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Buhari’s archaic approach to Niger Delta problems

08:59 May 23 2016 Niger Delta, Sagbama, Bayelsa, Nigeria

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When eventually they were elected into office, the militancy in the Niger Delta was at its peak. Many analysts had argued that Obasanjo was forced to bring Jonathan into the presidential pairing as a peace offering to the Ijaw militants and their loud and troublesome “father”, Chief Edwin Clark, in place of the more fancied and popular Dr. Peter Odili, the Rivers State governor.
That Obasanjo bowed to the Clark/Ijaw faction of the South-South People’s Assembly (SSPA) rather than the more broad-based pro-Odili faction led by Ambassador Matthew Mbu/Raymond Dokpesi, was seen as an application of common sense. Obasanjo must have realised that ignoring the demands of Clark and his Ijaw militant tribesmen would keep the economic livewire of the nation in the Niger Delta at great risk. The disruptions would never stop, and the economy would continue to suffer.

Today, we are back where we were before Yar’ Adua’s amnesty programme came into effect seven years ago. Our oil production has plummeted from 2.2 to about 1.4 million barrels per day, and the outlook for the future is bleaker still. Unless something is urgently done, all the plans of the Buhari administration to diversify the economy from oil dependence might fail. You can only diversify from oil with oil money. With the gas infrastructure being dismantled with bombings, there will be no gas even to generate power to keep the economy going.
There is a wise old saying popularised by Pirelli Tyres: “Power without control is nothing”. It was illustrated with the photo of a well-muscled sprint athlete poised on his marks but wearing high heels! How can he run? Yar’Adua and Jonathan, as Commanders-in-Chief, partnered with the ex-militants to enable Nigeria exploit our oil resources from the Niger Delta in peace. Buhari has chosen to “crush” them, and in the process, we are unsure where our economy will be in the near future.
Buhari’s approach, to me is archaic and unrealistic. The Niger Delta of today is not the Niger Delta of the 1970s and 1980s when the civil war had just ended and people were living in trepidation of the North and its all-conquering military. The Niger Delta people’s consciousness of their oil and its place in the economic wellbeing of Nigeria and their right to resource control has grown in leaps and bounds. Militarily, they now know where to press the buttons and put the economy in distress. Even if the military succeeds in apprehending and eliminating all the known militant leaders, it is unlikely to guarantee that new ones will not come up and continue pushing the same agenda.

The people of the Niger Delta have become stakeholders in the security of our oil resources in their ancestral homeland. Those who say that the oil resources of the Niger Delta “belong to the North” can continue to daydream. It is either we embrace the people of the Niger Delta as stakeholders in the nation’s oil and gas resources, or we continue to deploy soldiers to harass and intimidate innocent villagers in the creeks with very little to show for it.
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