Following the eclipse of MOSOP and Nigeria‘s return to democratic governance in 1999, it fell to MEND to develop a new strategy for engaging the international community with regards to the plight of the Niger Delta people. MEND‘s strategy took a new form of the militarization of local resistance. The emergence and operations of MEND has negatively affected the global access to the oil in the Niger Delta, necessitating the securitisation of oil commerce in the context of the ―global‖ energy interests of the world‘s powers, spearheaded by the U.S. MEND‘s emergence as a social force in the Niger Delta may be placed between late 2005 and early 2006. The organisation first made the headlines when it successfully attacked the EA oil field off the coast of the Niger Delta on 11 January 2006, and followed this with impressive attacks on Shell oil installations and contractors, and abducted some expatriate oil workers (Obi, 2008: 423). The origins of MEND can be traced to the Ijaw ethnic minority group that is dispersed across the coastal states of the Niger Delta. As Obi (2008: 424) comments, ―MEND is a decentralized broad pan-Delta alliance of Ijaw resistance groups in the Niger Delta whose [overriding aim] is to wrest control over the oil produced in the Niger Delta from the state-transnational oil alliance, which it has targeted for attack.‖
MEND have carried out disturbing attacks on oil installations, openly exchanged bullets with the Nigerian military force, and kidnapped many foreign oil workers. Unlike MOSOP, MEND‘s leaders are unknown, as it communicates with the outside world through the means of a dedicated email address, with all its press releases signed by an unknown Gbomo Jomo. While MOSOP had taken to networking with transnational advocacy groups, the leadership of MEND have preferred to use the media to reach the international audience. The attacks of MEND have featured prominently in global media, and in some cases, the group has given information prior to attacks, possibly to demonstrate the inability of Nigerian security forces to stop either its attacks or sabotage of oil installations. MEND has drawn the eyes of the international community to the Ijaw plight through the taking hostage of foreign oil workers and the consequent
154 demand for ransom (Obi, 2009: 122). The UN Office for Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs documents that in January 2007 alone, ―at least 50 foreigners were taken hostage, two of whom were killed. That compares to a total of around 70 foreigners snatched in the whole of 2006‖ (IRINnews, 2007).
The use of emails, photographs, and hostage-taking by MEND is a stratagem geared at focusing ―the attention of Western governments and the world‘s media on the Niger Delta, exploiting the blaze of publicity generated by hostage-taking to press their grievances and demands‖ (Junger, 2007). In particular, MEND has gained most attention globally by its threats to ―cripple the Nigerian oil exports‖ (IRIN, 2006). Among the other strategies used by MEND to internationalise its plight includes the creative use of the Internet to send information to its supporters abroad and ―effective dissemination of information and images of captives and well-armed fighters in real time‖ (Obi, 2009:
478). One theme that MEND often seeks to project is its capacity to hurt the economic interests of the state-global oil alliance and leave a solid dent on the transnational production of oil from the Niger Delta.
In response to the criminal attacks of MEND, the Nigerian state-transnational oil alliance has often walked the path of militarisation and securitisation of the Niger Delta. Three major considerations merit our attention. The first point is that the Nigerian government have tended to perfunctorily dismiss MEND as an opportunistic criminal group. The second point is that the post-9/11 global war on terror has tended to provide the background for the ―labelling‖ of MEND as a ―terrorist organisation with possible links to the other transnational terrorist groups targeting Western oil interests‖ (Obi, 2009). The third point concerns the risks to U.S. interests against the background of the increased profiling of West Africa in global security equations as an alternative to the volatile Arabian and Persian Gulf (Ianaccone, 2007), as well as a site of increased global competition for hydrocarbons in the face of increasing demand and decreasing supply (Obi, 2009: 478). The latter informs Obi‘s (2009: 478) contention that ―the transnational alliance has increasingly privileged the security dimension of the extraction of oil from the Niger Delta, with local resistance now seen as a threat that has to be removed.‖ It is in this context that the offer of military support to the Nigerian government (in 2008) to
―restore law and order‖ in the Niger Delta by the British Prime Minister (BBC, 2008) becomes intelligible. This was the raison d’être for the recently formed U.S. Africa Command (AFRICOM). AFRICOM has as part of its mandate the curbing of threats to U.S. interests on the continent, as well as enhancing the capacity of African militaries to ensure security and order within their territories (Obi, 2009: 478).
