Niger Delta Avengers is the name of a new group of militants in the
Niger Delta who claim to be different from the former agitators and
militants who operated between 2006 and 2009, largely under the umbrella
of the Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta (MEND).
The title of this group may well serve as the thematic and definitive
umbrella for the resurgence of low-level insurgency in the Niger Delta,
for in the last month alone, more groups have joined the NDA to wage war
against oil installations, the Buhari government, and the Nigerian
state.
These include the Isoko Liberation Movement and the Red Egbesu Water Lions. The groups are working in concert with the Indigenous People of Biafra (IPOB) led by detained Nnamdi Kanu.
The NDA runs a website (created in February 2016) where it posts
news items and statements; and in terms of rhetoric, and activities,
there is no doubt that the various groups are indeed on “a vengeance
mission”. They are angry over what they consider the continued
marginalization of the Niger Delta, the unjust allocation of oil mining
licenses to persons from non-oil producing areas, the hounding of
officials and associates of the Jonathan administration by the present
administration (hence General Torunanawei, coordinator of the Red Egbesu
Water Lions issues a seven-day ultimatum calling for the release of
Colonel Sambo Dasuki, and the de-freezing of the accounts of ex-militant
leader Government Ekpemupolo). There is also some concern about
environmental pollution, the scrapping of the Maritime University at
Okerenkoko and undisguised discontent with the Buhari administration.
More than any of the emergent groups, the Niger Delta Avengers
have used their online resources to articulate the basis of this
vengeance mission in such posts as “Operation Red Economy”, “We shall
do whatever is necessary to protect the Niger Delta interest” and “Keep
your threat to yourself, Mr. President”. Their statements are written in
halting, extremely poor English, but their various strike teams, which
they boast about, have proven to be deadly through recent attacks on oil
infrastructure creating a global oil supply crisis, and bringing down
Nigeria’s daily oil production from 2.2 million barrels to just about
1.4 million.
Shell has had to shut down its Forcados terminal. Chevron’s
Escravos operation has been breached. ENI and Exxon Mobil have declared
“force majeure”. Shell and Chevron are moving their staff out of the
Niger Delta. The avengers claim they are not into kidnapping, or the
killing of people and soldiers, but no one is sure yet about the depth
and extent of this new phase of Niger Delta insurgency, and of course,
the oil and gas multinationals have since learnt not to trust either the
Nigerian government or the criminals who target oil infrastructure to
make political and ethnic statements. But the question is: why
vengeance? The reason this question is important explains the seeming
indifference to the crisis, at least for now, within the larger Nigerian
community and why the avengers have so far been dismissed, to their
dismay, as “empty heads” and “criminals.” Not a few persons have asked:
what else do Niger Delta militants want?
Recall that in 2009, late President Umaru Yar’Adua introduced an
amnesty programme to end Niger Delta insurgency. Two years earlier, the
architects of Nigerian politics had also deemed it necessary to allocate
the Vice Presidency to the Niger Delta, and by sheer providence, the
occupier of that slot, Dr. Goodluck Jonathan soon became Acting
President following the death of his boss, and later in 2011, he won the
Presidential election and became President.
For about seven years, under this programme, introduced by
President Yar’Adua and sustained by President Jonathan, Niger Delta
militants were demobilized and disarmed. The top hierarchy soon became
security consultants to the Federal Government, monitoring pipelines,
and helping to check oil theft. The middle cadre was placed on a monthly
stipend while those who could be trained were sent to technical
colleges and universities in Southern Africa and Eastern Europe. The
militants became rich and gentrified, and with their kinsman in office
as President in Abuja, the people of the Niger Delta began to feel a
sense of ownership and belongingness that no one in that region had felt
since 1960.
But what is now happening clearly shows the limits of the politics
of appeasement that Nigeria has played since independence. No country
can be successfully run on a short-term basis and through the assignment
of tokens to aggrieved parties within the union. It was mere delusion
to have ever imagined that the people of the Niger Delta could ever be
successfully appeased with a pacifying short-term amnesty programme and a
shot at the Presidency. Even under President Jonathan, there were
protests about the distribution of amnesty largesse, and disagreements
among the former militants, who practically relocated to Abuja to take
advantage of their brother’s ascendancy. The quarrel was all about who
got what and it was only a matter of time, before those who felt
short-changed would stage their own drama, which they have now started,
in the hope that they may be luckier this time around and get their own
share of appeasement. This is the sub-text of the deliberate distancing
by the new boys from the old guard of militants.
