OF all things, militancy should be the last to occupy our minds right now; but it has crept back stealthily to the front burner. Many thought that it was dead and buried following the amnesty granted militants by the Yar’Adua administration in 2009. Under the deal, those who renounced militancy and surrendered their weapons were granted amnesty and rehabilitated by the government. The ‘men’, that is the leaders, were said to have been given a huge sum of money to give up their weapons; the ‘boys’, that is the foot soldiers, were taken to camps for deradicalisation.
In the camps, they were paid stipends and taught handcrafts. Many were taken abroad for further training, with the government spending millions of dollars on them. The amnesty deal was, however, not embraced by all militants’ leaders. Dokubo Asari of the Niger Delta People Salvation Front (NDPSF) remains a known critic of the programme. Asari has also never hidden his disdain for the North, which he believes is responsible for the despoiling of the Niger Delta. The region is oil rich, but its people are the flotsam and the jetsam of the earth.
The Niger Delta environment is not conducive today because of the operations of oil companies. They have messed up the waters and the farms from which the people derive their living without giving them anything in return. Rather than come to the people’s aid, successive administrations were believed to be in cahoots with these foreign firms to deprive the oil-producing communities of what rightly belongs to them. It was to call attention to their people’s plight that environmental activists like the late Ken Saro-Wiwa sprang up. But with the death of Saro-Wiwa and the likes of the late Isaac Adaka Boro before him, the agitation took a militant hue.
Militancy changed the face of the fight because it became what the agitators could get from the struggle and not what could be done for the larger community. Militants resorted to kidnapping for money and blowing up oil facilities, which are the nation’s assets. As things stand now, it seems it is bye bye to amnesty, with the sudden emergence of the Niger Delta Avengers (NDA), starting the fight all over again. It is not that the fight had been settled; no, not all; but, at least, the country was making headway in resolving it through the amnesty initiative. The Avengers, only they know what they are avenging, have thrown a spanner in the works, with their ill-motivated action.
There is more to the resurgence of militancy in the Niger Delta than meets the eye. There is no threat to the region’s interests for now to warrant what the Avengers are doing, except if they are executing a hidden agenda. The militants may not be happy that the region has lost power at the centre and may be doing all this to rattle the Buhari administration to draw constant attention to the place. The Avengers are surely not fighting for former President Goodluck Jonathan, but fighting to keep what they were getting under him, which may no longer come to them, with Buhari at the helms. We were warned of this day long ago by Asari, but we did not take heed of what he was saying then.
Shortly after the last presidential election, which Jonathan lost to Buhari, Asari rambled about the Niger Delta ideology at the gathering of the Ijaw for the 2015 yearly Isaac Adaka Boro public event. He was bitter that Jonathan had lost the election and without mincing words, he said his people would ‘’resume our struggle if Buhari draws the first blood’’. Asari forgot that Buhari was not elected to shed blood, but to preserve it. In the heat of the moment, he spoke the minds of his people on that occasion, threatening fire and brimstone, all because their son lost an election.
Asari said : ‘’Yes, a new government begins in Nigeria and a new phase of our struggle shall begin also. The Jonathan presidency was like a restraining order; now that restraint is lifted. However, we will watch and wait; let them draw the first blood and we shall determine our best way forward. Truly, Nigeria will never be the same again; the future is pregnant’’. Is NDA the product of that pregnancy? Asari should tell us because a rabbit does not run in the daytime for nothing. The Avengers are dancing to the drumbeats of some people, but we do not know where these people are. Asari may know for him to have spoken the way he did last year.
Using strong words to the delight of his fellow Ijaw, he went on : ‘’Should Buhari whom like Pharaoh has determined in his heart to turn desolate the Niger Delta draw the first blood by undermining certain interests of the region, then begin the systemic arrest, maiming and murder of our comrades, continue the confiscation of our rights for self determination and treat the region as a conquered region then it may be honourable for some of us to die in prison or on the field of war as nobody is afraid of him’’. Long before Buhari assumed office, the Niger Delta people seemed to have resolved to give him a tough time because of the fear of the unknown. Whatever gave them the impression that the president would come with an agenda to decimate them only God knows.
Or are they trying to do to Buhari what Boko Haram did under Jonathan? Of what use will that be? Were they told that the president was Boko Haram’s sponsor? This shows how shallow their thinking is. The Avengers are having a field day destroying our commonwealth in these hard times and even daring the military to a fight. Those who know them should call them to order now because by the time the military takes them on, the story will be different. We all have our grievances against the system, but they cannot be addressed through violence. The earlier the Avengers appreciate this fact the better for them and their backers.
NATION
END
Hmmm…which way Nigeria, which way to go, I love my father land, which way to go….