Niger Delta: Ibori Replies Leadership Newspaper’s Sam Nda-Isaiah



My attention was drawn to the article written by Sam Nda-Isaiah, the publisher of the LEADERSHIP newspapers, Monday last week. Ordinarily, I would not have wasted my time worrying about it, talk less of writing a rejoinder but for the grave unethical misrepresentations in the article.

It is true that I met Sam Nda-Isaiah at the meeting President Umaru Musa Yar'Adua had with publishers at the State House on Wednesday, May 28, this year. There, we had discussions on the Niger Delta and other burning national issues. As he may well have noted, if he were that observant, most of those who spoke on the problem were passionate in their advice to the President to handle the issue of Niger Delta with seriousness and tact.

It is also true that Nda-Isaiah requested to talk to me on the subject that day and I promised to engage him if only to educate him on the variegated issue and its security implications. We have not engaged in that discussion yet. But I recall placing a phone call to him when his newspaper, LEADERSHIP, published deliberate falsehood on the true ownership of a collapsed building in Abuja. To be honest, I cannot recall ever saying what he quoted copiously as my discussion with him, especially on the legal challenges surrounding my tenure in office and the question of the "boys" in the Niger Delta.

On numerous occasions, I have made my position on this matter known to the public either personally or through my spokesperson. So, Nda-Isaiah, like other Nigerians, knows that I support wholeheartedly the strategy of the President on this matter, especially as he has chosen a two-pronged approach – insisting on concrete development in the region with all sincerity on the one hand, and enforcing internal security coupled with dialogue on the other hand.

I think it is unethical, if he understands his duties as a publisher, to ascribe to me what is not true, given his claim that it was a privileged discussion. Those who know me very well can testify that all through these legal proceedings, I have stayed away from discussing any aspect of the matter in public because I fervently believe that the drama will play out in the court of law and that I will be vindicated in the end.

On what he claimed he heard from Chief E.K. Clark, all I will say is that Chief Clark is a man of immense experience and, at 80 years of age, we all respect him for his age if for nothing else, because that is what our culture demands of us. I am unable therefore to respond to what he has ascribed to him; I do not know if he reported correctly his discussions with Chief Clark, especially as what he ascribed to me was for the purpose of promoting his publication. Moreover, I find comfort in the firm knowledge that any major player in the Niger Delta region knows the facts as they are.

In the same vein, I will stay away from the personal judgements the LEADERSHIP publisher made on the performance of certain former governors, including myself. My prayer is for God to give him the inspiration to run for, and the blessing to be voted as, governor of Niger State so that he can outshine the performances of all the 36 governors of the class of 1999 to 2007 combined. I have enormous respect for all the former governors and their achievements in office and, in my known commitment to true federalism, I do not expect the people, issues, challenges and remedies in every state to be the same. Yet, I make bold to say that most of my former colleagues got into office at a time in this country when many eminently qualified Nigerians could not dare to contest. They were elected by their people to serve, and, as far as I am concerned, they performed to the best of their abilities within the limits and constraints prevalent in their various states. The rest is now history.

With the superfluous issues pushed aside, I can now focus on the main subject of that write up: the Niger Delta agitation proper. It is the likes of Nda-Isaiah who aggravate, through their verbal assaults, the fragile situation in the Niger Delta region. My advice to him and people like him is to be more conciliatory instead of driving a wedge between the people of the region and the other parts of Nigeria.

What I wanted to tell Nda-Isaiah, when we met at the State House, is the nature of the conflict/agitation. I wanted to aid and advance his understanding of such matters - and not issues personal to me. This is because it is important to first understand the history, nature and complexity of a problem before attempting to solve it.

The Niger Delta issue must be compartmentalised into various categories: genuine agitation, politically-sponsored attacks among rival groups as they contest for turf and influence, illegal bunkering, inter-ethnic conflicts, inter-community conflicts, conflicts between multinationals and host communities, the Henry Okah factor (MEND) and sundry criminal activities. It is also important to understand the genesis and history of each category. Probably, Nda-Isaiah is also unaware that some of the militancy originated from ethnic conflicts: between the Itsekiris and the Ijaws, Odimodi and Ogulaha communities in Delta State for instance. .

One of the questions to ask is: who procured the guns that were used to prosecute those conflicts? Just as one would also ask who procured the guns used to prosecute the Maitasine riots in Kano, and other riots in Borno and Adamawa, or the bloody ethnic and religious crises in Taraba, Kogi, Oyo (Ife/Modakeke) and Plateau states. Could it have been the politicians? Or could it also have been the would-be governors that were not elected into office until May of 1999?