They seem to have been further provoked by the arrival in Abuja
of “a new Pharaoh who does not seem to know Joseph.” President Muhammadu
Buhari has approved funding and payments under the Niger Delta Amnesty
programme, he has also appointed a Minister of Niger Delta and a Special
Adviser on Niger Delta Amnesty, in addition to extending the amnesty
initiative, beyond the initial December 2015 deadline to December 2017.
But there is no programme of patronage, the type that channels money
into the pockets of Niger Delta militants, warlords or foot-soldiers,
and since Abuja also seems to have become wasteland for the
once-triumphant Niger Deltan, the Jonathan crowd, and the fisherman’s
cap, the informal patronage that turned many Niger Deltans into king’s
men and women, has vanished. The emergent militant groups also have
other selfish reasons why they are angry not just with President Buhari
but also with the Nigerian state, for in the end, after the 2009-2015
period, position, cash and contracts appeasement has not in any way
resolved the core problems of existential and environmental crisis in
the Niger Delta. Nigeria merely postponed the evil day and unless we
deal more forthrightly with the vexatious issues of equity, federalism,
justice and citizenship driving Niger Delta and Biafran nationalism,
those who throw tokens at the problem can only do so in vain.
The bad news is that President Muhammadu Buhari doesn’t seem
to be in a hurry to address these fundamental issues. He probably has
every reason to be angry, and he may even raise such questions as: what
is wrong with these Niger Delta avengers? What exactly do they want to
avenge -their kinsman losing election? Do they think they can blackmail
government even when the amnesty programme has been “magnanimously”
extended? These may sound emotional, but they are serious questions,
signposting how access to power at the centre and survival in that space
has become a victim of deterministic ethnic rivalry. The emerging trend
that whoever becomes President of Nigeria now has to worry about the
possibility of being sabotaged by an aggrieved ethnic group or groups is
dangerous for our democracy.
Recall also that after the 2011 Presidential election, the people
of the Niger Delta while certainly elated about one of their own
emerging as President, were also painfully aware that in the course of
the feverish politics of succession in 2010, leading up to the
nominations for 2011, certain interests and voices from the North had
threatened that should Dr. Jonathan become President, Nigeria would be
made ungovernable for him. And as promised, the Boko Haram threat, which
had been an issue before 2011, soon got worse and from 2011-2015, the
Jonathan administration had to struggle endlessly with overt national
security challenges designed and delivered in the North East, and other
parts of the North. The Boko Haram crisis and the abduction of the
Chibok girls eventually became key negative factors for the Jonathan
campaign in the 2015 Presidential election.
It is also similarly on record that before and during the 2015
elections, certain Niger Delta elements also threatened that should
President Jonathan lose the election, Nigeria would be made ungovernable
for President Buhari. And again as promised, the South East and the
South South, President Jonathan’s main support centres, have thrown up
major security threats since President Buhari won and assumed office.
When governance and politics are thus reduced to a game of thrones,
democracy and sovereignty are endangered. Already the Niger Delta
Avengers have announced a plan to declare a sovereign state of Niger
Delta in October 2016. Nigeria sits on a precarious balance.
There is no justification however, for President Buhari, in
dealing with these challenges, to also play the game of vengeance.
Speaking in China, recently, he directed the military to crush the new
Niger Delta militants and indeed there has been a scaling up of military
operations in the region. A military solution to a crisis such as this,
as has been learnt with the Boko Haram, and much earlier in the Niger
Delta, ultimately proves to be inadequate; instead there should be a
return to the core issues of making Nigeria a country that works for
everyone regardless of extraction – religious or ethnic. President
Buhari is a livestock farmer; it should not be too difficult for him to
understand how the chickens are now going home to roost in the Niger
Delta. In the face of unemployment rate hitting 12.1%, youth
unemployment, 42.24%, the GDP recording a negative growth of -0.36%,
inflation standing at 13.7%, crude oil accounting for 90% of exports and
70% of national revenue, crude oil production dropping to low levels,
and the country facing recession, a foreign exchange and power supply
crisis, and financial insolvency, renewed restiveness in the Niger
Delta, and threats by avengers who want to cut off Nigeria’s key source
of revenue, can only further deepen the people’s agony, and place the
country on danger list.
President Buhari may deal with the impunity and criminality of
the avengers, but Nigeria must address the more ideologically original
parts of their protest, and how particularly, the politics of
appeasement has made the country far more vulnerable than imaginable.
Preventing the country from imploding so dangerously, on so many fronts,
as is currently the case, should be considered a matter of urgent
national importance.
