Dead on arrival

The seeming ease with which our military forces have recently overrun militant base camps and pockets of resistance in the swamps of the Niger Delta may have lulled our political leaders into a dangerous complacency.

Pride goeth before a fall.

How else to explain the much trumpeted amnesty announcement by President Umaru Yar’Adua on Thursday? In what must count as a huge missed opportunity, the president presented warmed-over offers that had died on arrival in the past. This latest offer, of amnesty, disarmament, and demobilization, will doubtless meet the same fate.

Everyone knows the solutions to the Niger Delta problem. But we have had no government so far willing to do the right thing and bring peace to the southernmost reaches of our country, in the oil-rich but much destabilized mangrove swamps that millions of our fellow citizens call home.

We all know that, without addressing the root causes of the insurgency and criminality of the region, simply asking people to turn their swords into plowshares can be seen as nothing more than a lame public relations effort, soon to disappear like a puff of cigarette smoke into the heavy humid air of that part of the country.

The fact is, in the latest offer, there is no incentive whatsoever for the militants to cease and desist. Right now, and despite conventional military victories recorded in the recent campaign, it is open secret that our government has no consistent control over the territory of the Delta. Militants, and criminal gangs routinely in cahoots with local politicians, blow up oil facilities at will, kidnap citizen and foreigner alike, often for ransom, engage in widespread oil bunkering, and generally make it impossible for normal life to be lived.

The insurgents have also succeeded in shutting in nearly half of our oil production capacity, at a cost to our treasury of roughly N10 billion a day.

As nearly every committee appointed by the government, and every outside group, has counselled, a comprehensive peace is only possible with a comprehensive peace plan. In addition to an amnesty, disarmament and demobilization, we need an immediate and credible attempt at negotiation with the genuinely aggrieved militants and other local advocacy groups.

Such negotiation must involve an external mediator. This is not to suggest that we are incompetent to resolve our own issues; it is merely to recognize that, after many years of failed promises and disillusionment, this will serve as an immediate confidence-building measure. It will allow the start of a genuine conversation that will signal to the people of the Delta that this is a new day.

Such a forum, preferably to take place within our shores, not outside, as some of the Delta groups have demanded, will then allow all grievances to be placed on the table. We can begin to tackle the issues of economic justice, of development, of mass unemployment, community disintegration, infrastructure development, and widespread alienation.

Previously on this page, we have also advocated the exit of our government from the oil business. Much of the inequity, the greed, and most assuredly the endemic corruption that has come to characterize our oil sector, can be traced directly to the pernicious effects of government serving as both player and regulator. Everyone from Ibn Khaldun to Frederich Hayek to Milton Friedman to most economists of this and other eras recognize that government, barring the rarest of emergency circumstances, should not be competing directly with the private sector.

The path to peace in the Niger Delta winds through many peaks and valleys. But it does start with a mediated negotiation to achieve a lasting resolution.