Like many Nigerians, Nda-Isaiah may never understand or appreciate the cost of peace, and how that precious commodity could be "purchased". All he is interested in is for peace to be procured at all costs so that he can sleep peacefully in his mansion in Abuja. Also, as long as it pays, he can afford to make reckless statements about the goings-on in the Niger Delta. So far I have restricted myself to the salient points for it is easy to get carried away and lose focus of the issue at hand, and begin to delve into extraneous matters.

It is a fact of life that militancy and disruption of oil facilities were already on even by 1997, as a library check of the newspapers of those days would prove. The defunct Post Express newspaper wrote a two-part series entitled "Shell Under Attack", as by then Shell bore the brunt of the disruptions. The result is that when we took office in 1999, Delta, Bayelsa and Rivers states were already experiencing active militancy. I can recall on one occasion the former Bayelsa State Governor D.S.P. Alamieyeseigha went to Sagana oil platform, 50 nautical miles offshore, operated by National Oil, now ConOil, without security cover whatsoever, to free hostages that were taken as a result of a labour dispute between the company and its staff. This conflict had nothing to do with oil bunkering, MEND activities or local politics. I can also recall the various occasions when my Rivers State counterpart, former Governor Peter Odili, undertook several very dangerous trips to locations in Rivers State to deal with one form of conflict or the other.

It is okay for some people to make the former governors of the region scape-goats to divert attention from the true challenge of restructuring Nigeria to earn its real name -Federal Republic of Nigeria. A truly federal Nigeria will go a long way to assuage the feelings of the component units, especially the minorities. With the same passion that I advocate true federalism, I have also in many fora drawn the attention of policymakers at the national level to the desperate need of industrial and agricultural production in most parts of the Northern states because, in my view, the situation there is just as volatile as in the Niger Delta region. With lack of employment opportunities and able-bodied youths roaming the streets, in no distant time, we will be faced with violence of immeasurable proportion if the situation is not immediately addressed.

To this end, some have advocated a negotiated approach to the resolution of the internal contradictions in our federal system of government. Others have advocated radical constitutional amendments, but I believe that a combination of both, spiced up with the United States of America's approach where Supreme Court decisions have helped to define the nature and content of their federal system, will be most beneficial in keeping this union called Nigeria together with guarantees of justice equity and fairness. One of my political elders once told me that as a staff of Nigerian Tobacco Company in Kaduna, he and his family depended on what used to be known as Sokoto rice. When he was eventually transferred to Lagos , he burdened his friends with requests to send the rice by train to Iddo Terminus, Lagos . We have a lesson to learn from this.

This propaganda against the former governors of the region that is actively supported by political adversaries, and covertly endorsed by foreign interests who exploit every opportunity to embarrass former office-holders of the region, is a short-term approach to resolving a fundamental problem. I can categorically say that it will not work. We should, in partnership with every stakeholder in the country, support the effort of President Yar'Adua to resolve this problem in a holistic manner. A critical look at the operators and operations of the oil majors in the zone, labour policies, patronage or contracts to increase local content, discretionary allocation of oil blocks, lifting of petroleum products – crude and finished – is needed to help correct the inherent imbalances and advance harmonious relationship in the region.

Nda-Isaiah would have noticed that I have also in this piece deliberately avoided all internal and external discussions with the Federal Government of our time, by the former governors of the region, on how best to deal with the challenges thrown up by all these complex interactions of potent factors in the Niger Delta. I had counselled in the past that, like in every conflict situation, a stitch in time saves nine. That, however, would be the focus of future articles and books maybe.

I will like to end by saying that I have decided to maintain my silence; but it is erroneous to think that you can wish away the experience of eight years of a former state Governor, his achievements, network and political contacts. That is wishful thinking. Instead of tapping from that experience, building on the foundations laid, some people would rather sponsor negative tales, propaganda, innuendoes, fabricated intelligence, intimidation, blackmail…and, in the extreme case, stretch this to a negotiated conviction – like in the case of Governor DSP Alamieyeseigha.

Chief James Onanefe Ibori is the former governor of Delta State.

Ibori, i did not know u write creatively like this oh.So u can sit in front of a computer and drat an essay like this. My question now is this. if former leaders like u are this intelligent why is it that we still have all this problems in our society since independence. Is it that immediately u pple get into office- u become blind to all these things for 8years. and after ur period in office. Wen u are out u remove the blindcloth off ur eyes and begin to c things like we c it. Is that it?