On countless occasions, MEND has been profiled by the Memorial Institute for Prevention of Terrorism (MIPT) (2006) as ―an active terrorist group that uses violent
155 means to support the rights of the ethnic Ijaw people in the Niger Delta.‖ The report further notes that ―led by a notoriously shadowy and secretive elite cadre, MEND‘s ultimate goal is to expel foreign oil companies and Nigerians not indigenous to the Delta region from Ijawland. In the short run, the group wishes to increase local control over the money made from the exploitation of the region‘s abundant natural resources‖
(MIPT, 2006). In its superficial focus on labelling MEND as a terrorist group that constitutes an imminent threat to Western energy interests, MIPT missed the more salient point of probing the circumstances within which MEND emerged and the content of its message(s). Okonta (2007: 7-11) provides a more nuanced view when he locates the emergence of MEND within ―the lethal cocktail of economic deprivation, military dictatorship and worsening environmental crisis‖ in the Niger Delta, and its tapping into
―the fifty year Ijaw quest for social and environmental justice in the Niger Delta.‖ Beyond this, while MEND has kidnapped foreign oil workers as part of resistance movement, ―it has released all such hostages after a period, all unharmed, giving credence to the view that they are used to draw international attention to the injustice in the region, seen as an important aspect in globalising local resistance in the Niger Delta‖ (Obi, 2009: 123).
MEND‘s spokesperson, Jomo Gbomo, once enumerated the objectives of MEND in an interview with Brian Ross:
The Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta (MEND) is an amalgam of all arm bearing groups in the Niger Delta fighting for the control of oil revenue by indigenes of the Niger Delta who have had relatively no benefits from the exploitation of our mineral resources by the Nigerian government and oil companies over the last fifty years (quoted in Obi, 2009: 123).
From the above, one can conclude—with a good degree of accuracy—that MEND‘s anger is directed primarily at the Nigerian government and the oil multinationals, which, in tandem with the Oloibiri metaphor, are held culpable for decades of plunder and pollution of the oil-rich Niger Delta. Having probed the internationalisation of local resistance in the Niger Delta, with especial focus on MOSOP and MEND, the concluding chapter goes in search of solutions to the current impasse in the Niger Delta;
it suggest alternative strategies for the creative, ordered and amicable management of ethnic minority problems in the Niger Delta, and Nigeria as a whole.
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Chapter Six
In Search of Solutions
6.1 Introductory Remarks
After over 50 years of independence, Nigeria stands helplessly at a political crossroads as it struggles to emplace legitimate and accommodative instruments of governance.
The country‘s cultural cleavages are not just severe and enduring; they have become its major Achilles heel. These cleavages are further exacerbated by the general sense among those who perceive themselves to be outside the corridors of power that their communities are poor and illiterate, lacking adequate social services, and without the accoutrements of development due to lack of adequate representation in government (Uzodike, et al. 2010: 175). This is brought into stark relief when we recall the many ethnic minority groups in the Niger Delta whose oil resources have served as cash cows for Nigeria‘s foreign exchange earnings for more than three decades. For such communities, ―majoritarian democracy has served both to legitimize and to facilitate their political marginalisation and the associated economic exploitation, poverty and development‖ (Uzodike, et al. 2010: 175).
Spotlighting Africa, Ake (1996: 129) argues that the continent ―requires somewhat more than the crude variety of liberal democracy that is being foisted on it, and even more than the impoverished democracy that prevails in the industrialised countries.‖ Ake further avows that Africa needs a democracy that ―puts as much emphasis on collective rights as it does on individual rights‖—a form of democracy marked by ―incorporation and power sharing which ensures as much participation, inclusivity and representativity as possible‖ (Ake, 1996: 132, emphasis added). Given the context of Nigeria‘s political processes and organisations as well as the severe structural segmentation of many of its ethnic groups, it seems plausible to work toward fashioning an instrument of governance that has the right ingredients for cushioning cultural cleavages while creating an enabling space within which political and economic development can blossom.
Assuming the highly contestable, albeit popular, view that democracy is the most suitable system of governance, this section proposes to revisit and offer the idea of consociational democracy83 (or power-sharing) as a potentially effective long-term
83The theoretical merit of consociationalism is reflected in the application of its tenets over the years in analyzing accommodation and power sharing in different countries. It has been used in the study of Austria (Powell, 1970; Luther and Muller, 1992), Lebanon (Dekmejian, 1978), Switzerland (Steiner, 1990;
Lehmbruch, 1993; Linder, 1994), Belgium (Zolberg, 1977), Malaysia (Von Vorys, 1975; Zakaria, 1989),
157 formula for mitigating Nigeria‘s ethnic minority problems and the associated challenges that it poses to the country‘s development, especially in the oil-rich Niger Delta. The overriding position taken in this section is that the winner-takes-all format of majoritarianism is precisely why tensions have remained ubiquitous in Nigeria, despite the introduction of political liberalization and democratic politics. The section concludes by adducing some other policy options that may help to alleviate the simmering conflict in the Niger Delta, and Nigeria as a whole.