger Delta who
claim to be different from the former agitators and militants who operated
between 2006 and 2009, largely under the umbrella of the Movement for the
Emancipation of the Niger Delta (MEND). The title of this group may well serve
as the thematic and definitive umbrella for the resurgence of low-level
insurgency in the Niger Delta, for in the last month alone, more groups have
joined the NDA to wage war against oil installations, the Buhari government,
and the Nigerian state. These include the Isoko Liberation Movement and the Red
Egbesu Water Lions. The groups are working in concert with the Indigenous
People of Biafra (IPOB) led by detained Nnamdi Kanu.
The NDA runs a website (created in February 2016) where it posts
news items and statements; and in terms of rhetoric, and activities, there is
no doubt that the various groups are indeed on “a vengeance mission”. They are
angry over what they consider the continued marginalization of the Niger Delta,
the unjust allocation of oil mining licenses to persons from non-oil producing
areas, the hounding of officials and associates of the Jonathan administration
by the present administration (hence General Torunanawei, coordinator of the
Red Egbesu Water Lions issues a seven-day ultimatum calling for the release of
Colonel Sambo Dasuki, and the de-freezing of the accounts of ex-militant leader
Government Ekpemupolo). There is also some concern about environmental
pollution, the scrapping of the Maritime University at Okerenkoko and
undisguised discontent with the Buhari administration.
More than any of the emergent groups, the Niger Delta
Avengers have used their online resources to articulate the basis of this
vengeance mission in such posts as “Operation Red Economy”, “We shall do
whatever is necessary to protect the Niger Delta interest” and “Keep your
threat to yourself, Mr. President”. Their statements are written in halting,
extremely poor English, but their various strike teams, which they boast about,
have proven to be deadly through recent attacks on oil infrastructure creating
a global oil supply crisis, and bringing down Nigeria’s daily oil production
from 2.2 million barrels to just about 1.4 million.
Shell has had to shut down its Forcados terminal. Chevron’s Escravos operation
has been breached. ENI and Exxon Mobil have declared “force majeure”.
Shell and Chevron are moving their staff out of the Niger Delta. The avengers
claim they are not into kidnapping, or the killing of people and soldiers, but
no one is sure yet about the depth and extent of this new phase of Niger Delta
insurgency, and of course, the oil and gas multinationals have since learnt not
to trust either the Nigerian government or the criminals who target oil
infrastructure to make political and ethnic statements. But the question
is: why vengeance? The reason this question is important explains the seeming
indifference to the crisis, at least for now, within the larger Nigerian
community and why the avengers have so far been dismissed, to their dismay, as
“empty heads” and “criminals.” Not a few persons have asked: what else do Niger
Delta militants want?
Recall that in 2009, late President Umaru
Yar’Adua introduced an amnesty programme to end Niger Delta insurgency. Two
years earlier, the architects of Nigerian politics had also deemed it necessary
to allocate the Vice Presidency to the Niger Delta, and by sheer providence,
the occupier of that slot, Dr. Goodluck Jonathan soon became Acting President
following the death of his boss, and later in 2011, he won the Presidential
election and became President.
For about seven years, under this programme, introduced by President Yar’Adua
and sustained by President Jonathan, Niger Delta militants were demobilized and
disarmed. The top hierarchy soon became security consultants to the Federal
Government, monitoring pipelines, and helping to check oil theft. The middle
cadre was placed on a monthly stipend while those who could be trained were
sent to technical colleges and universities in Southern Africa and Eastern
Europe. The militants became rich and gentrified, and with their kinsman in
office as President in Abuja, the people of the Niger Delta began to feel a
sense of ownership and belongingness that no one in that region had felt since
1960.
But what is now happening clearly shows the limits of the politics
of appeasement that Nigeria has played since independence. No country can be
successfully run on a short-term basis and through the assignment of tokens to
aggrieved parties within the union. It was mere delusion to have ever imagined
that the people of the Niger Delta could ever be successfully appeased with a
pacifying short-term amnesty programme and a shot at the Presidency. Even under
President Jonathan, there were protests about the distribution of amnesty
largesse, and disagreements among the former militants, who practically
relocated to Abuja to take advantage of their brother’s ascendancy. The quarrel
was all about who got what and it was only a matter of time, before those who
felt short-changed would stage their own drama, which they have now started, in
the hope that they may be luckier this time around and get their own share of
appeasement. This is the sub-text of the deliberate distancing by the new boys
from the old guard of militants.
