Date Published: 05/18/09

Coalition indicts Govt on renewed killings in Niger Delta

CHAIRMAN of the Niger Delta Civil Society Coalition (NDCSC) and former member of the Ledum Mitee-led Niger Delta Technical Committee, Mr.Anyakwee Nsirimovu, says the civil society in the volatile oil and gas region,  is shocked beyond believe learning of the latest massacre of people  and razing to ground zero, communities  of the Niger Delta by the President Umaru Yar’ Adua-led regime in a ‘democracy’. 

In an on-line statement to our correspondent yesterday, the coalition said, ''the very sick, impotent and illegitimate government of President Yar’Adua,  that have hardly moved Nigeria an inch  forward in terms of any  visible human development, has shown by its authorization of the latest massacre  and orphaning  of further thousands of children in the  Gbaranmatu kingdom, of  the region in the latest inferno, that there is a well written script and strategy for regimes in Nigeria, to go to any length – genocide inclusive, to expend the peoples of the region, wipe out their livelihood,  to enable oil that fed their primitive  accumulation of wealth,  flow without let or hindrance''.

According to them, ''the indiscriminate shelling and slaughtering of women, children and helpless seniors in the communities  by  federal soldiers of fortune, has no doubt put a lid on the mockery public relation exercise, flagged off recently  by the President,  in the name of amnesty and peaceful settlement in the region''.

Continuing, they added, ''the cleansing strategy adopted in the wasting of Odi, Odioma, Agge, Umuechem has been repeated in the Gbaranmatu kingdom, all the time, the military making sure that the number of the raped, slaughtered, maimed and abused are never fully  known in order not to horrify a conscious humane world. The level of human rights abuses in the region by the governments and military task forces has assumed a very high level proportion,  that merits international attention for necessary action, by way of  bringing pressure to bear on an unresponsive illiberal regime, to humanely deal with the legitimate and just  demands of the peoples of the region''.

Nsirimovu says the coalition maintains and very strongly too,  that the conflict in the oil region  is about  age long gross and attested violations of cultural, social, economic, political and environmental rights of the minority citizens, therefore, beyond the orchestration of criminality and oil bunkering that deflates  from the fundamentality and community support for the genuine struggle for social justice. 

''The orchestration of criminality and greed theory, leaving out friends and members of the regime who drive the arms proliferation and  oil bunkering industrial complex for punishment,  continue to make  the federal government and oil multinationals look good internationally, in the face of human depradation in the region. 

Let it not be forgotten that structural violence of the state linked with inhuman standards of operations of oil multinationals,  began the current cycle of violence.  The criminal response of the State to what was a peaceful agitation by the Ogoni social movement , led by late Ken Saro-Wiwa, led to a change of strategy  by  peoples who now genuinely believe that an imposed government, holds no measure of security to their livelihood.  This has inevitably led to the  growing secondary forms of violence, such as hostage taking and destruction of oil facilities'', the group said.

While drawing the attention of the international community and sister democracy movements to the current situation in the Niger Delta, the group claimed that human needs are continually being frustrated on a large scale by illegitimate federal and state regimes in the oil region. 

According to them, ''experience over the decades has shown that the more arbitrary law and order is enforced in the region to control helplessness and frustration, in the midst of abundance and evil governance, the more the helplessness and frustration.  Our genuine fears  and concern is that, rather than military  massacre to put a lid on demand for just peace;  from the humiliation and further loss, will spring  some other forms of extreme  agitation, to continue to emphasize and demonstrate to  the world,  that continue to tolerate competititve authoritarian regimes in Nigeria, that there are features of the regimes in the Niger Delta that   are repugnant to justice  and  human dignity, that are unacceptable to the peoples, and are worth dying for''.

They then renewed the demand of the peoples of the region for justice and peace to mean:  demand for sustainable  development that has been deliberately kept away from them. ''They ask that the poor and vulnerable be at the centre of the development process in their communities – also the protection of the life opportunities of future generations and the natural systems on which all life depends'', the group said.

Meanwhile, the coalition has called on the global civilized  nations and democracy movements to take their responsibility to protect  human subjects anywhere in the world, including democratic principles seriously, by calling  on the ''illiberal regimes in Nigeria, who are intent on destroying the enormous investment in democracy building by  democracy defenders,  to urgently respond to the just demands of the peoples of the Niger Delta, as forced peace will surely compound the avoidable  catastrophe waiting to happen in that part of the world''.