Fresh facts have emerged about a curious Nigerian secret mission to South Africa. A few weeks ago, sections of the Nigerian media reported that Baba Gana Kingibe, Secretary to the Federal Government, had led a government delegation on a secret mission to South Africa to discuss the seizure of assets acquired in that country by corrupt Nigerian officials. Saharareporters can now report that those speculations were wide off the mark.
Contrary to media speculation that the widely reported secret trip was meant to discuss the repatriation of loot by former governors, Saharareporters has learnt that the delegation, which included Foreign Affairs minister, Ojo Maduekwe, was to meet with Henry Okah (a.k.a Jomo Gbomo) of the Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta (MEND) to discuss terms for peace in that increasingly volatile, violence-prone oil producing region.
Henry Okah, Saharareporters has learned from highly reliable sources, enjoyed patronage from top officials of the Yar'adua government since their assumption of power in May 2007. One of our sources revealed that the open romance between Henry Okah and Federal officials in Nigeria -including Obasanjo era officials-was an open secret.
A faction of MEND that recently called off its unilateral ceasefire pledge against the Nigerian government suspect that the Federal Government delegation that visited Okah in South Africa might have set him up for his recent arrest in Luanda, Angola. Okah was arrested on September 3, 2007 at the international airport in Luanda while returning to his base in South Africa.
Baba Gana Kingibe, as the SGF, chairs the Federal Government peace committee that has been meeting with Niger Delta militants in Abuja in the last one month. Several groups from the Niger Delta have held a series of meetings with Yar'adua in Abuja. Though Baba Gana Kingibe serves as the government’s main negotiator, Yar'adua has also met with the groups once in a while to break negotiation deadlocks.
The Niger Delta team is composed mainly of MEND, FNDIC, a group led by Tompolo in the Western Delta area of Warri and environs, Asari Dokubo's NDPVF, and a sprinkle of civil society activists.
In recent weeks, the groups have become increasingly distrustful of the government because of what a source said was the lack of will on Yar’adua’s part to fulfill commitments he freely agreed to. One example is Yar'adua's promise to visit the region two weeks after the negotiations started a pledge he is yet to fulfill.
Two months into the negotiations, several activist groups described Yar'adua's physical outlook as weak, citing a meeting they had with him at 11:00 p.m. where he appeared very exhausted and barely able to speak.
The groups are apprehensive that Yar'adua's commitment may be fickle especially as several members of his cabinet are more inclined to use force in the Niger Delta, they describe Baba Gana Kingibe as a foxy individual who was quick to refer to his so-called progressive credentials to waive off set of pre-conditions they put forward before the government, but the main problem with the group is that there is a lot of conflicting agenda and this blew open as soon as the news of arrest of Henry Okah became public last week.
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