A few years ago, a former United States
ambassador to Nigeria, Mr. John Campbell, wrote a brilliant book titled,
“Nigeria: Dancing on the brink”. I wrote a piece acknowledging the
searching intelligence and inspired insight in that book and got so many
knocks on the head for doing so. It got the Nigerian officials so angry
that they publicly condemned the author on what they dismissed as
doomsday predictions. Many officials of the Nigerian Embassy in
Washington DC at that time were indescribably livid. I recall a
particular official who wrote one harsh mail to me and even requested a
meeting. We later met, argued and became good friends before she left DC
for a higher posting. I wonder if those officials who were calling for
the head of the author can stand up to a debate now about what has come
of Nigeria today and the postulations in that book. The sad truth is
that most of the predictions in that book have come to pass except that,
probably, the country has not ripped physically apart yet into a
Christian South and a Muslim North. With only that pending at the
moment, and 2015 fast approaching, there are genuine reasons to worry.
That is why in the last few weeks many Nigerians have become
increasingly concerned about the commentaries as they relate to the 2015
elections.
Many politicians from Northern Nigeria
are insisting that the incumbent President must respect the gentleman’s
agreement allegedly reached with the region and state governors and not
re-contest his position even though he is said to be constitutionally
empowered to do so. Supporters of the President have warned repeatedly
that they could not guarantee peace in the Niger Delta if their kinsman,
Goodluck Jonathan, was not re-elected in 2015. Major highlights in the
verbal missiles were the ones thrown by the Special Adviser to the
President on Amnesty, Mr. Kingsley Kuku, during a forum in Washington DC
recently. In many ways, the speech of Kuku, to an extent, did not
surprise me. The prayer of an average public office holder is the
maintenance of the status quo as this could guarantee continued stay in
office, at least in principle. If the office he currently occupies is
“lucrative”, as many have opined, it will only be natural for him to ask
for more like the proverbial Oliver Twist. I can also imagine that he
means well for his boss and wants to be seen as loyal. However,
wittingly or unwittingly, that speech has raised the antennae of many
Nigerians at home and abroad to begin to give his comments a closer
scrutiny and a more nuanced interpretation. That speech may end up
hurting the person who he travelled all the way to try to assist.
Continue to read...
Let me touch four areas of immediate
concern to many. First is to quickly declare without equivocation that I
am a Niger Deltan broadly speaking. I may not have an oil well at my
backyard but at least my state is oil producing as covered in the Niger
Delta Development Commission Act. So, I think it is wrong to portray the
President as a regional player. That is exactly what Kuku’s speech has
inadvertently done. I support President Jonathan to deliver dividends of
democracy to all parts of Nigeria and expect to be elected by all of us
on the basis of such sterling performance. If he underperforms, it
weakens our morale — period. We know that no one region can elect the
President alone at least going by the stipulations of the constitution,
no matter how much we love him. So, we need one another now more than
ever before. Related to this is the fact that the message was delivered
to the sensitive and sometimes nosy Washington DC audience. As if that
was not enough, after a few days, another self-acclaimed supporter of
Jonathan re-echoed the same message as if they were playing out a
well-rehearsed drama. To all intents and purposes, such statements
corroborate the predictions made by the former ambassador in his book.
Another aspect of the concern relates to
the position of Kuku himself. The Niger Delta Amnesty programme is a
very sensitive one. Whenever anyone from that office speaks, the person
should expect to be taken seriously. From the declaration of amnesty by
President Umaru Yar’Ardua, the ex-combatants dropped all their weapons
and embraced amnesty. The federal office that Kuku coordinates was
commissioned to carry out a comprehensive demobilisation,
demilitarisation and reintegration programme. That means that,
theoretically speaking, neither militants nor stockpile of weapons of
any kind should exist anywhere in the Niger Delta. Most of the fighters
should have been trained or are currently undergoing training and so
will be expected to reintegrate into the society as normal law-abiding
citizens. If these are the cases, then who are the people that Kuku is
referring to? Many people are now struggling between what they consider
the original goals of the amnesty programme and the speculations of
converting it to a private army of some sorts. We do not need any war or
drums of war — what we need is fiscal federalism that will allow us
control our resources and develop the region.
