After the Abuja bombings, the political process turns back to the Niger Delta, where militants are frustrated by the aftermath of the amnesty deal

Bomb blasts in Abuja on 1 October killed twelve people. They could foretell more trouble to come and it is still not clear who was responsible, despite an e-mail purporting to come from a loose affiliation of militant groups in the Niger Delta (AC Vol 51 No 20). President Goodluck Jonathan, who is from the Delta, faces calls for his impeachment from northern rivals for the People’s Democratic Party (PDP) presidential nomination. National and state elections, due in January, are expected to be delayed until April, giving candidates more time to fill their war chests.

The impeachment calls from the Northern Political Leaders’ Forum are being pushed by Adamu Ciroma, hitherto an uncontroversial pillar of the governing PDP (whose National Women’s Leader is his wife, Maryam). Months of manoeuvres to secure the party’s nomination – or for Jonathan to run for a rival party – could involve the end of an amnesty for militants, a rapid disintegration of security in the Delta and a resumption of armed conflict there.

Amid the furore over responsibility for the Abuja bombing is a leading figure in the Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta, Henry Okah, whose own statements on the matter are as tangled as the government’s. In February 2008, Okah was arrested in Angola for trafficking arms for MEND and detained by the Nigerian Federal authorities. Under an amnesty during the presidency of the late Umaru Musa Yar’Adua, he was released in July 2009 and took refuge in South Africa. After the Abuja bombing, South African police arrested him at his house in Johannesburg on suspicion of terrorism and at Jonathan’s behest. He now faces extradition to Nigeria, where subsequent claims and counterclaims have cast confusion over the bombers’ identities and motives.

The government rubbished Okah’s claims that it wanted to blame the bombing on Jonathan’s northern rivals and the Joint Task Force talked down the threat of militants resuming serious armed struggle in the Delta. The JTF insisted that its aerial surveys proved there were no longer any militants’ camps. However, Okah claims the amnesty is close to falling apart. There were not 15,000 fighters in the rehabilitation programme, more like 500, and the rest were a ‘rent-a-crowd’, he said; there were thousands of weapons in the region and Jonathan was not sincere in wanting to return the land to the Delta’s people.

Okah’s little list
The authorities quickly summoned MEND leaders who had signed up to the peace process to the presidency to denounce the bombings. Meanwhile Okah’s diary, scrutinised by South African magistrates, referred to ‘Boats, Micro-uzzi, binoculars, Jungle boots, 40mm cannon, raincoats, Surface to Air Missiles, Grenade launchers, Land mines, Assault machine guns’. An entry dated 19 September reads: ‘We will fight to the finish.’ Okah told journalists he feared he would be poisoned in gaol.

Rival conspiracy theories proliferate, mostly without a shred of evidence. One is that Jonathan’s supporters set off the bomb, with Okah as the fall guy, to give the impression that Delta militants were again a threat to state security, so Jonathan should stay on to keep them in check.

The day after the bombing, Jonathan told a meeting of the Economic Community of West African States that MEND was not to blame: ‘What happened yesterday was a terrorist act and MEND was just used as a straw; MEND is not a terrorist group.’ He claimed that other forces were behind the e-mail. Security officers then arrested Raymond Dokpesi, manager of the former military leader General Ibrahim Babangida’s campaign for the PDP nomination. They alleged that a string of text messages linked Dokpesi to the bomb plot but later released him. A television tycoon, he is now suing them for wrongful arrest. Militants had already threatened Dokpesi, one of the richest men in the Niger Delta, with death if he came home after working for Babangida.

Another theory is that a group of hard-line northern activists was behind the bombs. The message would be that Jonathan is weak and cannot keep the Delta under control, so the north needs to take charge again. On paper, that could favour any of the northern contenders for the PDP’s nomination: ex-military leader Babangida, former Vice-President Atiku Abubakar and former head of military intelligence Aliyu Mohammed Gusau. Whatever the truth, the ructions around the government have weakened Jonathan. Some in the Delta think that a faction within MEND wants to show it remains central to politics, with or without him. Yet this theory does not explain the President’s eagerness to shift the blame away from MEND.

The Abuja bombings may be forerunners of greater violence but not of a change in the Delta militants’ tactics. Few MEND people know how to plant bombs triggered by mobile telephones. There have been bombings before but they were not followed by wider violence. Jonathan has old links to the Delta militants. As Baylesa Governor, he inherited a relationship with Ijaw nationalists and armed youth groups, originally deployed by his predecessor, Diepreye Solomon Peter Alamieyeseigha, to fight the neighbouring Itsekiri community. MEND brings loosely together the Ijaw Youth Congress fighters of this period, remnants of Mujahid Dokubo-Asari’s Federated Niger Delta Ijaw Communities and the Niger Delta People’s Volunteer Force, with smaller criminal gangs and armed groups such as Ateke Tom’s Niger Delta Vigilantes (AC Vol 45 No 18). Factions may switch between different parties and candidates, leading to sudden and bloody conflicts.

In 2003 and 2007, most of the armed thugs were employed by the PDP. It is likely to be different in 2011. Only a few MEND leaders profit much from the amnesty – High Chief Government Ekpemupolo (aka Tompolo), Prince Farah Ipalibo (‘Dagogo Farah’) and Victor Ben Ebikabowei (‘Boyloaf’, see Box). Despite the military’s claims, men from hundreds of militant camps have moved to Obubura camp in Cross Rivers State and another in Bayelsa, ready to take up arms.

Bayelsa is beset by criminal gangs linked to the main camp near Yenagoa, with Governor Timipre Sylva using them as his shock troops. In May, ‘General’ Eris Paul and ‘General’ Africanus Ukparasia Tuwonwei aided former Delta Governor James Ibori’s escape from arrest, spiriting him away to Sylva’s personal yacht, the Silver Spirit, stationed off the coast of Brass, and thence to a West African safe haven and Dubai, where he is now fighting extradition to Britain to face corruption and money-laundering charges.

The gangs still kidnap, rob and bunker (steal) oil, enriching themselves and their political patrons. International markets are awash with this illicit oil, much of which finds its way to Port Arthur in Texas, a key destination for Nigerian oil. The International Maritime Bureau’s Piracy Reporting Centre in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, ranks Nigeria second only to Somalia, and estimates that half the incidents go unreported. For example in January 2009, the MT Meredith, laden with 4,000 tonnes of diesel oil, was attacked by gunmen in speedboats at the Bonny Fairway Buoy. The Romanian crew was kidnapped and the engine dynamited. MEND claimed that an affiliate group carried out the operation. The Delta’s waterways are clogged with rusting ships with crews from eastern Europe and the Philippines.

Vested interests in the shipping industry prefer to minimise the danger. Identifying the risk would increase insurance rates and draw attention to bunkering and other illegal business such as arms-dealing. West Africa hosts an oil and gas boom with new finds made almost weekly. The region, its investors and their clients want stability in international shipping. Energy security is crucial for the United States, the largest buyer of Nigerian crude oil. Americans are now shying away from offshore oil, except from foreign shores. The Delta is Anglo-Dutch Shell’s second-biggest profit centre, so European governments worry, too.
 

Any further collapse of security would allow fishermen and fighters from poor communities with expert knowledge of the creeks to make their own law of the sea.  

Source: http://www.africa-confidential.com