ON WATCH: The money or the arms

MEND is a command structure which amalgamates and co-ordinates various operational cells. MEND has an overall political purpose which it has often stated as reforming the government's administration of the Niger Delta calling for true federalism, transparency of revenue flows, reform and professionalism in the police force.

This has provided the umbrella for action that some gang leaders have taken advantage of to fulfil their purposes which may be more focused on enriching themselves rather that improving the quality of life for people in the Niger Delta.

Operating within the MEND structure provides an additional leverage to each commander and helps to ensure that his territory is not threatened by other MEND commanders or other gangs. There is then a significant advantage to operating within the MEND structure.

The government has tried to dismember MEND by buying off individual commanders. There is nothing inherently wrong with paying a monthly stipend to former combatants while they retrain and develop skills suitable for community employment.

Nor is there anything wrong with a weapons buy-back scheme if the process is transparent, meets UN standards for disarmament and weapons destruction, and the price paid for weapons surrendered is not above market price.

In such circumstances the government would use the ceasefire and amnesty period to fast track major employment and economic restructuring in each state so as to sustain development opportunities and employment that would continue former combatants in gainful employment.

However, if sustaining peace relies on continued payments to former combatants and their leaders then the peace is doomed to fail. Either the money to discontinue conflict will run out or better offers will come from other sources such as political godfathers and potential political candidates who want to engage the boys to dissuade potential rival candidates for political office. The likelihood of this last possibility will increase as the next elections grow nearer while the former is already becoming a problem as at least one governor has had to already borrow heavily from the commercial sector to fund payments to former combatants.

Can the peace hold? There are three major factors working against a sustained peace:

1. Despite the arms surrender the non-state forces retain a significant level of fire-power and if the amnesty unravels there are too many youths in the Niger Delta that will be armed and dangerous; 2. The political godfathers need the boys to secure the next election and thus want to ensure these boys remain available. At the same time the political godfathers must ensure the boys are not drawn under the control of rival godfathers. Thus the gang structures are maintained by monthly payments; 3. The oil barons are making too much money out of illegal bunkering and to do this they do deals with the military. Both the Navy and Army have been publicly implicated in illegal bunkering operations but the prosecutions have been minimal.

At the present time peace relies largely on money being paid regularly to keep the boys sweet either through direct payments or via funding through former commanders. The issue inevitably arises as to whether the commanders pass on the payments to their former foot-soldiers as witnessed in the recent protests at Bayelsa State House where Boyloaf's boys protested at their commander withholding promised payments that he had received from the Bayelsa State Government.

One measure of the success of the amnesty is the number of weapons surrendered. Thus far the number is woefully low. The Akwa Ibom Coordinator of the Presidential Committee on Amnesty reported the surrender of 15 militants and one (1) ... yes, only 1 ...

AK-47 turned in under the amnesty and this is claimed to be a success (Next, 13 September 2009).

The surrender of Kile Selky Torughedi aka "Young Shall Grow" to Presidential Advisor Timi Alaibe yielded one of the largest caches of weapons with around 100,000 rounds of ammunition, 70 automatic rifles, several machine guns, assorted other weapons and three gun boats. This followed the earlier surrender to President Yar'Adua of a group of militants including Ebikabowei Ben Victor aka General Boyloaf,

Commander Africa Ukparasia, Commander Joshua MacIver and Ezizi Ogunbos aka Commander Ogunboss which yielded 520 arms, 14 gunboats and a total of 95,970 rounds of ammunition (Next Editorial, 17 September 2009).

But overall the number of automatic weapons surrendered is probably less than one percent of the total number of automatic weapons in civilian hands in the Niger Delta. In short, if the boys want to reignite the conflict the availability of weapons will not be a constraint.