The third and probably the most
important point is the timing of these comments vis-à-vis the ongoing
considerations of extending amnesty to Boko Haram insurgents. Such a
comment is capable of upsetting the momentum gathered in discussions
about peace in the North. So, what is the meaning of amnesty? Is Kuku
trying to fly a kite or are there things the Nigerian public needs to
know? On what basis can we convince the insurgents in the North to drop
their weapons and embrace peace? What if others begin to see the
statement as an inspiration to start making preparations for an
imaginary war? Those who have examined the Niger Delta militancy and
the Boko Haram insurgency insist that the two are fundamentally
different. Do we now want to start equating them? The mere flash of
Niger Delta militants on one side and Boko Haram on the other is too
frightening to contemplate and so any statement that seeks to insinuate
such is not in our best interest as a nation.
Almost two years to the 2015 elections,
there is no need to get into a panicky mood. What is the desperation
about? Good governance and public service? Really? Even at that, are we
to prepare for elections or to prepare for war? I insist that President
Jonathan’s action or inaction about very sensitive issues that border on
Nigeria will be what we count for him or against him. Comments like
those credited to Kuku and the flip-flopping ex-militant, Asari Dokubo,
will heat up the system unnecessarily, portray the President in bad
light and complicate what is clearly a challenging situation. Worse
still, it could precipitate anarchy and pave the way for the military to
confiscate the democratic space and plunder our polity.
Finally and closely linked to the second
thought but of far greater worry, is the rising suspicion amongst
Nigerians today of the President’s Amnesty programme. The Kuku and
Asari-Dokubo’s comments and the repeated threats to unleash the nation’s
allegedly disarmed and “amnetised” militants, who are now being trained
and retrained and sustained under a national amnesty programme funded
with federal revenue, on Nigerians and the Federal Republic of Nigeria
should one individual not be re-elected as president of the nation come
2015 now renders the entire programme as being implemented by Mr.
President suspect. Many discerning minds are now beginning to question
the true motive of this government’s amnesty programme and justifiably
so. They allege that the programme being implemented by the Presidency
and that conceived by the late President Yar’Adua are not one and the
same. Many now allege that the real amnesty programme has been tweaked
with and reformatted for political intimidation as against a
correctional scheme. People now ask if amnesty is truly a national
demobilisation, demilitarisation and reintegration programme or a mere
perfect guise under which Mr. President and his kinsmen are applying
federal funds to maintain and sustain ethnic militias which shall be
unleashed as a tool of political coercion on the generality of
unsuspecting Nigerians in the run-up to, during and perhaps after the
2015 general elections. This feeling gets stronger especially against
the background of the information recently released that the amnesty
programme and payments being made thereunder may officially terminate in
2015. Would that be when the true mission has been accomplished in 2015
thereby rendering the ex-militants functus officio? The manure
for these rising concerns is provided by the threatening comments of the
President’s kinsmen like Kuku, Asari-Doukbo and, sometime in the past
the President’s self-proclaimed political godfather, Chief Edwin Clark.
It is also fuelled by the Presidency’s now unholy and very uncomfortable
silence over these comments nearly one week after, which many now
interpret to be more than just a tacit endorsement of the threats.
Nigerians are already asking very
pertinent questions. Questions such as: Are these repentant militants
truly repentant and changed in their ways? Is their allegiance truly to
the Nigerian nation now or to some ethnicity or individuals somewhere
out there? If the amnesty programme, as it is being executed, is as
successful as we have been made to believe, then these repentant
militants should by now be as civilly innocent as the rest of us having
been fully disarmed, demilitarised and re-orientated. And so, who are
Kuku and his co-travellers referring to? The Federal Government must get
the chief implementer of the amnesty programme to explain not only his
utterances but also provide the answers to all of these questions!
Indeed, it is time for a comprehensive review of the amnesty programme
to ensure that we are not made to perceive that there is a hidden agenda
against the generality of Nigerians or threat to the sovereignty of
this nation.
- Uche Igwe (ucheigwe@gmail.com)
SHare your thoughts...thanks!
THE TRUTH IS THAT JONATHAN THE NIGERIA PRESIDENT IS PART AND BEHIND CROOK MILITANT ASARI AND CRIMINAL KUKU'S SPEECH. HE IS AWARE AND AUTHORIZED THE SPEECH, BUT THAT WILL BACKFIRE SOON JUST LIKE THE BOKOHARAM BACKFIRED UPON THE NORTH.
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