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By Samson Jaja
Ever since President Muhammad Buhari appointed Prof. Charles Dokubo Special Adviser on Niger Delta Affairs and Coordinator, Presidential Amnesty Programme, the people of the Niger Delta, nay Nigeria, have witnessed unprecedented peace.
This has translated into better economy, not only for the region, but for the entire country as revenue from crude oil and natural gas have ballooned.
Even though trained in the United Kingdom up to doctorate degree level, Prof. Dokubo does not exude the trademark cockiness of “been-tos”, neither does he assume that, as a professor of nuclear weapons proliferation studies, he knows it all.
Aside been very approachable, Prof. Dokubo who doesn’t relate with workers at the Amnesty Office based on tribe, tongue or creed. He is at home with everybody.
Perhaps it is these qualities, among other factors, that have assisted him in moving the Amnesty Office to enviable heights.
Prof. Dokubo is a firm believer in the wisdom in the maxim that it is better to teach a man how to fish. If you give him fish, he’ll always come cap in hand begging for more. He believes that, as the British philosopher Edward Everett noted, education is a better safeguard of personal liberty than a standing army.
“i believe we should train people and train them in such a way that they should have qualifications that will give them jobs, and that is the direction I’m going to adopt.
“We must have the capacity to give beneficiaries of the Amnesty Programme some qualification that will enable them to work wherever they could. It is not only about mass education, it is qualitative education. Let our people have quality education that will make them stand tall; that is what we want to do”, pledged Dokubo shortly after assuming office.
True to his promise, several youth are being given quality training. Just last month, 500 youth from communities in the Niger Delta graduated from the Onshore and Offshore Safety Institute of Nigeria in Port Harcourt, Rivers State.
At the occasion, an elated Dokubo reaffirmed, “The Presidential Amnesty Programme under my watch will ensure aggressive engagement of youths in the Niger Delta to achieve sustainable peace and development in line with President Muhammadu Buhari’s vision for the region. I am determined to ensure that the gains of the Amnesty Programme extend beyond beneficiaries enlisted in the programme to youths in the crisis-impacted communities.”
One of Prof. Dokubo’s greatest assets is his degree in peace studies. He understands the importance of dialogue a a key to peace.
On assumption of office, Dokubo met with leaders and stakeholders of the Niger Delta. The meeting, which held in Lagos, Nigeria’s commercial capital city, saw ex-agitators promising to cooperate with the Amnesty Programme and support the Buhari administration. So far, they have kept to this promise thanks to Prof. Dokubo’s leadership style of the Amnesty Programme.
Having earlier met with foremost Ijaw leader and First Republic Minister, Chief Edwin Clark, Dokubo also parleyed over 30 leaders of Niger Delta ex-agitators known as Phase 1.
He followed up by meeting with another batch of over 70 leaders of ex-agitators, and with the leadership of the Niger Delta sociopolitical group, Pan Niger Delta Forum (PANDEV).
However, but not unexpectedly, there are some persons who are unsettled by Prof. Dokubo’s stewardship style. To them he’s too approachable. “Doesn’t he know he is a big man, a Presidential Adviser for that matter; why is addressing common policemen and Privates at the gate? Big men don’t behave this way,” they opine.
Unknown to them, Charles Dokubo isn’t your typical Nigerian “big man”. He believes that every position one attains in life is by God’s grace. That one shouldn’t see him/herself as better than the others simply because they’re not that privileged.
This, perhaps again explains why Prof. Dokubo is “at war” with some persons who would rather they “cornered” all the monies budgeted for the Amnesty Programme and then, give out crumbs to those for whom the programme was originally designed.
It is sad that some see the Amnesty Programme as a cash cow for settling political and provincial godfathers. Some of these pests were used to living large outside of the shores of Nigeria.
When Prof. Dokubo took over, little did he realize that he was going to, by virtue of his insistence on due process, step on big toes. These fat cows are hurting very badly, and we all know that hurt cows love to gore everything in their path.
Conniving with a few Judases in the system, these now starving cows resort to slandering and blackmailing Prof. Dokubo. Little do they realize that the Prof. Is not fazzed by their antics. His commitment to delivery on President Buhari’s promise to keep the Niger Delta as safe as possible remains paramount.
Time was when the entire Niger Delta was a cauldron of crises, with militants firming a near parallel government.
Militancy in the creeks of the Niger Delta
got to a head in early 2009 when Nigeria’s daily oil production dipped by as much as a million barrels. At about $58 per barrel at the time, it was clear that Nigeria was losing about $60m every 24 hours. The previous year, the country lost a whopping $20 billion to the activities of the militants. Added to this loss was another $20 billion the Nigeria Liquefied Natural Gas [NLNG] said it lost to militancy.
By January 2009, Nigeria’s daily oil production has dropped to a mere 700,000 barrels, down from 2.2million barrels per day.
President Umar Musa Yar’Adua had been in power for about 18 months. The economy was wobbling, and it was clear that something drastic had to be done to arrest the situation.
Yar’Adua’s predecessor, Olusegun Obasanjo- a retirrd General- had for about four out of his eight-year tenure attempted to use military might to crush the militants. If anything, the move infuriated the militants the more. Most of the military hardware deployed to fight the militants ended up in their hands. The miltants appeared to have the upper hand in the theatre of war, as well as on the turf of propaganda.
The situation didn’t change much until May 29, 2007 when Yar’Adua took over as president.
When, therefore, the new president directed his deputy, Dr. Goodluck Jonathan, himself a Niger Deltan, to dialogue with the militants, some scoffed at the idea. The epochal meeting triggered a chain of events, culminating in the Amnesty Programme.
It’s been ten years on since the programme began. Several lessons have been learned. One big lesson is that round pegs in round holes provide the best results. Prof. Dokubo is one such round peg in a round hole. Little reason the Presidential Amnesty programme is growing by leaps and bounds!
Jaja writes from Port Harcourt and can be reached on samjaja1@yahoo.com