By Olasunkanmi Olapeju
Asari Dokubo’s threats that Nigeria will become extinct if President Goodluck Jonathan is not returned by 2015 should be considered beyond mere brinksmanship of a provincial war lord or a groveling crony of the President. I agree such a threat comes across as an insult to Nigerians,including Niger-Deltans, who reserve …the democratic rights to voting candidates of their choice.
But we can’t wish away the capability of Niger Deltan Militants to actually bring Nigeria to extinction,given the circumstance of inter ethnic acrimony obviously underlying unfolding events in our polity . In the real sense of it,the current operational force behind Nigeria’s sustainabilty is oil- a resource presently located in the Militants’ backyard, which all its mining infrastructures that bring earnings for Nigeria can be obliterated in a day. Militarily,they can leverage on the littorality of their location to freely access all sorts of instruments requisite to pursuing an enhanced and inexorable guerilla warfare on the water.
On the other hand, if collectively expressed,Niger-Delta’s right to either self-determination or absolute resource control is well covered by the United Nations Universal Declaration on Human Rights,and the United Nations Declaration on the Rights Indigenous people,as the case may be. As far as I’m concerned,they have the rights as a people to determine the swing of their future with Nigeria.
Asari Dokubo and several other activists of the Niger Delta won’t cease regaling other Nigerian groups with actual details of how they have perpetually become parasites in the warped geographic expression called Nigeria,as other provincial champions from other Nigerian regions would do, had they the resource advantage plus the contamination of the Niger Delta’s environment,and sensitized enough to understand the ‘non-renewability’ of the resource,and the practically indelible nature of the environmental blotting .
However irritating and insulting the verbalizations of Asari Dokubo might appear,it should rather stimulate our consciousness more to the ills of our pseudo-federal system. We should convert our democratic anger to the zest for true federalism. The regime change or perpetuation that we divisively long after would either sustain the status quo or superficially bring about marginal improvement. The real change is when whatever happens at center becomes inconsequential to Nigerians within their various provincial enclaves. The real change is when all our states are structurally re-positioned to be self-sufficient,competing aggresively to be the best in terms of drive for improved welfare of the citizenry and internally inspired development,as opposed to waiting indolently for crumbs from the Niger-Delta . That is when the threats of Asari and the likes would appear like mere rants.