Anyakwee

Militancy Not the Problem, Governance is

I listened to Lt. Col Sagir Musa, the Public Relation Officer of the Joint Military Task Force, Operation Flush III, emotional outburst a couple of days ago on television, and I thought, this officer and gentleman is directing his anger at the wrong target. The JTF PRO was visibly angry that militants had attacked and killed two of his men unprovoked. The question is were they really unprovoked, taking into account the festering frustration that is the Niger Delta today? He sounded a direct warning as instructed by his superior , to the effect that any other attempt on his men, will be met with inescapable maximum response. As I watched him and reflected on his emotion laden speech, I thought to myself, that if the energy is properly directed, that things could change for the better in the region.
The fact is whether we like it or not, as long as the Niger Delta remain the popular excuse rightly or wrongly, for the mayhem that is currently taking place on both sides of the divide soldiers, governments and militants; and indeed, as long as the decrepit State refuses to remove the symptom of the glaring disease, the treacherous violations against the people, militants, soldiers and innocent bystanders will continue unabated. Governments should therefore, in my view, be the subject of reminder of voiding the spill of the blood of our innocents including our soldiers in their quest for primitive greed and utter bad governance.
Soldiers too, must recognize that in this civilization, simply obeying orders of commanders or state executives, does not and cannot exculpate them in due course of the heinous gross and attested human rights violations that is taking place daily in the region whether the situation in the region is criminally tagged internal disturbance, or better understood as a state of conflict-war, that the state is refusing to recognize as such for obvious implications. For the avoidance of doubt, communities and peoples have and continue to suffer internal displacement and starvation, which could graduate into a refugee situation shortly, no matter how much the state try to hide the reality of what is happening.
Soldiers and militants lost in this battle are our own flesh and blood. Some of us have soldiers as brothers, sisters, father, uncle and cousins. There are soldiers of Niger Delta origin, plenty of them. But AK47 bullets in the field of battle hardly discriminate on who to render lifeless. The reverse is also the case when we turn to militants. We must all begin to interrogate for clarity purposes, the reason for what has been happening in the Rivers state and beyond. Consistently referring to the actors as criminals, that soldiers trained and fed with tax payer's money should fight to submission, on its own is a criminal act. This line of propaganda have not sold and cannot sell. Armed robbers or other forms of criminals gangsterism, do not build camps, quarter themselves and acquire weapons of human destruction in any nation, and wait for soldiers and other law enforcement officials to come and dislodge them. The JTF PRO, and power drunk leaders of the region, knows this very well, and I guess, that is why even in his hard pres conference presentation, he also recognized that the chaps in the creeks waging this battle against the state, are our relations, brothers and fellow citizens no matter the distance or blood separation who ought not to be the primary object of destruction by a professionally trained military force.
Something therefore, must be responsible for almost every Army Chief in recent past, to have recommended that, military action on its own, will exacerbate rather than resolve the Niger Delta crisis. But in an environment of impunity, where the object of illegitimate administration is aimed at elimination of the truth by all means, to give a lee way for their own brigandage, such advice from experienced military Chiefs like General Ogomudia and Aziza amongst others, must fall on deaf ears. Our Administrators, as ever, believe that they can buy their way out of every difficult situation with unaccountable windfall from oil resource flow, using deliberate state policy to slaughter, starve , impoverish and degrade their fellow citizens. State and their soldiers ought to appreciate now the widespread recognition within Africa and the international community that peace and development are fundamentally intertwined; that as long as recurrent conflicts continue to threaten stability, development will remain illusory. And that days are far gone, when states and leaders can use military action to force, intimidate, blackmail, horse-whip, genuinely aggrieved sections of their society into line.
Soldiers should appreciate the debilitating fact that the peoples and communities of the Niger Delta region have endured for over 50 years a miserable life of oppression and suppression, deliberately inflicted upon them, not by an external colonial force, but by the Nigerian state. During the dictatorship of General Ibrahim Babangida who seized power in 1985 and terrorized Nigeria until 1993, as much as $12.2 billion in oil revenues disappeared into thin air. Babangida consciously worked to institutionalize corruption as a tool of political control. General Abacha who succeeded him stole between one and three billion dollars of oil money during his four year war of terror against Nigerians. Nigeria's 36 state governments received more than $35.6billion (over N4.6 trillion) in federal government allocations between May 1999 and August 2006, while the 774 Local Government Councils, were allocated an additional $23.4 billion (more than N3 trillion) by same federal government over the same period. Average federal monthly allocations to both state and local governments from the region have been steadily increasing since then.
These vast increases in state and local revenues have not led to progress in combating extreme poverty or to successful government efforts to provide for the progressive realization of the socio-economic rights of the people to an acceptable level of basic health and education services. The revenues continue to be lost to corruption with impunity. The head of Nigeria's Independent Corrupt Practices and Other Related Offences Commission (ICPC), once said that corruption at the local government level is “rampant.” The former Executive Chairman of the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission, Mallam Nuhu Ribadu, went further to say that the conduct of many local government officials “is not even corruption. It is gangsterism. It is organised crime.”
