By Okanga Agila
Dear Chief Edwin Kiagbodo Clark, Call your children to order.
Permit me to again write you another letter in the space of three weeks
since my last open letter to you. I would have exercised some patience and
see how well the issues I raised in the previous communication are being
treated. However, the bruise I called your attention to has festered into
an open wound that could become gangrenous if we continue to treat it as a
mere sore.
In my earlier letter, I asked you and other elders in the Niger Delta to
stop kicking against military deployment to stop the destruction of oil and
gas installations in the area, which you are opposed to based on
self-interest and greed. The appeal was for the elders of the area to allow
the military to deploy to the Niger Delta since there is still time to
clean up the mess that you and other elders created.
Your response to that letter, in which you accused me of being vicious,
wicked and not a patriotic Nigerian for stating the truth, failed to
articulate any possible suggestion that would contain the activities of
these misguided children of yours but rather elected to focus on the
anti-corruption crusade of the current administration.
Even as you continue playing the ostrich over your role in the crisis
threatening the stability of the country, things have turned uglier in the
space of these three weeks. Your children continue to destroy vital
economic infrastructure even as the few that have seen the light openly
named you and other leaders in the south as being sponsors of the Niger
Delta Avengers (NDA). They did not only mention your name but prominently
so.
Given the venom you spewed pre-2015 General Elections about how the country
would burn if your godson, Dr Goodluck Jonathan, was not re-elected; your
denial of any links with the NDA is laughable. The most positive reaction
it drew from Nigerians was to feel vindicated that they have been proven
right. It turned out you shouldn’t have bothered distancing yourself from
the NDA or denying what the Reformed NDA (RNDA) said about you and other
ingrates from the region. The RNDA specifically narrated how the present
destabilization plan was hatched, put on hold when Dr Jonathan conceded
defeat and again reactivated when corruption investigations and trials were
brought against members of that administration of which you were the one
that called the shots.
Despite your denial and half-hearted assurances to call your rampaging
children to order, they continue to bomb economic infrastructure and have
taken implementation of your agreed plan to the its next phase with a
threat to declare secession from the Federal Republic of Nigeria by October
1st.
This shows it is you who is unpatriotic.
You of all people know the significant of October 1st and we are not
talking about Nigeria’s Independence Anniversary. Rather it was the day
your godson, Dr Goodluck Jonathan became a spokesperson for terrorists on
October 1, 2010 when he stridently refuted responsibility for a bomb attack
they carried out in Abuja. His complicity in issues of insecurity is well a
known fact. It must also be on record that it was that infamous blast that
opened the floodgate of bombing in Nigeria.
Also recall that when a former president, Chief Olusegun Obasanjo had to
hold a meeting with Dr Jonathan in the presence of Pastor Enoch Adeboye and
Bishop David Oyedepo to resolve his numerous letters that went
unacknowledged by your godson. Chief Obasanjo accused Dr Jonathan based on
security report that the then President was training and arming the youths
through NIMASA, then headed by Akpobolokemi. What did you ever do about
that ugly episode? Nigerians expect that you will use your influence among
persons identified as sponsors of NDA to ask Jonathan or either of these
highly respected clergymen to tell the world what Jonathan’s answer to
Obasanjo was.
You did nothing about the revelation that your youths were being armed and
it will be redundant to now urge you to call your children to order in this
instance that they want to declare a problem republic because even a brain
damaged youth without the benefit of education should know what treason is
and its attendant consequences. If the threat of secession is being
bolstered by the pre-election cache of weapons, militants that trained as
commandos under the pretext of amnesty rehabilitation, and worthless
assurances from some foreign powers, then it means yourself, elders and
militants of the Niger Delta failed to read up the relevant portions of
international laws and conventions that allow nations to defend their
territorial integrity when the need arises. So I nonetheless urge you to
call your children to order and that is assuming they can still listen to
you.
As you would have noticed, the Nigeria Police Force has issued a warning
that your boys must not dare the Federal Government by going ahead with the
provocative plan. This must tell you that the beat has changed: while there
were appeals to allow the military deploy to the Niger Delta to arrest the
sabotage of oil and gas installations there would be no need for such
protocols should your children proceed with the manic plan. It is one thing
to be detonating explosives that security operatives have now confirmed to
have been planted in preparations for blowing up the country over Dr
Jonathan’s election loss, it is another thing completely to contemplate
treason.
A republic must necessarily have a capital and government with officials so
there will be no doubt as to who to arrest for treason and where to get
them.
This is what makes what your children are contemplating seriously different
from the cowardly hide and seek of blowing up pipelines. It is also what
should give you concerns that once they expose themselves for arrest a next
logical step is that the connection of the elders to them would be exposed.
You must advise your colleagues not to risk using a few riffraff as place
holders for the declaration of secession so that security agents won’t be
able to make connections with the real sponsors of the plan. History will
not be kind to the elders if they repeat the folly that gave rise to
militancy and militant warlords. Their latest plan risks creating the
emergence of a new power bloc peopled by thugs whom you falsely think you
are arming to harass the Federal Government. These same weapons being
placed in the hands of the youths will soon turn against those that
supplied them.
Yourself and fellow Niger Delta elders must now begin to contemplate how to
eat that humble pie when October 1st arrives and there is no republic to
present to the masses that you brainwashed into being used as tools. You
must also worry that the dawning culture of accountability will force the
hundreds of thousands of your impoverished people to start asking why they
live in squalor and your children and grandchildren live in gilded
opulence. This is the real revolution that will occur as opposed to your
expectations that the poor will again offer themselves as cannon fodder –
sacrificial animals – to preserve the life of entitlement that Niger Delta
elders and militant leaders live.
If you find time to call a press conference to address the issues raised in
this letter, kindly do well to objectively digest the issues so that your
reply does not shot off at a wrong tangent. What is needed from you is to
call your children to order. They must stop all attacks, disband all
illegal group they have formed and stop thrash talking the rest of the
nation. These must happen without anyone expecting goodie bags as happened
under the watch of your godson, it distorts the economy and rewards
criminals.
In case you have not noticed, fiscal federalism is something that all
constituent ethnic nationalities in Nigeria are clamouring for and many of
them are doing it without resort to violence. If we allow you get away with
what you are asking for then we will be confirming our ethnic nationalities
as inferior to yours simply because we do not have oil wealth. We are not.
Okanga, a traditional minister in Agilaland contributed this piece from
Benue State.