Date Published: 01/25/10

Niger Delta Militants: Why we accepted Yar'Adua's Amnesty

NIGER Delta militants have named Vice President Goodluck Jonathan, as the principal reason why they embraced President Umaru Yar’Adua's amnesty. 

Spokesperson for the Joint Revolutionary Council (JRC), Cynthia Whyte, claimed in an e-mail to our correspondent on Monday, ''Jonathan is a generational leader and people like him come just once in a long while. His insistence on a non-violent struggle has put us at loggerheads in times before but we have recognized that we do not have the power to undermine him.''

According to them, ''in a Niger Delta governed by some of the most corrupt human beings on earth, Goodluck Jonathan remains a fresh of breath air. So far, he is the best there is. He needs to be given the benefit of doubt.

''The Niger Delta struggle today has been overtaken by whoremongers, prostitutes, bandit elements, rent seekers, political gangsters, benefit captors and treasury looters. It is important the Vice President keeps his distance from such elements. These people remain the real problem of the Niger Delta''.

The JRC is claiming that since the Yar'Adua amnesty expired on October 4, 2009, ''the Presidential Committee on Amnesty (PCA) has not been really able to establish itself on a sound footing. The PCA created a working draft (draft work-plan) for rehabilitating the so-called ex-militants by relying too much on the structures of Small and Medium Enterprise Development Agency (SMEDAN) and National Poverty Alleviation Programme (NAPEP) led by Dr. Magnus Kpakol.

''The failure of that work-plan was actively driven by the fact that people like Magnus Kpakol who was drafted from a university in the United States of America to become Olusegun Obasanjo’s Chief Economic Adviser (before he lost his job to Charles Soludo) has no knowledge of how economic processes work in Nigeria. To succeed in our economic spheres, you must understand native economics.''

Adding, they alleged, ''Magnus Kpakol and his bunch sat together to develop a draft document that included a list of non-existent and ill equipped training centers that were to be used as training centers for ex-militants.''

For the protesting militants, ''SMEDAN, NAPEP and NDE are failed institutions and must never be given any role to play in the campaign for reorientation and rehabilitation of the heroic young men of the Niger Delta who have decided to lay down their arms for the sake of peace.

''SMEDAN, NAPEP and NDE do not understand the pains of the people of the Niger Delta. Neither do they understand the aspirations and desires of ex-combatants. Their pedigree of failure must not be used to cloud the great vision of our young men.''

Continuing, they said but for the timely intervention ''General Boyloaf'', one of the frontline commanders of the Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta (MEND), and his representative on the amnesty committee, Selekaye Victor Ben, ''the draft document would have been endorsed and accepted without recourse to the aspirations of the young men for whom the various reorientation and rehabilitation programmes were being designed for.''

''With the support of Boyloaf'', they went on, ''members of the PCA sub-committee on Rehabilitation and Reorientation and all the leaders of ex-militants groups who accepted the amnesty as well as their representatives were called together and hosted in Yenagoa, the capital of Bayelsa State.''

After the Yenagoa meeting, the PCA workplan was rejected and the Patterson Ogon committee was set up to look into the document, define critical areas and make recommendations where necessary.