Bakassi Strike Force... yet another militant group is born
Suddenly, militancy which has been out of fashion in the last six years, is all the rage in the Niger Delta.
The emergence of the so-called
‘Avengers’ has unleashed a rash of would-be liberators of the peoples of
the South-South zone. One group is called ‘Ultimate Warriors of Niger
Delta’, another goes by the moniker ‘Niger Delta Liberation Force
(NDLF).’
Another band dedicated to avenging a
different kind of loss has just popped up. They are called the ‘Bakassi
Strike Force.’ Their mission is simple: the Nigerian government must
recover the Bakassi peninsula ceded to Cameroon or face the wrath of the
group.
To send shivers down our collective
spines they’ve sent out the obligatory photo of gunmen covered in body
paint dancing in a war canoe.
So what does it take to prosper in this new growth industry? At best a Twitter or Facebook account and you are good to go!
You can blow up an isolated pipeline in
the backwaters of Bayelsa and the sound of your triumph would be
amplified worldwide by a thousand screaming front page headlines.
It doesn’t matter whether your armoury
of missiles exists only on Facebook with your name creatively
‘Photoshopped’ on them; be assured that your threats would be helpfully
ventilated on social media; or by traditional media desperate to outdo
social media for shock and sensation.
Which is just great as it solidifies the
notion that in today’s Nigeria, only the gunman, rebel or outlaw gets
the attention of the powers-that-be.
And so, barely a week after it rolled
out what seemed like an armada of warships, and set a stream of fighter
jets cartwheeling through the skies over the Nigeria Delta, the
tough-talking Federal Government has been quickly brought to heel to
‘negotiate’ with the militants who have successfully disrupted the
country’s crude oil production.
Such is the vulnerability of this nation
which in 55-years has contrived to put all its eggs in one basket. Now a
band of characters it cannot control is stomping on that basket to
devastating effect.
Whether the hurried talks of the last
few days between Vice President Yemi Osinbajo, service chiefs and
governors of the South South zone were borne out of genuine conviction,
pressure from world powers or simple realisation that the petroleum cash
tap was being effectively turned off by the hardline militants, is not
really important. In any conflict it is always cheaper to talk.
But very rarely do you find an early
consensus for dialogue. Parties in most conflicts always want to
negotiate from a position of strength, or talk only when they have been
virtually brought to their knees.
It is no surprise, therefore, that the
Niger Delta Avengers (NDA) have spurned the olive branch offered by the
government – signalling their intent by taking out a couple more oil
production facilities.
At this point the militants have their
tactics spot on. Their attacks put the government under tremendous
pressure as every facility destroyed results in lost revenue and
torpedoes budgetary projections.
The government, too, would be frustrated
by the fact that rather than being intimidated, the militants have
reinforced that old belief that you can’t fight insurgents using
conventional military tactics. That is why the jets roaming the Niger
Delta skies haven’t been able to stop the bombings.
Which is not to say that the vandals can
prevail against the might of the Nigerian military in the medium or
long term. We’ve been here before. In the first year of the late Umaru
Yar’Adua’s presidency, the amnesty deal was only procured after a
lightening military offensive that destroyed an extensive web of
militant camps in the creeks.
The impact of that military action was
terrible on local communities – turning thousands of terrified villagers
into refugees. No one knows how many lives were lost but the outcry
from Ijaw leaders forced the hitherto recalcitrant militants to reach a
deal with the government.
Hopefully, the window for dialogue that
has been opened would be exploited by the Avengers despite their
bluster. But, again, that might just be a fond wish.
Anyone who has followed what the NDA has
had to say about its actions and mission would have noticed an
evolution in their rhetoric. Their latest statement has the
sophistication of something written by a professor or some seasoned
activist.
“We are not like some of these
personalities who run champagne parties or turn Rivers State Government
House into a house patrimony of god-sons and prebendalism,” it states.
This is a far cry from some of the
barely literate stuff they dished out at the outset. Still, the overall
message is no different from what their forerunners like the Movement
for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta (MEND) trumpeted. They want
control of the oil pumped from beneath their feet and
self-determination.