Precisely for this reason, we have the grinding poverty that afflicts the populations of the Niger Delta region. A 2006 UNDP report had described the Niger Delta Human Development situation as “appalling” and stated that the region was unlikely to meet any of the Millenium Development Goal targets, other than school enrolment, by 2015 “or anytime soon after.” Infant mortality in the rural communities of the core Niger Delta region is higher than in any other part of Nigeria, yet the region is the heart of the oil industry, the driving force behind the Nigerian economy. The peoples and communities of the region have also had to cope with the environmental impacts of a poorly regulated oil industry that engage in substandard methods of operation.
The network of oil pipelines that crisscross the region's maze of creeks and mangrove swamps record hundreds of oil spills that often destroy farmland and waterways. Oil multinationals have continued the environmentally harmful practice of flaring excess natural gas despite repeated promises to phase it out. This and other harmful practices by oil companies that hail from 'civilized democracies' have led and continue to lead to series of health problems and have made it extremely difficult to earn a living out of the God given land and waters. There has been a deliberate conspiracy between the federal government and the oil companies to abuse, impoverish and marginalize the populations of the region in the past 50 years.
In 2004, Nigeria's 36 states received a combined total of just under $6 billion in transfers from the federal government; nearly one-third of that total went to four major oil-producing states of Akwa-Ibom, Bayelsa, Delta and Rivers. The revenues accruing to same states has more than doubled since then. The state governments generally failed to translate their new found windfall into any real effort to combat poverty, improve health care, roads, education or meet their human rights obligations to their peoples. Instead soldiers are brought in to replace bread and butter with bullets, horse-whips and stone. The human toll exacted by the breakdown of governance in the region has been just as dramatic as the sheer scale of the stealing of the peoples monies has perpetuated extreme poverty. This is more true in Rivers State more than anywhere else. The situation in Rivers stands out by sheer reason of the amounts that had flowed and continue to flow in huge quantum, with no positive impacts. Ex-governor Odili left the state and its people worse than he met in eight years of evil governance. The matter is further compounded because those who are running the state today, are not significantly different in much measure from those who ran it in the past eight years, without the mandate of the people, no matter how much they try to disguise their antecedents.
Some part of the stolen wealth are used to proliferate gangs, arms and violence to engage in war politics, and at the end soldiers are employed wittingly or unwittingly to come and dislodge and kill, when politicians find them heady or no longer useful, or too powerful to control. Let us all get it into our small and big heads that the peoples of the region have gone through hell, tolerated and beard so much, and their reaction have been late in coming. The question in view of the forgoing should be asked: who really are the criminals in the region? The state politicians who use violence to gain power positions, then steal the lot that is meant for massive development of the area and its peoples; the federal government that has deliberately abandoned its responsibilities to the peoples of the region, inspite of what the Willink Commission Report on Minorities says; or the alternative voices expressed in different forms in the region that insist on a better deal for the people who are on the verge of extermination? Why did Nigeria not listen to the peaceful voice of Ken Saro-Wiwa, rather than judicially assassinating him? Why is Nigeria concerned now that there is some collective drive towards violence? Why can't the states dialogue rather than kill its own souls?
Soldiers do know very well that those who carry guns under the situation in the region, must use them, sometimes carelessly. Soldiers supporting the illegitimacy of the moment, perhaps by reason of the fact, that part of the resources that leaders of the region have sworn would not reach the people for their improvement, but used their comfort and welfare, should know that such support cannot possibly work, because some soldiers too feel the innate pain of the region. What is required is soldiers defending their professionalism and its ethics, by way of getting the dictators in civilian apparel to appreciate the fact that there is an intolerable festering and condemnable massive injustice against the people, staring us all on the face. Treat the glaring injustice, like the world before you treated slave trade, the guns, the agitations, the camps, the negative criticism, unnecessary spilling of Nigerian blood, whether those of soldiers or civilians or militants will be spared.
For the state to discharge its legitimate functions in the region, force, violence, soldiers and other arms of law enforcement agencies must not play a role in the elections of future leaders. For civil society in its broadest sense to flourish and for the private sector to function effectively, a system of good governance is required that allows stakeholders to play their respective roles to their full potential. Good governance is required to ensure that Niger Delta's social and economic priorities are based on the needs of society as a whole and that a broad-based stakeholders' participation is facilitated in the economic and political affairs of the land. Common sense and political will, should urgently replace emotional outburst of a fine military gentleman Col Sagir Musa, guns and bullets. The war against injustice, is a war for all the oppressed, not some of the oppressed. Majority of Nigerians, not just the region are consciously oppressed and suppressed. Let us overcome. Morning comes.      

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anyakwee@ihrhl-ng.org

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