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Amnesty: Don’t celebrate
yet –David-West
• Raises fear over exclusion of MEND
From YINKA FABOWALE, IBADAN
Wednesday, October 7,
2009
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Niger
Delta militia
Photo: Sun News Publishing |
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It would be rash to assume that the last minute mass surrender
by leaders of Niger Delta militia at the weekend has ended militancy
and restiveness in the oil-bearing region. Former oil minister,
Prof. Tam David-West gave the warning in an interview with Daily
Sun in Ibadan yesterday.
He spoke as major top commanders of the militant groups including
the dreaded Government Ekpemupolo (a.k.a Tompolo) rushed to beat
the October 4 deadline for the presidential amnesty.
A cynical David-west said the entire process was too “razzmatazzed”
and politicized to give the profound event a real soul.
He was also quick to point out that the amnesty programme would
fail, unless government addressed the fundamental issues that led
to insurgency.
“I hope and pray that we’ve seen the end of the whole
thing. Why I said this, is that it will serve no useful purpose
for everybody and the country if the fundamental issue raised is
not addressed. And this is simple-justice. Without justice, what
we’re doing will be empty. You cannot have peace without justice.”
The professor of Virology pointed to the resolve of the Movement
for Emancipation of the Niger Delta’s (MEND) insistence to
fight on and the haul of surrendered arms and ammunition, which,
he observed, was an indictment on the nation’s security agencies
to buttress his point.
“It is an indictment on the intelligence and security outfits
of this country if after many months of surveillance and fighting
in the territory they could not recover all these weapons and armoury
by themselves.
“The big question is, are these all the guns in their (militants)
possession? Is this really the end of it? Is it 100 per cent?
“They (security forces) don’t know, we don’t know,
and that is the danger because they didn’t recover them by
themselves!”
The former university don said the recently settled political rivalry
between Bayelsa State Governor Timipreye Sylva and Chief Timi Alaibe,
presidential adviser on Niger Delta matters, had tended to trivialize
the amnesty project, with both trying to impress the president by
claiming, the glory of getting the militants to disarm.
Said David-West: “They are trying to please and impress Yar’Adua
like two wives in a polygamous family, to get him to support them
for 2011 governorship. So, where is the soul of the amnesty? Americans
would say where is the meat in the hamburger?
So, let it not be as if we have sheared the surface of the wound,
without the wound healing, because it’ll be dangerous for
everybody. It is my prayer as a Nigerian and as an ijaw that we
should not do anything that will make the target of restiveness
nebulous.
“The present arms surrender appears to me so razzmatazzed,
too much playing to the gallery. You don’t do something like
that to an issue so profound that can even threaten the existence
of this country.”
David-West also noted that Federal Government’s reluctance
to engage MEND, smacked of a divide and rule strategy, which he
said could be counter-productive.
“MEND is the nucleus, we have only dealt with the cytoplasm,
if we are to go biological. Tompolo, Ataka, Boyloaf and the rest
of them are offshoots of MEND. If you don’t take a holistic
action on arms surrender, it will be counter productive in the final
analysis,” said professor.
He advised President Yar’Adua to disregard Bayelsa State governor’s
recent statement that MEND no longer existed, except on air waves,
stressing: “We should work on the premise that the group is
not dead.”
“There is a Kalabari axiom which says, if you are quarrelling
with a blind man and he tells you to be careful, better run away,
because you don’t know what he was in his mind or pocket.
The same metaphor applies to Nigeria,” said the ex-minister.
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