Following the expiration of the deadline and air strikes by the Nigerian military on barges used for oil bunkering, the group threatened to unleash what it calls ‘dark February’ – a series of sabotage operations intended to cripple oil production and supply in the region. On Saturday 16th of February, MEND militants kidnapped nine expatriate subcontractors working with Shell during a series of well choreographed attacks on several oil installations. Shell, in its response has shut down operations in the western delta area. Global oil prices are skyrocketing in response to both instability in the gulf and the escalation in the Niger Delta. The NNPC has disclosed that attacks on pipelines will threaten domestic supply. The specter is one of a fuel scarcity that could cripple the nation’s economy. It is still early days but February is already beginning to darken. MEND’s activities thus far represent nothing less than a failure of the military option employed by the federal government. The keys to resolving the situation in the region remain in the realms of constructive politics and dialogue, not violence. Should the government persist in its use of military force it will undoubtedly trigger off a full scale insurgency. Profiles of MEND in the media do not suggest merely a rag tag bunch of brigands. On the contrary, they appear a highly disciplined well organized group. From a purely martial point of view, a military solution is not viable in the delta because it would pit a conventional army against a guerilla force in difficult terrain. History has shown that conventional armies tend to flounder against guerilla forces operating in a terrain that they are familiar with as borne out by America’s misadventure in Vietnam, Soviet Union’s disastrous standoff with the Mujaheddin in Afghanistan and more currently the engagements of coalition forces in Iraq with insurgents. In all these instances the numerical and technological superiority of the conventional forces were undermined by the stealth and territorial familiarity of the guerilla movements. Operating in a complex maze of creeks and waterways, MEND has what all effective guerilla groups enjoy- familiarity with a difficult terrain and therefore territorial superiority. Continued military aggression by Nigerian forces in the delta will only stoke the embers of Ijaw micronationalism and anti-Nigerian sentiment which are already running high. And then the nation could find itself fighting a second and even more costly civil war. Secondly the presence of so many oil installations in the area means that the collateral damage both in human, ecological and infrastructural terms would be very high. Resolving the Niger delta crisis must begin with a recognition of the fact that the grievances of the people of the area are legitimate. The federal government must also accept a chunk of the responsibility for allowing the situation to escalate to this extent. The emergence of MEND is only the current stage of an evolutionary process that dates back to Isaac Boro’s twelve day revolution and more recently Ken Saro Wiwa and the Ogoni nine. Saro Wiwa’s Movement for the Survival of the Ogoni people (MOSOP) represented an ideas centered approach to articulating the problems of the Niger delta. The Abacha government refused to engage Saro-Wiwa on the platform of ideas and instead murdered him and then sent troops in to the delta to pacify the region. Sadly the Obasanjo administration has not departed too far from the Nigerian state’s culture of belligerence against people with legitimate grievances. In any social confrontation, it is the stronger force that determines the medium of engagement. The government must realize that by its actions it chose violence as the tool of engagement. When dovish idealists are scorned at the table of dialogue, then surely there can only be recourse to extremism. Groups like MEND represent the ascendancy of extremist hawks who believe in the utility of violence in dealing with a recalcitrant Nigerian state. Obasanjo’s classification of MEND as a terrorist group is dangerously similar to Russian President’s Vladimir Putin’s labeling of Chechen fighters as such. In a world at war with terrorism, tagging a movement a terrorist group is a license to unleash violence and unspeakable violations of human rights on a people. This is as true of Russian troops in Chechnya as it is of Nigerian troops in the Niger delta. A war on terror is a simplistic and inaccurate definition of the conflict in the delta and it will become a cover for bare faced repression. They say that one man’s terrorist is another’s freedom fighter and there is no doubt that the Ijaw communities that have borne the brunt of Nigerian military force see the militants as freedom fighters. The polemics of liberation or terrorism are however irrelevant. What is important is that MEND has by its actions employed violence to gain leverage and attention and is now in a position to negotiate. The government should immediately focus its attentions on how to return this conflict to the level of dialogue. The fundamental issues are those of resource control and inequitable sharing of revenue within the Nigerian federation. But the subtext of the conflict is the troubled trilateral relationship between the Federal Government, the Multinational oil companies and the oil producing communities. The Niger delta crisis is in a sense an offspring of the symbiotic relationship between the government and big business. For several decades the Nigerian state has allied with multinational corporations to plunder the delta. The spectacle of Nigerian security forces armed and equipped by Shell, for example, bears out this point. This in itself is only a part of a global culture of exploitation in which multinationals partner with often despotic governments to plunder their natural resources in a scenario that repeats itself across the third world. More fundamentally an examination of Nigerian history will uncover the fact that colonialism in Nigeria started out as a commercial venture. The Nigerian state itself was spawned from the Royal Niger Company, the first multinational operation in Nigeria. This is crucial to understanding the