FG must shun conflict entrepreneurs, says Nsirimovu

Erstwhile chairman, subcommittee on Disarmament, Demobilization and Rehabilitation (DDR) of the Technical Committee on the Niger Delta, Anyakwee Nsirimovu, told KELVIN EBIRI in Port Harcourt, that government should not dialogue with conflict entrepreneurs who may want to capitalize on the situation for personal aggrandizement. 

Some Ijaw elders have warned against government dialoguing with the militants without their involvement. Was this the scenario under late President Umaru Yar’Adua?
The Federal Government should not be dialoguing with any elder at the moment. I think their focus should be those who are blowing up oil pipelines and make oil flow impossible at the moment. I don’t know who and who are behind these attacks. If elders in the Niger Delta are saying they must be involved, then they must have to answer this fundamental question.  Do they know the nitty-gritty of the latest agitations?  Because most of us do not understand why this is happening at this time and who is behind it. For us here, we simply see this as a political thing to retain power in the Niger Delta and to create hell. Those who are politically minded and think they have question to answer and they don’t want the State to get at them, are using this as a means of distraction.

During Yar’Adua, we didn’t have this scenario of elders saying they must be involved in talks for it to be meaningful. There was a fight. There was clear blockage of oil flow in the Niger Delta and people wanted the oil to flow so that Nigeria can grow and get money. And during that time, they needed to get the militants to drop their guns. We needed the militants to buy into the amnesty process offered by the Federal Government and that was the work I did as the chairman of Disarmament, Demobilization and Rehabilitation of the Technical Committee on the Niger Delta. We didn’t see these conflict entrepreneurs then. We had to go to Oporoza, camp 5, met with the leaders of militants and they bought into the amnesty programme. I still have the last document they signed called the ‘the last chance’, and that amnesty process was agreed upon.

Are you suggesting that the elders should be ignored?
Yes. If the elders can look at the Federal Government in the face and say they are our boys, okay. You cannot begin to dialogue on what you don’t know. If the chiefs are saying we sent these boys out and so we should be part of the negotiation, fine. Let them come out openly so that we know what they are dialoguing about. Even the governor of Bayelsa State cannot come and say he wants to be part of this so that they can set an agenda. You don’t set agenda in what you are not in control of. Niger Delta is beyond Ijaw and nobody has been consulted. I mean the other ethnic minorities have not been consulted, even if the Ijaw say they are majority. Nobody has been consulted on what is going on. If these few individuals who I call conflict entrepreneurs are saying that they know why these whole thing is happening, then let them come to the round table and say we sent the boys, so we have to be part of the negotiation. I want them to come into the open, so that Nigerians will know who to negotiate with genuinely. The chief security officers in these key states of the Niger Delta states should take responsibility and should be held responsible for what is happening. Because you cannot be a governor in a state and claim ignorance of what is happening. Then you are not fit to do the job of a governor and to be the chief security of your state. The governors have a responsibility to tell the people of Nigeria what is happening. Investors are running away and the governors should be held accountable for the security breach in their domains.

Some splinter militant groups have emerged recently. MEND claims it is dialoguing with the government, while the Avengers have denied any talks. Which group should government be dealing with at this moment?
There is only one Avenger and some of us can pontificate what Avengers is all about. But immediately you say discuss with Avengers, the chances are that other people will also want to be part of it because they don’t know what the result will be. Is it going be another amnesty or is money going to be shared? So, out of nowhere, MEND has emerged and saying we don’t know the Avengers. I don’t know who is using who. There have been previous agitations. And as members of technical committee on Niger Delta, we insisted that through dialogue, the Niger Delta should be developed. At the end of the day, that is what we need here. It is not about people shooting guns and feeding their pockets. If you dialogue with those directly involved in the current attacks, the chances are that there will be more and more groups coming out and engaging in violent agitations as we are seeing. It won’t stop with Red Egbesu and so on. You will see people from Itsekiri, people from Urhobo. I don’t know if Ikwerre people or Ogba people are willing to also be part of the agitations. So, if those who call themselves elders in Ijaw communities say that we are the authentic people to be discussed with, then, they know where this problem is coming from and Nigeria should deal with them. And of course, if there are dangers emerging, they should be held responsible.

What could have led to the emergence of the Avengers, owing to the fact the amnesty programme was still subsisting?
If you look at the trajectory of the Avengers, they are not kidnapping anybody to make money. Avengers is not collecting crude oil to sell in the high sea to make money. The question that must be answered is where are they getting the motivation to do what they are doing? Taking into account the genesis, of how it all started, the genesis of this whole thing was that Tompolo, having been indicted was asked by a court to come and defend himself. He disappeared. There was no Avengers up till that time. He disappeared and didn’t want to go to court to give an account. He tried to use the court process to counter that. But when he disappeared, then Avengers appeared.

So, what happened? Who is funding the Avengers? Tompolo has kept on denying the Avengers.  Up till today some people don’t know who Gbomo Jomo of MEND is.  It could be same person who is doing the current attacks based on previous experience in the field. The problem is that Nigerian system does not seem to have an effective, military or other intelligence gathering apparatus capable of getting at the root of all these. You have Department of State Security Services (DSS) people all over the place. You have the police and military everywhere, yet they don’t seem to know what is happening. Now, Avengers is not collecting oil to sell. Nobody in the Niger Delta, whether youths or elders will want to go and blow things up for free. So, who is that person that wants to create havoc here? Who is running away from corruption charges? Who wants to retain power in the Niger Delta through barrels of the gun? If the system wants to deal with the unrest in the Niger Delta, it should go ahead. If you dialogue with Avengers today, another group will come up tomorrow and we cannot continue to live like that. In this whole thing, if you look at Avengers from the beginning, Avengers never had any agenda. If you create Niger Delta Republic today, there will be war in Niger Delta. If Niger Delta people want to secede, there has to be complete negotiation, so that every ethnic nationality has to be carried along in the self-determination movement and you have to start through discussion and not the guns alone.

What went wrong with amnesty programme?
The last administration did not follow strictly the process recommended by our committee. What they did was to monetise the programme by giving people money. Even the rehabilitation process did not go down well. Most of those who carried guns have not been rehabilitated till this moment.  People felt in government then that you could just give people money and that is the end of the matter. But, as we see today, that is not the end of the matter.

How can peace be worked out in the Niger Delta?
The clear option for the government in the Niger Delta is that they should engage in activities that develop the entire region. We are talking about infrastructure and human development. I think that that is the fundamental requirement for this government to do. If they think that dialogue is the option, there is nothing wrong in a democracy to discuss with anybody. Fundamentally, the constitution says that we are all equal under the law and right now we are still under one federation. There is no reason why some people should be above the law. So law and order must be maintained in the Niger Delta. If there are grievances, they should be channeled through the appropriate channels. I said this, not discarding that there are problems here. I say this because agitations had taken place in the Niger Delta. The whole world over is conversant with what those agitations are all about.  And decisions have been taken and amnesty was one of the decisions. But individuals’ pockets have been enriched. Few individuals’ wellbeing, their estates have improved remarkably at the expense of the people and their livelihood. The creeks have remained the same. There is no infrastructural development. Infrastructural development like the East-West Road, the Coast Road and others, none happened. But individuals who called themselves militants became richer than that the ordinary people. The last report out of the Niger Delta since the Willinks report is that of the Niger Delta Technical Committee submitted to late President Umaru Yar’Adua. The government should look at that report. It was out of that that the ministry of Niger Delta Affairs was established. Government should use this instrument to begin to develop the Niger Delta. As long as you have unfed stomachs in the Niger Delta, merchants of violence will continue to use these people to create havoc.