Niger Delta Avengers: Call your sons to order

•Buhari begs Ijaw royal fathers

By DICKSON OMONODE

PRESIDENT Muhammadu Buhari seems to have been caught between a rock and a hard place in his effort to wrest the nation off the stranglehold of the Niger Delta Avengers making good their threat to ground Nigeria.

It’s just not certain whether his gunboat diplomacy will actually deliver the goods as Nigerians reel in pains of the economic crunch getting worse by each attack from the vandals.

In the lead-up to Operation Crocodile Tears, a military option the federal government proposed, the Nigerian Army has started moving its Special Forces and heavy equipment to the region.

The SF, according to the Army PRO Col. Sani Usman, are now prepping up for Amphibious and Internal Security Operations to counter kidnappers, militants, vandals, and pirates in the region.

Notwithstanding the muscle-flexing, Buhari is still willing to keep up the jaw-jaw the Movement for the Emancipation of Niger Delta brokered between the militants and the federal government.

And Buhari’s tone, at least until the dialogue deadlocks, will remain as soft as unusual of a commander-in-chief addressing a ragtag militant group defying the state power, and wrecking its economy.

ALSO SEE: Nigerian Army commences “Exercise Crocodile Smile” to rout Militants

Nigeria currently produces, daily, about 1.5 million barrels of crude, the nation’s biggest forex earner. That is down from above 2 million recorded last December.

The loss has been telling on the economy and the ability of many states, which mostly depend on the monthly dole-outs from the federal government, to sustain their workforces.

Delta, the hottest of the red zones in the region, got N3 billion in July. “This cannot even pay the wage bill of workers put at over N7 billion,” Gov. Ifeanyi Okowa said during a phone-in programme on Delta Broadcasting Station last month.

“The low allocation is as a result of the recent pipeline vandalism in the state, this will also affect our allocation up to the month of August. This criminal act is destroying our state and preventing Deltans from enjoying the dividends of democracy to the fullest.”

Millions of other citizens across the nation are not left out of the deprivation. And that is obvious in the runaway inflation rate tottering on 15.4 percent currently, and other economic fundamentals indicating Nigeria is in a recession.

The pressure is, however, more on Buhari and his APC government that promised to change Nigeria’s fortune during the 2015 presidential election campaigns.

Many believe that anxiety is the reason Buhari is going back and forth on crushing the Niger Delta militants a decision that some say might worsen the situation or parleying with them. Which he’s doing now with the Aaron Team 2 of the Movement for the Emancipation of Niger Delta (MEND).

But the snag is: Buhari might be betting on the wrong horse consulting with this former militant group that just morphed into a mediator between the Avengers and the federal government.

Most of the Ijaw leaders involved in any form of peace deal at the state or community level say MEND has no authority to stand in for the Niger Delta at the federal roundtable.

Edwin Clark, a foremost Ijaw leader, for instance, and some other ones are not quite excited MEND is stealing the show,

“Is MEND part of the groups bombing pipelines? has it not been disbanded?” one of the Ijaw leaders told the Vanguard at a meeting Clarke convened Friday. Bayelsa’s Gov. Seriake Dickson, ex-Minister Alaowei Brodrick Bozimo, and others attended the meeting.

“They are talking with unknown group leaving the Niger Delta Avengers or their accredited representatives. And Ijaw leaders who will speak to their people are not part of the dialogue.”

The feeling is that the current dialogue won’t achieve much without the blessings of the elders. “Ijaw has not mandated anybody to negotiate on our behalf,” the Ijaw Youth Council President Udengs Eradiri also added.

According to him, President Buhari isn’t ready. When he is, Eradiri said, “he will invite leaders for meeting, which he will preside, and that is when we will know that government is serious and not speaking through ministers or aides, who do not have mandate of the president to organize a meeting.”

But Aaron Team 2 doesn’t care a farthing whether Ijaw leaders approve of its effort at Aso Rock or not. Comprising Adolphus Wabara, Odein Ajumogobia, and HRH King Alfred Papapreye Diette-Spiff, the Amanyanabo of Twon-Brass in Bayelsa, as members of the Dialogue and Peace Initiative, the team believes the negotiation has moved up a littlewith some modest achievements.

One, the rank of the Avengers has been broken. A Reformed Niger Delta Avengers has now allied with MEND and the federal government. More militants may soon come to heel. And the new group has threatened to name names.

Besides, before the military amphibious force moves into action as soon as it’s mobilised, MEND will first begin its Operation Moses, essentially an orientation campaign across the region. That will get the counter-avenger op some goodwill.

The outcomes of the negotiation released by MEND recently also stated certain concessions the federal government made, which included conditional release of prized suspects like Nnamdi Kanu, leader of the Indigenous Peoples of Biafra, Henry Okah, a MEND’s chieftain serving a jail sentence in South Africa, his brither Charles also in Kuje Prison, and Obi Nwabueze.

The statement disclosed that Kanu and other detained IPOB activists would be released on condition that they renounce their agitation for secession.

According to MEND, ex-Senator Adolphus Wabara had introduced the compromise to secure the release of the pro-Biafran agitators.

ALSO SEE: Buhari’s indirect talks with Delta militants: Repeat of same past mistakes?

The government’s negotiators also agreed not to arrest or harass fugitive ex-MEND militant, Government Ekpemupolo (popularly known as Tompolo), “whenever he makes himself available as a delegate of the MEND Aaron Team 2.” In addition, the group stated that the government would review the life sentence meted out on Edmund Ebiware.

The agreement also called for a review of “criminal charges against Urhobo freedom fighter Kelvin Prosper Oniarah,” and the review of life sentences handed to seven soldiers in 2008 for supporting the Niger Delta struggle.

The affected soldiers are Major Suleiman Alabi Akubo, Sergeant Mathias Peter, Lance Corporal Alexander Davou, Lance Corporal Moses Nwaigwe, Lance Corporal Nnandi Anene, Lance Corporal Taatihi Emmanuel, and Private Caleb Bawa.

MEND obviously is getting all it wants. But the federal government’s request, the end of Avengers’ vandalism, is not in sight yet. Probably Buhari could end up with the short end of the stickif the Ijaw leaders’ naysaying prevailed.