Date Published: 03/18/10

Mend’s Warri Bombing: Another Security Gaffe And Price Of Uduaghan’s Callousness By Ifeanyi Izeze

When the Delta State Governor, Dr Emmanuel Uduaghan callously said MEND was a mere media creation that existed only in cyber space he must have received from his carry-go audience a very loud applause for his bravado and political wizardry. But that was all politics. And His Excellency now knows better that there is a clear and very sharp divide between political talks and ‘focused lawlessness especially when it involves proving a point.’

How else can anybody imagine that the chief security officer of Delta state despite the fact that he was clearly warned ahead of time outrightly ignored or rather down-played what was an obvious security threat capable of claiming the lives of everybody in attendance at the venue of the conference.

The Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta (MEND) about an hour before commencement of the conference had sent out alerts that it has successfully breached security at the venue of the Vanguard organized and Delta State Government –sponsored post amnesty conference billed to hold inside the Government House Annex. The group even went ahead to disclose that it had planted bombs in and around the venue. Few minutes to the explosion, the group again warned that the threat was genuine.

This is an extract from the warning issued by MEND: “Thinking of no better way to announce our continued presence in the Niger Delta to Mr Uduaghan, operatives of MEND today March 15, 2010, successfully breached the security at the Delta state government house in Warri and planted three explosive devices in and around this compound which is the venue of the Vanguard Post Amnesty Dialogue organised by the Vanguard newspaper. These devices will be detonated remotely.

“In our usual effort to prevent the loss of innocent life, the Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta advises the immediate evacuation of the the Government House annex Warri and its immediate surroundings up to the Delta state Broadcasting Corporation.

“The time given for this evacuation before the detonation of the first bomb is thirty (30) minutes which will elapse by 1130 hrs Nigerian time. The primary school bordering the government house annex should be evacuated immediately! The first bomb will be detonated at exactly 1130 hrs.  We will thereafter advise on the other devices planted within and around the venue of the vanguard newspaper organised and Delta state sponsored conference. Organisers and participants at this jamboree will ignore this warning at their peril. People must not remain in their cars and attempt to drive their cars and maintain safe distance from all cars and the area.” 

What other security report would Gov Uduaghan have needed to avert this terrible gaffe and disgrace? Which would have been better or rather more honourable, to delay/ postpone the conference and avoid this embarrassment or use bone-face and at the end be disgraced? Of course, the conference was at the end of the day, still postponed. Supposing the bomb actually exploded right at the centre of the conference venue, could you imagine the quality lives that could have been lost just because the governor thinks his pride was far more important than the early warning and genuine threat of disaster that could have claimed quality lives?

Meanwhile, this sad incident has again called to question the role and effectiveness of the JTF and the Mobile Police Anti-Terror Squad deployed in Delta State and the Niger Delta region to restore hope and actual security. Where were the State Security Service operatives? How did the bombers succeed in transporting and detonating their explosives so close to the Governor’s Office at a time when these security agencies were expected to be at highest alert to give maximum security to the governors, top Federal Government officials at the programme and other distinguished dignitaries? Where is the intelligence community of the various security agencies?

It was rather disgusting that most comments on the Warri incident were mere emotional outbursts and political babblings. How does anybody expect MEND that wanted to prove to the Delta State Governor that they actually have physical presence outside of the cyber space, to be reasonable? Of course it depends on who is defining reasonability in this case: reasonable from the militants’ standpoint or reasonable from the politicians’ standpoint? And now that MEND has decided to be reasonable by their definition, it all means that the amnesty and the so called peace deal have been led to rest.

Though it may be too early to say this, but it is strongly believed that ‘these people’ are not telling the whole truth because there were so many gaffes, majority of which seemed deliberate. But let that be for another time.

How come that every time such unpleasant incident happens nobody owns up to say, we provided enough intelligence to the appropriate quarters and in this case to the Delta state governor? The security agencies clearly, as in the Jos incident, failed woefully in their responsibility to provide early warning intelligence with proactive analysis that could have averted this huge embarrassment.

Above all, the charade called amnesty or rather post amnesty programme was a big deceit. The MEND’S bomb explosion in Warri shows very clearly that the Federal Government, the state governments that made up the Niger Delta, all of them have missed the point of the amnesty. Everybody has missed the point of the amnesty because if you say that you have offered amnesty and some thing like this happened, it shows very clearly that the amnesty and its programmes/effects either wasn’t there in the first instance or has failed.

It would be outright foolishness for anybody to assume that the Warri incident was a Niger Delta affair. Far from it! More importantly, what the whole thing signals is the need for our leaders to become more intensive and do more in solving our problems? The future of this country should be of serious concern to all of us because everywhere you look at in Nigeria you see time bombs. From Kano, where over five million children are begging for alms instead of going to school through Jos to the Niger Delta time bombs are just scattered everywhere.

The interesting thing about these time bombs is that they are all foretold including what has happened or rather has been happening in the Niger Delta. Abuja and the Gwari ethnic nationality is the biggest time bomb so far planted in this country, maybe, second to the Niger Delta case and its sure going to explode if not today, tomorrow. The crisis of Niger Delta was foretold in the Willinks Commission report of 1958 and failure to implement the recommendations of that report created what is happening now.

IFEANYI IZEZE, ABUJA (iizeze@yahoo.com)