December 8, 2008
I was researching radical Islamism because of the terror that is rife in the Middle East since the state of Israel was created sixty years ago. Today, the Middle East is turbulent with established guerrilla and terrorist groups, each fighting to assert its authority. The Al Qaeda is dominant Iraq, with networks spread around most Arab nations. The Taliban holds sway in Afghanistan while the Hamaz and the Hezbollah give tutorials on terrorism in Palestine and Lebanon. An earlier terrorist group known as the Fedayin or “men of sacrifice” was very prominent in the Middle East in the 1960’’s and 1970’s.
The Middle East is not the only place where the “teaching of terror” has reached biblical proportion. In Peru the “Shining Path” guerilla group has been doing battle with the Peruvian government. In Indonesia, the Acch region has been making secessionist movements for upward of a decade. In Columbia, there are three well established armies vying for power. In the Philippines, Islamic elements are resisting oppression. Under the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF), the Muslims seek to establish a separate Muslim state in the Southern Philippine Island of Mindanao. The Muslim insurgency is an attempt to undermine the political homogeneity of the country. Southern Sudan has been fighting for upwards of 20 years against what they perceived as political and economic marginalization of the North.
In Mexico, the Zapatista Movement was started by the Zapatista National Liberation Army (ZNLA), in 1994. The ZNLA declared war on the Mexican government and proclaimed a revolutionary agenda against the government. The robust crisis profile of such insurgencies is in-exhaustive. Nigeria has had the Yenagoa Putsch - Adaka Boro’s 12 day revolution and the 30 month old fratricidal civil war prosecuted by Dim Odumegwu Ojukwu. All insurgencies across nations are products of oppression, economic exclusion and political marginalization. The most lasting panacea is to remove the causality of problem rather attempt to cure the symptoms
For about a decade now, the Niger Delta Region has become a theatre of political gangsterism, economic opportunism and military adventurism. The federal Government and its collaborators have always treated the Region as an economic colony and a militarily conquered territory. That explains why there is little or no regard for the political, economic and environmental rights of the inhabitants. The relationship between the federal government and the oil bearing communities is one of master servant relationship underscored by grave exploitation. It is a dog-eat-dog capitalism.
Psychologists have long established a correlation between alienation and frustration. Even researchers of terrorism believe that rebellion or insurgency is the product of an unjust political order. An unjust political order leads to economic exclusion and political alienation, and it is a natural tendency for the alienated lot to nurse a sense of psychological rejection. This feeling in extreme cases leads to narcissism. As the population of frustrated humanity gathers groups will have the natural tendency of plotting violence as the only solution to terminate the exploitation real or imaginary. This is the scenario in the Niger Delta and the kafkaesque nightmare that has enveloped the Niger Delta. When a people are excluded from what they are supposed to own, control and enjoy, they come together and become resilient, and when this happens there is no amount of raw force that can dislodge such insurgency.
During the 17th century, the Niger Delta was wedded to mercantilist capitalism in Europe via the legitimate trade in Palm oil and other legitimate goods. Since the discovery of crude oil and its exploitation, fossil fuel has become a curse rather than a blessing to the people. Government at all levels is insensitive to the plight of local people and oil companies have failed woefully to deliver corporate social responsibility. Development paradigms adopted since 1960 are very weak. Thus the nitty-gritty of the Niger Delta crisis for the past three decades is centered around power and resources in the hands of the Federal Government through obnoxious decrees.
The Niger Delta people have been protesting against economic exclusion through non-violent means in the past, but the protest has assumed a violent dimension especially after the killing of Ken Saro Wiwa along with eight Ogonis. Now, the Region has been militarized and even States pay colossal sums of money to militant groups in an attempt to pacify them. By the day, it is becoming obvious that oil is thicker that blood.
The Federal Government has also adopted “bullet for oil” diplomacy by militarizing the Niger Delta. Most people believe that the deployment of military men to the area is a very weak policy option considering the stark reality that the Niger Delta is of immense strategic interest to the capitalist powers. At no time in the history of diplomacy has force triumphed over dialogue anchored on justice. For example, during the period of legitimate trade, the British sent punitive expeditions to Akassa, Brass and Nembe but king Koko of Nembe decided to take his own destiny in his own hands. After a bloody conflict the British occupation of the area was only temporal and the trade for which the expedition was sent suffered severe reverses of fortunes. King Ibanichuka of Okrika, Nana of Itsekiri and other suzerains also resented British imperialism.