They seem to have been further provoked by the arrival in Abuja of “a new
Pharaoh who does not seem to know Joseph.” President Muhammadu Buhari has
approved funding and payments under the Niger Delta Amnesty programme, he has
also appointed a Minister of Niger Delta and a Special Adviser on Niger Delta
Amnesty, in addition to extending the amnesty initiative, beyond the initial
December 2015 deadline to December 2017. But there is no programme of
patronage, the type that channels money into the pockets of Niger Delta
militants, warlords or foot-soldiers, and since Abuja also seems to have become
wasteland for the once-triumphant Niger Deltan, the Jonathan crowd, and the
fisherman’s cap, the informal patronage that turned many Niger Deltans into
king’s men and women, has vanished. The emergent militant groups also have
other selfish reasons why they are angry not just with President Buhari but
also with the Nigerian state, for in the end, after the 2009-2015 period,
position, cash and contracts appeasement has not in any way resolved the core
problems of existential and environmental crisis in the Niger Delta. Nigeria
merely postponed the evil day and unless we deal more forthrightly with the
vexatious issues of equity, federalism, justice and citizenship driving Niger
Delta and Biafran nationalism, those who throw tokens at the problem can only
do so in vain.
The bad news is that President Muhammadu Buhari doesn’t
seem to be in a hurry to address these fundamental issues. He probably has
every reason to be angry, and he may even raise such questions as: what is
wrong with these Niger Delta avengers? What exactly do they want to avenge
-their kinsman losing election? Do they think they can blackmail government
even when the amnesty programme has been “magnanimously” extended? These may
sound emotional, but they are serious questions, signposting how access to
power at the centre and survival in that space has become a victim of
deterministic ethnic rivalry. The emerging trend that whoever becomes President
of Nigeria now has to worry about the possibility of being sabotaged by an
aggrieved ethnic group or groups is dangerous for our democracy.
Recall also that after the 2011 Presidential election, the people of the Niger
Delta while certainly elated about one of their own emerging as President, were
also painfully aware that in the course of the feverish politics of succession
in 2010, leading up to the nominations for 2011, certain interests and voices
from the North had threatened that should Dr. Jonathan become President,
Nigeria would be made ungovernable for him. And as promised, the Boko Haram
threat, which had been an issue before 2011, soon got worse and from 2011-2015,
the Jonathan administration had to struggle endlessly with overt national
security challenges designed and delivered in the North East, and other parts
of the North. The Boko Haram crisis and the abduction of the Chibok girls
eventually became key negative factors for the Jonathan campaign in the 2015
Presidential election.
It is also similarly on record that before and during the 2015 elections,
certain Niger Delta elements also threatened that should President Jonathan
lose the election, Nigeria would be made ungovernable for President Buhari. And
again as promised, the South East and the South South, President Jonathan’s
main support centres, have thrown up major security threats since President
Buhari won and assumed office. When governance and politics are thus reduced to
a game of thrones, democracy and sovereignty are endangered. Already the Niger
Delta Avengers have announced a plan to declare a sovereign state of Niger
Delta in October 2016. Nigeria sits on a precarious balance.
There is no justification however, for President Buhari, in dealing with
these challenges, to also play the game of vengeance. Speaking in China,
recently, he directed the military to crush the new Niger Delta militants and
indeed there has been a scaling up of military operations in the region. A military
solution to a crisis such as this, as has been learnt with the Boko Haram, and
much earlier in the Niger Delta, ultimately proves to be inadequate; instead
there should be a return to the core issues of making Nigeria a country that
works for everyone regardless of extraction - religious or ethnic. President
Buhari is a livestock farmer; it should not be too difficult for him to
understand how the chickens are now going home to roost in the Niger
Delta. In the face of unemployment rate hitting 12.1%, youth
unemployment, 42.24%, the GDP recording a negative growth of -0.36%, inflation
standing at 13.7%, crude oil accounting for 90% of exports and 70% of national
revenue, crude oil production dropping to low levels, and the country facing
recession, a foreign exchange and power supply crisis, and financial
insolvency, renewed restiveness in the Niger Delta, and threats by avengers who
want to cut off Nigeria’s key source of revenue, can only further deepen the
people’s agony, and place the country on danger list.
President Buhari may deal with the impunity and criminality
of the avengers, but Nigeria must address the more ideologically original parts
of their protest, and how particularly, the politics of appeasement has made the
country far more vulnerable than imaginable. Preventing the country from
imploding so dangerously, on so many fronts, as is currently the case, should
be considered a matter of urgent national importance.
Tags
Opinion