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Let me make a prediction:
Umaru Yar'Adua's regime will regret its decision to act with
the hauteur of an army of occupation with regard to the
Niger Delta. Nowhere is the government's imperial mindset as
manifest, and offensive, as in the insistence that
Ambassador Ibrahim Gambari must chair the so-called
stakeholders' summit in the Niger Delta. That posture is
nothing short of a provocation, and Yar'Adua as well as his
advisors cannot claim ignorance of that fact.
The idea of Gambari at the helm of the summit is as cynical
as the appointment of Justice Muhammed Uwais as head of the
electoral reform panel. On paper, Uwais' credentials as a
former chief justice of the federation would appear
impressive, but he is hardly an inspiring fit for any
serious effort to fix the crisis of electoral malpractice.
Uwais' judicial validation of the 2003 presidential election
was, to put a mild face to it, questionable and
controversial. My hunch is that former President Olusegun
Obasanjo's ability to get away with the electoral heist of
2003 fertilized the ground for the much grander rigging that
took place last year. At the very least, Yar'Adua ought to
have known that Uwais was far from the most persuasive name
to bracket with electoral reform.
Gambari labors under the same manner of deficit. The man has
earned his reputation as a formidable scholar. He may even
be an astute diplomat, even though I harbor my serious
doubts. Whatever his gifts, he is a demonstrably poor choice
to lead any summit on the Niger Delta. His apologia for the
Sani Abacha regime after that dictator hanged Ken Saro-Wiwa
and eight Ogoni activists ought to disqualify him.
Gambari's defenders could argue that he was simply doing his
job when he characterized the hanged men as common criminals
deserving of their punishment. But there's a price a man
must pay when he peddles such an appalling defense of
official barbarism. There's also a tragic aspect to
Gambari's misreading both of the domestic as well as
international reaction to Abacha's butchery. Even if one
were to allow that the hanged men had committed crimes,
Gambari knew that the tribunal that found them guilty was a
kangaroo one. The real crime was one perpetrated by the
Nigerian state against men who had set out to use largely
peaceful means to protest the ecological devastation and
economic impoverishment that had become the lot of their
fellows.
The callous killing of the Ogoni activists yielded the
Nigerian state a false sense of imperial domination. For the
inhabitants of the oil-rich delta, especially the youths,
the hanging was a pivotal moment. It revealed the Nigerian
government's disdain for justice. It exposed the
determination of the parasitic elements feed fat on the
nation's resources to resort to brutish means to preserve
their illicit privileges. In what's now a nightmare for
everybody, it suggested to the upcoming group of activists
that violence ought to be the default mode for the struggle.
On Ken Saro-Wiwa's grave rose the plant of militancy that
has since convulsed the delta. Where Saro-Wiwa had used
moral suasion and intellectual arguments to press his case,
his “children” now abduct oil workers, shoot at soldiers,
issue ultimatums that give the fever to global oil markets,
and sabotage oil installations. In essence, they borrowed
the violent vocabulary and bullying tactics of the Nigerian
state.
Gambari apart, the much-hyped summit of the Niger Delta
strikes me as some jiggery pokery, a gambit. As a number of
intellectuals and activists have argued, there's really no
point to another elaborate talking jamboree. Since the
1960s, a number of commissions have examined the peculiar
challenges of development in the delta. There is a litany of
development plans, products of earlier summits by
“stakeholders,” tucked away in government offices,
discarded.
Yar'Adua thinks it's time to talk, but he should listen to
the marginalized people of the delta who insist it's time to
act. If he is serious about redressing the injustice done to
the people of the Niger Delta, he ought to exhume any of
several development blueprints archived by past governments
and proceed to implement it.
Perhaps the reason he so desperately clings to the option of
a summit is that, far from wanting to do justice, he wishes
to buy time. It's altogether possible that he craves more
time to enable the culture of parasitism to thrive and
fester. At any rate, his advocacy of a summit is often
undermined by his regime's saber rattling. One day, he
presents himself as an agent of peace; the next, he ratchets
up his bellicose stance, like a man about to wage war
against his own.
A clear danger is that Yar'Adua may be wedded to the
moribund perception that the Nigerian state has the
wherewithal to compel the aggrieved people of the delta to
bend to its will. His regime's slowness to retreat from
Gambari bespeaks a certain arrogance and insensitivity. His
is the posture of a man who envisions himself as a doer of
favors to the people, and who expects then that his decrees
are to be obeyed just because he says so.
One has said it before, but it bears restating: the absence
of justice in all its ramifications is at the root of the
deepening crisis in the Niger Delta nay Nigeria. There is
neither reason nor rhyme to the depressed condition of the
Niger Delta. Considering how much revenue Nigeria has earned
from crude oil, it is inexcusable for Nigeria to remain
blighted, a portrait of failure. It is nothing short of a
crime that the delta, site of the greatest exploitation of
crude oil, should be mired in crushing poverty. That's an
anomaly that deserves meaningful correction, not the usual
dose of palliatives.
The gravity of the situation in the oil-producing hub
mirrors the dysfunction in the larger Nigerian polity. Some
critics are quick to flay such nationalist groups as the
Movement for the Actualization of the Sovereign State of
Biafra (MASSOB) and the Movement for the Emancipation of the
Niger Delta (MEND). But these critics are often blind to the
fact that the rising stridency of secessionist rhetoric is
directly related to the real and easily perceived absence of
equity and justice in the Nigerian space. Does anybody
believe that separatist groups would have sprouted if
Nigerian leaders were making a good faith effort to fulfill
the legitimate aspirations of citizens? A state that
routinely aborts justice stands the risk of provoking the
fury of its disenfranchised populace.
Here, finally, is what one finds awfully sad about
Yar'Adua's slumberous response to what is an exploding
situation in the Niger Delta and elsewhere in Nigeria. He
has spoken about the need for “peace, security and long
overdue progress in the Niger Delta,” but he has never felt
tempted to utter the word justice. Can a man do justice when
he cannot see its absence?  |
