NIGER DELTA: CONTRARINESS OF YAR’ADUA’S AGENDA
Vice President Jonathan’s pathetic position in Umauru Yar’Adua’s
deceit of the people of the Niger Delta could best be described as a very
bad luck. There is no single good luck in Jonathan’s situation. While
busy deceiving the people of the region on a peaceful dialogue on the
crisis, the President was also busy signing pacts for a military solution
with both the British and American (Africom) authourities.
The question is: Which of the options is actually the Federal
Government’s policy thrust on the resolution of the Niger Delta crisis
and which is ‘Plan B’? From recent developments and pronouncements by
Yar’Adua’s men it seems that the federal government is fully convinced
that a full military approach would resolve the crisis while the issue of
dialogue is merely a ‘Plan B’.
President Yar’Adua, during his state visit to the United Kingdom, had on
Wednesday, July 16 2008 struck a deal with the British Prime Minister,
Gordon Brown for the deployment of British military experts in Nigeria to
train and advise Nigerian troops fighting the militants on the surface and
maybe to covertly fight as mercenaries or battle instructors.
"The security training force that we are talking about will be support for
Nigerians to be able to have trainers and others who can build up this
capacity locally to deal with the problems of lawlessness that exist in
the area," Brown said. A British Embassy official in Abuja further
explained that this means “military experts providing military advice”
to Nigeria ’s security forces on the Niger Delta security challenges.
It was very interesting that while the President was signing military
pacts all over the globe, the Vice President was in Abuja at the same
time, fashioning ways to come out of the mess he found himself by not
being very smart to debunk the game plan of his boss and his cabal.
According to Vice President Jonathan, “Even the Federal Government, what
we want is a discussion. Let us listen to the issues in the Niger Delta.
Different people have different thinking about the Niger Delta. Some
people think it is purely a security matter, some think it is purely an
infrastructural matter, some think it is a political matter. Some think it
is education. So, it is a complex thing.”
He announced that due to the controversy generated by the proposed Summit
, the Federal Government agreed to drop the talk show. But in its place, a
presidential committee is to be set up to aggregate and articulate the
entire demands of the region as an alternative resolution mechanism.
However, he tried to explained that, “When you use the word‘summit’, it is a problematic word now because the people feel that
when you say ‘summit’, people will come from everywhere, different
memos, sentiments, and they will say it is a jamboree. It is not really
what they want. We will raise the issues, present it before the Federal
Government and we will dialogue. Let’s leave it at that point. We are
not using the word ‘summit’.
“The committee will raise the fundamental issues believed to be the
pressing challenges, make recommendations on the way forward and present
it to the Federal Government. So when the document is presented to the
President, we will look at it and then move from there."
Truth be told: the idea of completely delegating the business of meeting,
negotiating and convening the talk show to the Vice President, Dr Jonathan
was a well calculated deceit or rather mischief. Agreed that the
Presidency is one, the issue of Niger Delta should have been treated as a
top national political or rather security crisis and as such should have
fully captured the interest and attention of the President and commander
in chief, if for nothing, to show that he identified with the groaning of
the people of the region.
Whosoever asked Jonathan to nominate Ibrahim Gambari in the first instance
had a clear-cut covert motive. From obvious indications, the decision
intentionally set out to pitch Jonathan against his people and that was
what it exactly achieved.
That same covert mindset by the President’s league was responsible for
Gambari’s insistence that he must chair the talk show inspite of the
region-wide rejection of his nomination by the same people he was supposed
to be addressing their problems. And to address Gambari’s rejection, the
President smartly and publicly told the Niger Delta people and entire
Nigerians that the candidate being rejected was nominated by Jonathan, a
Niger Deltan. It was an outright blackmail against the vice president or
rather good politics. However, it failed woefully as the Niger Delta
people now know from where their problems come. Thank God that some
politically aware people of the region quickly realised the game plan and
moved to seal whatever cleavage was caused by the act.
This same Jonathan was utterly humiliated by his boss when he presented
his pre-conference briefing to him before the first consultative meeting
between the Presidency and governors of the Niger Delta states. Media
reports had it that the Vice President actually presented to his boss a
position paper highlighting all the concerns of his people and their
suggestions on how to resolve the issues. Of course the president was
particularly vexed by certain items on the brief such as resource control,
sovereign national conference and a focused development agenda for the
region etc.
It would be recalled that the President during his campaign and
immediately after assuming power, vowed in the public to frontally
confront the crux of the agitation by the people of the region within his
first 100 days in office. Unfortunately, it took over 400 days of deceit
for the Presidency to realize that not only had they not done anything,
they have no single plan or rather clue on how to start addressing the
issues which mainly borders on infrastructural development and correction
of decades of injustice by successive governments.
So it not surprising that most Niger Deltans now believe the allegation
that President Yar’Adua may be using the idea of a peaceful dialogue to
buy time for his actual intention of a full military solution. Although
this perception may be wrong, only time would bring out the truth.
Could it be that the present administration tried to deceive the people of
the region by proposing a summit of insincerity after about 14 months of a
do-nothing- alternative? Could the President have worked alone in this
gimmick or is there a league of interest group (s)? Recent pronouncements
by some political leaders from certain quarters may provide some clues as
to the actual game plan.
BY: IFEANYI IZEZE
IFEANYI IZEZE IS AN ABUJA-BASED CONSULTANT ON POLITICAL STRATEGY AND
GRASSROOT CONSULTATION (iizeze@yahoo.com)