I would gladly line up behind any
initiative that guarantees that the wealth of this longsuffering region
trickles down to the people. But while the NDA talk a good game, I am
very suspicious of them and their fast-breeding spawn.
Let’s start with their name. What’s in a
name you ask? Plenty, I say. It tells you so much and speaks to their
mindset. A mission of vengeance is not ennobling, edifying, redemptive
or positive in any sense. Who wants to be hitched to people whose raison d’etre is destruction without a roadmap to some future Eldorado?
These are not some latter day Robin Hood
reincarnations – robbing rich, oppressive Nigeria to redistribute to
the poor denizens of the creeks.
They are no different from the class of
warlords who prospered under former President Goodluck Jonathan while
their erstwhile foot soldiers remained pauperised.
Speak with some of these ex-militants
who supposedly signed up for the amnesty programme and they would regale
you with tales of how only a fraction of the stipend due to them ever
reached their hands because along the way their ‘leaders’ and sundry
middlemen had creamed off a generous portion.
Today’s emergency militants and their
sponsors have seen that the fastest path to fantastic wealth in the
Niger Delta isn’t through education or enterprise, but by taking up arms
albeit in the name of the region but ultimately to feather their own
nests.
That is why you won’t hear them talking about serious developmental and environmental initiatives but the sharing of oil blocs.
Some of the militant groups are
demanding that 60% of ownership of oil blocs be allocated to persons
from the South-South zone. On the face of it this would appear to be one
of the issues that should be easy to resolve. I believe the government
has indicated its willingness to revisit the issue of the oil blocs with
a view to ensuring more transparency and equity in their allocation.
How I wish that ownership of oil blocs were the solution to mass poverty in the South-South region. Unfortunately, it isn’t.
The advertised data concerning present
ownership of the blocs shows that that they are unduly skewed in favour
of prominent individuals from the north. But what advantage has it
conferred on the region? It remains the poorest section in the country –
behind in all the measurable development indices.
What about the few southerners who own
oil blocs? How have they been an advertisement for how ownership of
these valuable assets can be a tool against poverty and a catalyst for
developing their backward communities?
If anything, elite greed has ensured
that the billions funnelled into the Niger Delta under existing revenue
sharing arrangements have disappeared into the pockets of so-called
leaders of the region who will not mind funding militancy as long as it
protects their interests.
If truly the Avengers and their ilk are
concerned about the despoliation of the Niger Delta how come they didn’t
let loose their vengeance all the years Goodluck Jonathan was in power
and the ‘oppression’ of the region by ‘Nigeria’ continued unabated?
Did the issues they would now have us
believe has driven them to arms disappear all those years only to
reappear magically in the last 12 months after Muhammadu Buhari became
president? Is this not just about the fact that the spigot of cash has
been turned off?
I believe that the way out of the Niger
Delta crisis is not to return to the old, discredited practice of paying
protection money to warlords and gunmen to buy an illusory peace. Pay
off this batch and another set would emerge with even more outrageous
demands.
I am all for engaging the communities in
dialogue but I am also for terminating the criminality that promotes
the wrong values in our region.
What is unfolding in the creeks is very
grave and once again the government could be repeating the same mistakes
made by Jonathan early in the Boko Haram insurgency. Back then many
called on him to take a tough stance and stamp out the burgeoning
violence. But he kept repeating the politically-correct rhetoric about
not “waging war against our people.”
By election year 2015 “his people” had
evolved into Frankenstein monsters – so much so that six weeks to the
presidential polls, with his seat under serious threat, the peacenik
president morphed into a hawkish commander-in-chief parading from place
to place posing for photographs in army fatigues.
I understand that some South-South
governors have been making the same noises about not being “at war with
our people.” I beg to differ.
This is a shooting, bombing war against
the nation’s economic interests. It is affecting what comes to Bayelsa
and other states in the region. The militants have the nation by the
jugular and some people think they are in a warm, cuddly embrace!
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