character of the Nigerian state in its handling of the Niger Delta and the nation as a whole. It also explains the arrogance of the multinational corporations operating in the area. Why have these companies remained in the delta despite the restive population, the social discontent and the potential for a civil conflagration? Why has the federal government failed to seriously take up these companies on the issue of social responsibility and reparations for the decades of ecological degradation in the area? Why do the oil companies prefer to pay ransoms for their workers kidnapped and held hostage by militant youth rather than embark on a region wide community development program which they can certainly afford? Why have the oil companies failed to invest in improving commercial-communal relations in the area? It is possible that a shrewd financial calculation by these companies has established that is cheaper to arm Nigerian forces against their own country men and to pay piecemeal ransoms to kidnappers than to pay the full price for their operations in the Niger delta. Although Nigeria generally has a lax regulatory environment that allows foreign investors to get away with murder, the relationship between the government and the multinational oil companies is an unholy marriage. The Chevron $10.8 billion scam disclosed in July 2005 by tax accounts engaged by the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) is symptomatic of the sort of relationship that subsists between the multinational companies and the Nigerian state. A typical aspect of multinational operations in third world countries is the compromise of key government officials and of whole institutions to in effect allow these corporations a measure of sovereignty in those nations. Nigeria is no different. Multinational corporations have demonstrated an unhealthy influence on the government’s handling of the Niger delta. This is what makes them an entirely legitimate target for the long simmering anger of the denizens of the delta. In order to guarantee the flow of much needed crude from Nigeria and the security of their investments in the area, western governments have often been complicit in Nigeria’s poor handling of the Niger delta. Thus the Nigerian people have been sacrificed on the altars of strategic economic interests, that is, Mammon by another name. This in essence is what the militants in the Niger delta are up against. The relationship between the federal government and the oil producing communities has been equally unstable over the years. The Niger delta Development Board was established in 1962 to address the region’s unique developmental needs. The Oil Mineral Producing Areas Development Commission (OMPADEC) was established in 1992 by the then military president Babangida. Like the rest of the Nigerian system, it was run aground by cronyism, corruption and poor funding. The Obasanjo’s administration created the Niger Delta Development Commission (NDDC) but it is hamstrung by the same problems which derailed its defunct precursors and also by the fact that the Niger delta crisis has escalated beyond whatever remedies posed by piecemeal measures by the federal government. Without addressing the key issue of resource control, the creation of agencies such as the NDDC amounts merely to expanding an already bloated federal bureaucracy. In fairness, the Obasanjo administration has done well by instituting the 13% derivation formula but has fallen short of the hands on approach needed to deal with the entirety of the crisis and has badly undermined the much needed good standing with the people by its often hasty resort to military force. The issue of resource control borders directly on our dysfunctional federal arrangement. The Nigerian federation is suffering from serious structural glitches which in their aggregate effect situate government at a remote distance from the people. The consequence is alienation and angst percolating through repressed communities until a violent reaction becomes all but inevitable. The same questions posed by the crisis in the Niger delta are essentially asked everywhere across the polity modulated only in degree of urgency: how do we bring government closer to the people at the grass roots? We need greater devolution of powers from the center to the states and to the local governments. The people of the delta and of Nigeria as a whole only desire a sense of control over their development and their destiny. Having said all this and despite the prominence given to the ill configured structure of our federation, it would be a grave mistake for us to chalk this down as a systemic problem. To be sure there are systemic failures caused by glitches in our constitution but this is not the whole story. For all the gremlins bedeviling our system, personal moral and leadership failures have played a great, if not greater role in the Niger delta crisis. In November 2004, the Federal Ministry of Finance released figures from its allocations to state and local governments. Between June 1999 and July 2004 the nine oil producing states received a total of approximately 887 billion naira from the federation account. Bayelsa received 125.911 billion naira while Delta State received 207.205 billion naira. These figures exclude allocations to the local governments. Allocations under Obasanjo’s government have improved significantly since 1999 due to the revised revenue formula and the surge in crud oil prices world wide. As at today, the region has received in excess of 1 trillion naira. In view of the developmental disaster in the Niger delta, the state governments’ handling deserves greater scrutiny. The tragedy in the delta was not authored only by the federal government. Considering the fugitive flight of Plateau state Governor Joshua Dariye and the escape artistry of former Bayelsa Governor DSP Alamyiesiegha, and the alleged pecuniary pastimes of some other Nigerian governors, it would be true to say that the Niger delta people have been failed above all by their own leaders. OMPADEC derailed while sons of the South- south zone were at the helm. For years even under military rule, ministerial oversight of Nigeria’s petroleum and energy