The situation is worse now that ethnic identity has been transformed into a mobilizing element not only for contesting access to state and oil. There is hardly any road in the Niger Delta Region that is not policed by the ugly monsters of armoured tanks and killer weaponry. The situation is so bizarre that even toddlers and infants can discern the difference between the sound of AK-47 and other brands of killer weapons. The youths are now living with the psyche that life itself is becoming meaningless, as violence seem to have been entrenched as a normal way of life. When the trouble started, the youths used to run under the staccato of gun fire, but now they are so used to the booming sound of those lethal weapons that any time a gun is fired, they sit back to evaluate the potency of the weapon. The implication is that the sound of gun is so commonplace in the Region that even children have impressed it in their psyche.
Here and there in Niger Delta, policemen and trigger happy soldiers violate the serenity of civil existence, and they justify these dastardly acts by branding their victims “militant”. Amidst this confusion, members of the JTF and some top military politicians engage in underhand deals, racking enormous financial capital in oil bunkering and sundry illicit activities in the treasure trove.
The story about the gruesome murder of three youngsters, one of them a University undergraduate in Southern Ijaw Local Government Area of Bayelsa State has once more demonstrated that the beast of insecurity is being emboldened to be more ferocious by even the security outfit, which remit it is to curb militancy. The beast of military-inspired insecurity will loom large and strong, as any body can be labeled a “militants” and annihilated.
In human affairs when leaders deliberately try to cover up the truth to satisfy their selfish interests, they end up telling more lies in an attempt to authenticate earlier fabrications. What cold logic will the JTF propound for abbreviating those three hapless youngsters knowing now that they were mistaken identities? How will the families of the youngsters be compensated for cutting short their dreams and aspirations? At least the JTF is made up of military officers trained and observant enough to differentiate between law abiding citizens and criminals.
The tutorials of terror are so hard that we seem to be approaching the moral limits of military deception in a supposedly democratic rule, where the Joint Military Task Force has a “kill and go” mandate – a fiat that is reminiscent of the Abacha era when an evil military baaskaap held sway. In a genuine democracy where the ‘Rule of Law’ is not stripped of its meaning, the JTF should have been dismembered. For many impartial observers, the JTF can be likened to the American forces in Afghanistan, who under the rubric of chasing out the Taliban and neutralizing the Al-Qaeda Network engage in rape, stealing, decimating civilian without discrimination.
I am tempted to agree with what Asari Dokubo said four years ago the “Niger Delta is a conquered territory. It is a place of ruthless internal colonization; it is a place where the gun, the tanker, the battleship, and the marauding war planes of the nation are always at the ready to deal destruction and death. The Niger Delta is a place where Federal forces display their latest technology of warfare – a place where uniformed men display their military tactics and wreck havoc, destruction and death. The Niger Delta is the festering sore of the nation…The Niger Delta is a beggar by the road side. The Niger Delta is like a woman raped and left to death in a dark alley. It is a place of deepest sorrow”. But the Federal Government has decreed that she must not protest.
Contrary to the thinking of some armchair analysts, the Niger Delta is not a threat to the peace and stability of the Nigerian State. Rather, it is the Nigerian State and her inept leadership that has imposed tremendous hardship on the people of the Niger Delta. The horrible experience Nigeria is passing through now calls of the emergence of genuine rebels and reform-minded revolutionaries. but in the so-called interest of the corporate existence and stability of Nigeria, our human rights activists, civil society organization have all surrendered to the Machiavellian tyrants and kleptocrats of our fatherland.
The Nigerian State has been caught stealing the resources of the Niger Delta and the Federal forces are killing the youths of the Region for speaking out that they should be given the right to own, control and enjoy their resources. The Federal Government sustains their corrupt hegemony with the resources of the Niger Delta Region. No group has suffered more indignities at the hands of the discredited system than the various communities in the Niger Delta. But for how long will the lessons of terror continue in our father land?
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