Colonel Edor Obi (rtd) is a former Military Administrator of Bayelsa State. He was a member of the committee that produced a technical report on the Niger Delta during the late President Umaru Yar’Adua’s administration. In this interview with INNOCENT DURU, he discloses that he saw the current Niger Delta crisis coming. He also bemoans the renewed activities of militants in the region, which he blamed on the piecemeal implementation of the technical report he described as the most comprehensive ever produced in the country on the Niger Delta
Niger Delta militants had sheathed their swords for a long time before the current bombing of oil facilities. What do you think is responsible for this renewed agitation?
Well, I am one of the people who have always been concerned that we had the silence of the graveyard in the Niger Delta, because I happen to have been in the committee that produced the most comprehensive technical report on the Niger Delta under the late President (Umaru) Yar’Adua. The amnesty programme, which was a fallout of that committee, was just taken out of the holistic recommendation we made to address the issue of Niger Delta.
As a stakeholder in the Niger Delta, what efforts have you made to address the problem?
Of course, I remain a stakeholder and I will always share my views with other stakeholders, because at the end of the day, we don’t have any other country to run to. So we have to save this country. When President Muhammadu Buhari was sworn in, I wrote a memo, and one of the issues in my memo was about the Niger Delta. Without any concrete information but based on my personal experience that there was a lot of unease in the region, I wrote about what needed to be done. I advised that we needed to pay attention to the Niger Delta because there was a lot of unease as there were issues about how the amnesty programme was going.
Don’t also forget that there was a lot of political undertone, which goes back to the issue of true federalism. The issue of resource control has always played out. And don’t also forget that even recently, following the Petroleum Industry Bill (PIB) in the National Assembly, the issue of what is due to the host community has come up again. I think the ultimate thing for us to do is to think of how to implement the National Conference report which will restructure the country and bring us into true federalism, where the regions will have more control of their resources.
I think if that is done, we will resolve many issues not just in the Niger Delta but also in the South East and other states. The bigger picture for me is the issue of going back to true federalism. Part of the things that I even recommended in my memo was that the immediate past president (Dr. Goodluck Jonathan) should be given a role to play in the Niger Delta because whether we like it or not, he remains a major stakeholder in the Niger Delta. And I also stated that we should not wait for things to deteriorate before we begin to react to them.
Was the memo you wrote to the President borne out of the feeling that you should advise him or?
I believe that I have a stake to offer my opinion on any national issue. I know the President and I believe that he means well. So I thought I owe him that to offer my advice on any national issue.
Let us go back to the report you spoke about earlier. What were the other things that were recommended, and when the president decided to handle the issue of amnesty alone, what was the reaction of the committee?
I must commend President Yar’ Adua because at the time we even decided to take the amnesty programme, we had what I will call one of the major challenges to our national security. Our production level was declining so rapidly that if we did not immediately embrace the amnesty programme, we would have arrived at a point in this country where our production would have probably amounted to nothing and the implication would have been that we would not have been able to realise any revenue and you can imagine what kind of national security issue this can cause. Probably we would have riots all over the country because people’s salaries would not be paid.
So, he saw that immediately, and I am told he was advised from the earnings that were coming in, and I think he had consultations with the relevant authorities and said let’s talk to these boys and let them lay down their arms so that at least we can have our oil production back. So, that was probably why he was in a hurry to just take that aspect and implement it. The understanding was that he would look at the other recommendations more. I cannot just sit down and tell you about the other recommendations. If you look at the Niger Delta Development Commission, you will see that there is a master plan for the Niger Delta. One of the things we talked about was to take that master plan and implement it fully in all the places.
Going back to our report, by the way, we did not create anything new. What we did was to just summarise the various reports between 1958 when we had the Willings Commission and the last report by the Ogbemudia committee set up by former President Olusegun Obasanjo. We talked about the issue of demobilisation, which eventually led to amnesty; skill acquisition; the training of those boys; job placement; the development of the host communities on sustainable basis and other things that should be done in the area of security, military and the economic and social impact programmes that were supposed to be implemented holistically with the various agencies.
There were stages where we said the Federal Government and the oil companies, state governments and the host community should come together to fashion out some of these things that are supposed to be done there so they could be sustainable and could be done on a long term. The report is still in the archive. They can still go and look at it and see how best they can implement it, because as we speak, that is the most comprehensive report on the Niger Delta.
Between the technical report on Niger Delta and the National Conference report, which one should the President be looking at?
The Niger Delta report and the National Conference report are two different things. When you talk about the Niger Delta, we have the technical report you should look at. But you cannot do that in isolation. We are talking about two different things here. At the end of the day, the national conference report has to do with the issue of true federalism we are all talking about as Nigerians. In my opinion, whatever you do in any region, if you don’t pay attention to that report, they will keep reoccurring. The present arrangement is very flawed and we can’t sustain it for a long time. As much as possible, we need to whittle down the powers at the centre of government because it is over-wealthy and it is slowing down the development of the country.
If you were the president, what would you do to resolve this issue?
As the President, you have to consult, and I think he (President Buhari) is already doing that. After that, he will need to come up with a plan to implement what he comes up with. From most of the comments that I have read, a lot of people have advised the President to open a line of dialogue and avoid the excessive use of military because in the long term, it will be counterproductive. You can never win that war on the battlefield. You just have to open lines of communication.
I am happy the Ogoni clean-up has begun. But I feel very sad that the President was not there to reassure the people as to his commitment and also exert his authority as the commander-in-chief. I recall one event when the Brass NLG grand breaking ceremony was going to take place at the height of the crisis in the Niger Delta under former President Obasanjo. There were a lot of security concerns but President Obasanjo went there himself and performed the ceremony. The managing director, who was from one of these multinational companies, did not show up, and they found that his country had advised that he should travel back home because of the crisis. What did Obasanjo do? He said if he as the president could go and the place was safe, he didn’t see any reason the managing director should not be there. At the end of the day, the managing director lost his job and Obasanjo gained the confidence of the people by that singular action.
Yes, the Ogoni clean-up has been flagged off. The issue again is dialogue and it is very important. Again, if I were the President, I will call for that report and look at what has gone wrong, because part of the amnesty programme is a product of that report which was implemented piecemeal, and I think that led to some of the problems we have.
Whether we like it not, in a democracy, we need to listen to the voice of the people. Most of these agitations, I believe that if there should be more dialogue, it will go a long way to douse the tension and reassure the people and make us to begin to have the conviction that we can live together in a restricted country.
