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John Donne
derided death with his famous phrase, “…death be not
proud.” John
Donne was an English poet, preacher and a major
representative of the
metaphysical poets of the period. The man whose works
are notable for their
realistic and corporeal style was worried about our
attitude to death, insisting
that each time we fall asleep we have each died enough,
for any sleep a moment
past, one awakes in eternity.
Yet, one death that
was truly proud for showing its sting to
Nigeria
Death plucked him when it mattered
most and created a huge vacuum in the leadership and
development process in the nation, which his successor
President Jonathan Goodluck is now trying quite
commendably to fill. As one put it, Yar’Adua was great
in life and graceful in death.
Perhaps more painful is that his
exit seems to be gravely affecting some of his patriotic
and visionary legacies, mostly his noble plans for the
Niger Delta. For decades, the Nigerian nation had
grappled with the
Niger Delta crisis.
But in one deft move, Yar’Adua changed the nation’s
dipping fortunes by returning peace to the Niger Delta
via the Amnesty Programme, which stabilized the polity
and moved the nation forward. Many see this as his
greatest achievement, for at that time, following the
growing impunity of MEND and Niger
Delta militancy, up to 40% of the nation’s oil revenue
had been wiped out.
What many remember is his Amnesty
Programme but that was merely an achievement by default.
His main achievement by design should be the report of
the Presidential Technical Committee on the Niger Delta,
otherwise known as the Ledum Mitee Report, fashioned out
by a 45-man committee charged by the government with
finding a permanent solution to the lingering
Niger Delta
crisis. The said
committee extraordinarily had a free hand to operate and
even
chose its own chairman and secretary, Ledum Mitee, a
human right activist, social
crusader and the arrowhead of
the Movement for the Survival
of the Ogoni People
(MOSOP)and Nkoyo Toyo, respectively.
President Goodluck Jonathan then Vice President, who inaugurated
the committee
on the 8th of September, 2008, promised that government
would view seriously its
recommendations and would equally do well to implement
them. One then wonders why the report, an excellent and
well thought-out document with historically informed
recommendations, submitted to the government before the
Justice Mohammed Uwais report on
electoral reform, more
than 2 years down the road, has not received open
government endorsement by way of a Government White
Paper.
Wonderful as they are, the Amnesty
Programme and the Ministry of
Niger
Delta Affairs
constitute only fractions of the core recommendations of
the Ledum Mitee Committee report. Government has thus
ignored its main
recommendations to date and is finding some other
shortcuts round the national
troubles the report’s full implementation is meant to
address.
Yet instructively, theses
shortcuts, like all palliatives, are not working. They
have proved to be mere stopgaps, which, at best, have
only doused tensions. This same fate was what Mr. Mitee
suspected would befall his report and enjoined the late
President, Umaru Yar’Adua, while submitting it, that
his government should not to conduct itself like its
predecessors, but take the recommendations seriously as
promised and implement them as the way of averting
further crises in the region and by extension, in the
country. President Yar’Adua promised to look into the
prescriptions and implement them. His health soon after
caved in and created its own crisis, which the county is
only smarting from. His death notwithstanding, his
successor, President Jonathan was part and parcel of
that practice and is in fact spending the residue of
Yar’Adua’s mandate.
At the 2010
Niger Delta colloquium put in place by the Edwin K. Clark Foundation and the National
Orientation Agency (NOA),
Delta State Directorate,
and powered by the Office of the Governor of
Delta State, scholars and leaders had to bemoan
government inability to keep its promise. The discourse,
though not intended to recite the content of the report,
delved into how past government policies on the region
were subverted by the leadership, thus failing to bring
about the desired development of the region and avert
the attendant insecurity and social
dislocations that have only grossed underdevelopment for
the land.
The report of the technical committee did well to review
all previous reports on
the Niger Delta, including the Willinks Reports (1958),
Belgore (1992), Etiebet
(1994),
Vision 2020
(1996), United Nations (1997), Popoola (1998) Ogomudia
(2001), Presidential Panel on
National Security (2003), Niki Tobi (2005)
and
that of the Coastal States of the Niger Delta .
Expectedly, the Mitee committee
held the same view as all the other reports
and further showed agonizingly that no government had
ever bothered to implement the recommendations with the
overall goal of holistic, people-centred, people-
focused and people-driven growth and development in the
region.
The continuing disconnection between the Federal
Government and the
Niger Delta is
till date, accentuated by the absence of requisite
political, which has, without doubt, led to the neglect
of the various reports on the Niger Delta. The
violence in the region, which degenerated into an all
comers’ affairs in
kidnapping, started as a reaction to the neglect,
insecurity, poverty,
oppression and desperation of the region. This is not
the type of national problem to fully resolve by an
amnesty programme or continuing attention deficits.
The fact remains that the region
has been criminally oppressed, exploited and
neglected for over 50 years. It will therefore be tragic
if President Jonathan
fails to do something concrete by coming out with a
White Paper on the Mitee
Report and fully implementing it, not necessarily as a
son of the region, but because the area accounts for
about 80 per cent of the federal revenue and yet the
least developed. Being a Nigerian president of Ijaw
extraction is not just enough; such position is a means,
not an end in itself.
For me, the main recommendation of
the Miteee Report that has to be discussed forthrightly
by the nation and agreed to is its prescribed 50%
Fiscal Federalism – partial resource
control with 25% as starting point and the balance met
in 5 ensuing years. Its relevance attains from the fact
that fiscal federalism is an irreducible minimum to any
federal structure and where this is not so, such a
federation basically remains one only in name.
The ongoing call for true
federalism for the Nigerian nation started 50 years ago
because Nigeria was intended to be a truly federal
system and not an amalgam of centrifugal and
centripetal forces, which it is today. Apart from the
restoration of federalism that implementation of the
Mitee report shall achieve, a veritable concomitant
ought to be security. Insecurity in the Niger Delta has
reverberated in the country in various forms, with its
ugly imitation in the south east in form of kidnapping,
in south west as unbridled activism and violence and in
the north, in the resurgence of Boko haram.
Indeed, there is growing
insecurity in the country and groups are arming
themselves to the teeth. There is now irrefutable
evidence that militants are rearming in the creeks of
Niger Delta. Many more groups are doing the same for
private reasons. The great arm cache containing heavy
weapons as rocket launchers and bombs found by the
security forces days ago at Lagos ports in 15 containers
is a very dangerous signal that should not the taken
lightly. It is true Israel says the cache was for Gaza
Strip, but it was not the first and will not be last.
So, it is just the time to revisit
the Mitee report, as a way of returning the
nation to the path of federalism, security, growth and
development, since the
growing insecurity and underdevelopment is diagnosably
symptomatic of
their growing lack.
Law Mefor, Author and Journalist, is Director, Center for Leadership,
Social and Forensic Research, Abuja; lawmefor@yahoo.com. 234)0(80-787-2893.
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Published
October 31st, 2010