sector was apparently conceded to the zone. State governors from that zone have distinguished themselves only by their sporadic lamentations of federal neglect while failing to give an account of their leadership especially given the considerable sums that they have received. DSP Alamyiesiegha had cast himself as a champion of resource control before his prodigious proclivities for executive larceny were publicly exposed. It is a salient commentary on the quality of leadership in the zone that the most progressive state development wise is Cross River State which is non oil producing. Civil society must also share in the blame for failing to direct scrutiny on these state governments while the governors benefited from the diversion created by civil society’s cheap federal government bashing. Perhaps if the state governments were subjected to the same scrutiny as the Federal Government, they might have been compelled to perform. But it doesn’t end there for there are really no simple answers to the catastrophe in the delta. How did Alamyiesiegha and his non performing counterparts attain political power in the Niger delta states to begin with? They did so as part of a diabolically efficient machine designed to achieve political power nationwide at any and all costs even if that included subverting the electoral process with vote manipulation and outright brigandage. For instance, Rivers State recorded a factually and humanly impossible one hundred percent voter turnout during the 2003 elections. Militant cult leaders such as Asari Dokubo and Ateke Tom emerged from the cauldron of political violence ignited by political functionaries in the South-south zone. They were the foot soldiers deployed to establish beachheads of political dominance in the zone. Electoral manipulation by godfathers and kingpins at the state and local levels are part of the Augean substructure of a discredited political establishment. After the elections, these bands of youths armed to the teeth with no other political objectives turned their guns on each other in bloody turf wars. Later on they joined with gusto in the Niger delta ‘struggle’ exploiting a burgeoning kidnap industry for financial gain. Obasanjo famously referred to these elements as “rascals” at the time of his first negotiation with the Dokubo’s Niger Delta Volunteer Force (NDVF). In truth, the federal government’s poor handling of the crisis has allowed a legitimate agitation for self determination and resource control to become entwined with the activities of criminal elements with far less than scrupulous motives. The problem now is that the criminality of these youthful “rascals” is part of a medley of crime being played by federal and state governments and the oil multinationals. The federal government must understand that by its far from stellar track record in the region, it has lost both a lot of moral authority and political capital. It now has to work hard to regain these without the typical resort to grandstanding and pontification. For several years, a low intensity conflict has been brewing in southern Nigeria. Considering the pattern of civil conflagrations across the West African sub-region, further escalation of the situation must be avoided. The alchemy of guns, cash and oil in the Niger delta has dangerous implications for our national and sub-regional security. As a gesture of good faith to jumpstart the peace process, the Federal Government must now initiate a demilitarization of the Niger delta by withdrawing its troops from communities save for security detachments assigned to oil installations. The Niger delta should be declared a federal disaster zone. A geo-economic rapid relief plan should be designed to fast track infrastructural development in the area. The plan should be executed in collaboration with state governments, the NDDC, and with the oversight of respected elder statesmen from the zone. These elder statesmen would constitute a critical leadership trust that would bring their moral influence to bear on the process of rehabilitation of the delta. Respected figures such as Gamaliel Onosode and Felix Ohiwerei could be involved in such a leadership trust. The initiative must be a protem effort the object of which is not to create more bureaucracy. The second tier of these reforms is equally important. The rehabilitation of the Niger delta should provide a template for restructuring the relations between the government and foreign multinationals. In particular, we need to see the strict enforcement of regulatory protocols such as the Nigerian Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative (NEITI). It would be gratifying to see these companies being compelled to pay compensations to the communities affected by ecological damage stemming from their commercial activities. It would be truly a new day for governance in Nigeria when those directly responsible for destroying the fisheries and farming economy are prosecuted for economic crimes. In the longer term, however the issues of devolution of powers and greater resource allocation are matters that can only be pursued through political engagement. Some realism is necessary here. The people of the South-south must realize that their problems will not be solved simply by having one of their own as president. Part of the deficiency of our federal structure is the fixation on the presidency as a holy grail for the geo-political zones. A South -south presidency would still be unable to decree an increment of revenue allocation or even greater powers for state governments by fiat. These outcomes can only be attained through political processes. Finally, the true tragedy of the resource control issue is that human resources are being expended wastefully in a conflict over what is essentially a wasting resource. When we see youths killing and being killed in this conflict let us remember that human resources, the ultimate form of capital for the development of a national enterprise, are being wasted. In the process of resolving the Niger delta crisis, we should make effort to restore hope to the restive youths and show them that the future is worth living for.
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