Northerners In MEND: Discordant Tunes From the Creeks

By

Senior Fyneface

senior_fyneface@yahoo.com

When a man starts deceiving himself thinking he is deceiving others, then you know the end has come.

Is it not funny that those who yesterday masqueraded themselves as militants fighting for the interest of the Niger Delta now talks word-for-word and tone-for-tone like PDP chieftains. That is what living in As Rock and Government Houses and riding executive convoys for just few months can do in the lives of opportunists.

It was unimaginable that some former militant leaders could open their mouth in the public in front of newsmen to accuse northern political elites and the Northern Political Leaders Forum (NPLF) of sponsoring and playing politics with the name of the Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta (MEND) to intimidate President Goodluck Jonathan.

Soboma Jackrick, aka General Egberipapa who spoke on behalf of other former militant commanders after their usual meeting in Abuja, alleged that some northern politicians were behind the bombing campaigns rocking the country including the Niger Delta oil facilities allegedly being carried out by MEND.

According to the group which comprised Government aka Tompolo, Boyloaf, General Egberipapa, among others, investigations (by special national security advisers to the President) revealed that some northern elite bent on acquiring power at all cost were engaging in activities aimed at destabilising the present administration.

Their allegation: “MEND had ceased to exist the moment they embraced the amnesty programme of the Federal Government under the late President Umaru Musa Yar’Adua. Any other MEND was a decoy by alleged northern politicians designed to divert attention from the real culprits. We are the MEND and it is no longer in existence.”

“The reason we went to the creeks is to fight a cause, the criminal marginalisation of the Niger Delta region and these issues are being addressed especially with the appointment of Mr. Kingsley Kuku as the special adviser to the president on Niger Delta affairs. We are satisfied with that and he has started on a good note. Everybody is getting his allowance and some have been taken for training in Ghana and South Africa while development projects are ongoing.”

So the appointment of Kuku as Jonathan’s special adviser on Niger Delta and prompt payment of monthly amnesty allowances translates to the amnesty programme working very well to serve the general interest of the Niger Delta people? This is sheer stupidity and an outright expression of depraved minds.

It has been said severally that Nigeria is a country of outright aberrations. This may be a wrong assertion but indications ordinary Nigerians get every day from press chats of former militant leaders (in Abuja) point to the fact that President Goodluck Jonathan now prefers security briefs he receives from Tompolo and Boyloaf amongst others to the ones given by the nation’s security agencies including the SSS and the NIA including his national security adviser.

The ex-militants exposed exposed their folly when at the same occasion they added a twist to their position by asking the Federal Government to also investigate former MEND commanders to ensure that they are not colluding in any way with the “sponsored MEND.”

The question is: which former MEND commanders should the Federal Government investigate? This question is pertinent because there are so many disgruntled former militants. Of course we saw General Togo and his actions in Ayokoroma, Delta state.

This coalition of security advisers to the President under the aegis of former militant leaders may have information that is not available to ordinary Nigerians and this is why the latest revelation may be taken a bit more seriously.

If Soboma Jackrick (Egberipapa) in his press briefing in Abuja could allege that MEND is being sponsored by Hausa people, he may be revealing to us what he did not actually say. Could it be that this group of former militant leaders worked with this same Hausa people in the past to create the spate of violence and bloodshed in the Niger Delta before one of such sponsors- late President Yar’adua introduced the now bungled amnesty programme?

A faction of MEND since the first day of the amnesty initiative had insisted that they were not going to be part of the initiative as it allegedly falls short of their expectations as an intervention measure.

Was it the northern political leaders who sponsored that faction of MEND to take and publicly declare such stand even before Henry Okah was arrested over the October 1 Abuja bomb blast?

It was an outright contradiction for the Presidency to turn around to task officers and men of the State Security Service (SSS) as well as the Police over the renewed threat to national security by “supposed members of the Movement for the Emancipation of Niger Delta (MEND).” The two security agencies were also charged to fish out those responsible for the bombing of Agip oil facility within seven days.

As reported by Leadership newspaper of Friday March 18 2011, President Jonathan according to his National Security Adviser was wondering why the two security agencies appeared to lack intelligence gathering expertise and that he was particularly irked that no security agency could provide the exact information on the persons “who called themselves MEND. We seem to be waiting for them to issue out threats and even carry them out before our operatives would start working. That is what the president said he did not want”.

The question is: Why should the Presidency look for answers from the SSS and Police when his coalition of national security advisers already knows the people sponsoring or masquerading as new MEND?

Was it northern political leaders that sponsored General Togo to return to the trenches, an act that led to the total annihilation of everything in Ayokoroma community of Delta state?

Was it the northern political leaders that sponsored the almost every day protest of bias and unequal treatment at the militant rehabilitation camp in Cross River?

Was it northern political elites that sponsored the bombing of the campaign headquarters of Timi Alaibe in Yenagoa?

Was it the northern political elites that are involved in the continuing widespread crude oil theft and bunkering across the Niger Delta especially in the western flank? Let’s stop deceiving ourselves and learn to own up to our own shortfalls.

The Nigerian security agencies should actually come into this matter now because there may be more these former militant leaders may have to tell them. It is a very serious allegation and should not be dismissed just like that.

More so, there was an inferred caveat by the former militant leaders that if northerners don’t allow Jonathan win the next month election, nobody would be allowed to come and take the Niger Delta oil and the country would be made ungovernable.

It would be in the interest of this nation if these militants are called to explain what they mean because supposing the PDP loses the presidential election at the April polls, it means we will surely return to a new spate of violence and lawlessness in the Niger Delta or maybe in the entire country.