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Niger Delta Fund Initiative: The Niger Delta Crisis: A region in search of peace
http://www.vanguardngr.com/articles/2002/politics/p509082003.html
Saturday, August 09, 2003
The personalities at the meeting was a pointer to the fact that the issue to be discussed was a grave and serious one. In attendance were Chief James Ibori, the governor of Delta State. Also there was Chief Benjamin Elue, Ibori’s deputy. There was also Professor Turner Isoun, the Minister of Science and Technology, his Police Affairs counterpart Chief Broderick Bozimo and Dr. Abiye Sekibo, Minister for Transport. Other guests in attendance were retired generals, royal fathers as well as Professor Kimse Okoko, the President of Ijaw National Congress (INC). The host was Diepreye Alamieyesegha, governor of Bayelsa state.
All those who attended the meeting of August 6 at the Creek Haven Yenegoa, official residence of the Bayelsa State government have one thing in common: they all hail from the Niger Delta where oil, the soul of Nigeria as a nation is sourced from. The meeting tagged "Stakeholders Meeting" was called to discuss "sea piracy and oil pipeline vandalisation in the Niger Delta". The problem of sea piracy and pipeline vandalisation is the latest direct fall-out of the seemingly intractable problem of criminal neglect of the area as well as environmental degradation occasioned by years of oil exploitation and exploration in the area by successive governments.
The problem of piracy appeared to have grown too hot for the government to handle. In the last few weeks, President Obasanjo has held series of meetings with various segments of the society over the problem of sea piracy. He has met with traditional rulers, the organised private sector, the National Association of Nigerian Students (NANS), market women and the military. In all these meetings, Obasanjo has expressed concern over the problem in the Niger Delta. As attested to by Alamieyesegha, "the Federal Government has lost all patience with the spate of vandalisation against oil installations and is increasingly getting frustrated with measures introduced to curtail the threat".
Alamieyesegha revealed to his stunned audience that "statistics showed that about 300,000 barrels of crude is wasted everyday through the activities of bunkerers and oil pipeline vandals which run into scandalous loss to the national economy of about $3.6 billion annually’, he said. Continuing, Alamieyesegha said "the perpetrators of these heinous crimes against the society are not people from outer space. They are neither wild beasts from our forest, nor are they spirits but people of flesh and blood who live and work among us", he declared.
But like Alamieyesegha and all those who gathered at the meeting know, and like even President Obasanjo also knows, the problem of the Niger Delta did not begin with pipeline vandalisation, neither did it start with sea piracy and bunkering.
And like Alamieyesegha did admit this much when he said: "today, more than ever before, there are more sophisticated weapons in communities and households within the Niger Delta. These weapons are in the hands of the wrong people and are used for wrong reasons. They use them to kill each other". The Bayelsa governor should know. Apart from being the chief security officer of a state, he was once a soldier who was trained at the prestigious Nigerian Defence Academy.
So the question is; why has the issue of the Niger Delta suddenly become so important that the Federal Government has decided to hold meetings with stake holders at Abuja? Why is it that it is when it was realised that Nigeria loses $3.6 billion annually to sea pirates and bunkerers that we now want to turn attention to the Niger Delta? Why is it that for years, the various ethnic groups have been fighting, killing and burning each other’s houses in communal and inter tribal wars which are widely reported in the national media and the government at the centre has behaved as if it is a problem only for the states concerned? Above all how do the poor fishermen and farmers in the creeks of the Niger Delta acquire both the knowledge and contacts in crude oil business such that they are now involved in bunkering? Are the youths of the Niger Delta really behind the crude oil theft being experienced in the area as the government is trying to make us believe?
Already, Alamieyesegha has passed a verdict of guilt on the people of the Niger Delta as being behind the large scale piracy and crude oil theft in the area. During the Yenegoa meeting, the governor said that "ours is a classic case of transferred aggression, but if our youths continue to perpetrate acts of sea piracy, to molest their own brethren and vandalise oil pipelines to press home their point, our detractors are bound to capitalise on this and continue to deny us our legitimate right to self determination".
But more worrisome to the citizens are the bloodletting in the Niger-Delta region and how to stop the killings. If it is not Ijaws versus Urhobo today, it would be Itsekiris versus Ijaws the next day. When will there be an end to these bloody confrontations?
These issues and how to find a lasting solution to the problem of the Niger Delta were what we took to two federal ministers from the area, Chief Broderick Bozimo of Police Affairs and Dr. Roland Oritsejafor, Minister of state for Defence. We also spoke to two prominent leaders from the area, Chief E. K. Clark, the Ijaw leader and Chief Gabriel Mabiaku, the Iyasere of Warri kingdom. They tried to profer solutions to the Warri crisis in particular and the larger problem of the Niger Delta in general.
© 2003. Vanguard Media Ltd.
http://www.earthrights.net/nigeria/news/nigercrisis.html