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Gentlemen of the press, i salute your courage in trying to provide the world with information that hitherto may have eluded us all, i have been watching with kin interest the unfolding event of the Amnesty deal, and here is my take on it, and as usual i am am sure you will do justice to my views. the Yar'adua"s Amnesty proclamation
simple dictionary definition put ,will mean
1. a general pardon for offenses, esp. political offenses, against a government, often granted before any trial or conviction.
2. Law. an act of forgiveness for past offenses, esp. to a class of persons as a whole.
3. a forgetting or overlooking of any past offense.
this being the case, the amnesty being granted by the President is a welcomed development, however the IYC is not suffering from any amnesia as a result of this desperate show of shame by this administration, hence our long silence on the issue, recall that since august 2007 the FGN constituted a joint FGN/IJAW representative committee, that worked itself out toward finding a lasting and peaceful resolution to the crisis, a state pardon or if you like amnesty was one of the resolutions reached and presented to the FGN then as a win-win scenario for this government, at that time the genocidal act on Gbaramatu ijaw communities had not occured, we went the extra mile of bringing before the government, position taken by perhaps the highest security body of the country led by Gen. Ogomudia as captured in the Ogomudia report that asserted to the fact that the Niger-delta crisis requires only political situation, while that was on, we as youth leaders took the bull by its horn to engage freedom fighters advising they stop all forms of violence, while some responded positively others were just being cautious of a tricky government like the one the country is experiencing now, Yar'adua's amnesty to many is like an escapist tact to save the country from a hurricane piper alpha of MEND that the JTF can now not stop.
We feel strongly embarrassed as Nigerians, when our Government can only be concerned about oil security instead of lives and the citizenry, evidence before council reveal that the people who are responsible for the woes befalling the Nation are not at rest, they have continued to find ways of dis-uniting the nation with their antics, here is a president who had sent various groups to the Field to find ways of putting a respectable end to armed conflict and bring about meaningful change by including the Niger-delta as one of its nine point agenda, went further to create the Niger delta ministry, it then under funded the ministry and transfer federal project already awarded by the ministry of transport in the 2008 budget to the Niger-delta ministry to swallow up the the lean budgetry provision, over funded the JTF to the tune of N800billion which is more than enough to address win-win developmental emergency in the region, the same government went ahead to order a military operation against its citizens with wan-ton destruction of lives and property of citizens who hitherto are victims of the Niger-delta crisis, with the killing of more than 1000 civilians including women and children, and the sacking of over 100 communities according to vanguard, of 01/07/09 report.
then in the wake of this distrust ,the much pleaded amnesty is granted without necessarily talking to the groups involved or input from those willing to accept the amnesty. the package looks like a stimulus package to quickly address the dwindling oil income, while we feel strongly that the war on oil must stop now and appeal to those behind it to stop forthwith,we must state here that this government is not yet ready to solve the niger-delta problem, how else can you explain the recent approval of a whooping N19b for building of a petroleum institute in a desert like kaduna, without hope of oil exploration, this was how It was in the beginning and the leadership is un-repentant, the best institutions for nation building are all put in the north to further their continued hold of the nation in the jugular,( and often times headed by their own )
a statistics of such institutions includes
1. Nigerian Defence Academy
2. NIPPS kuru
3. NTA College JOS
4. Police academy Kano
5. MOPOL training school GWOZA
6. Nigeria Military School zaria
7. AVIATION college ZARIA
8. Nigeria immigration academy Kano
9. National space centre Abuja
10. NDLEA school sherri hills Jos
11. POLICE staff college Bukuru
and now a petroleum university in Kaduna because to me that is what they intend to transform it to,
its therefore clear that there is a cabal in the land making sure that our nigerdelta and the people there-in remain under-developed and under-privileged. it was martin Luther king that said "an individual has not started living until he can rise above the narrow confines of his individualistic concern to a broader concern of all humanity," if i may interject, the bane of our nationhood has been our tribal and religious barriers , our leaders still pursue a North-South agenda trying to undo one another and then turn around to blame the youths for responding appropriately to such dichotomy into which we were born. A situation where a Niger-deltan feels less Nigerian by the actions of the government cannot be an acceptable norm, if this amnesty must work ,if the people involved must take government seriously, then the Yar'adua administration must rise above the temptation of destructive selfishness to a creative altruism of what he must do in the Nigerdelta to win back the confidence its people,
in the amnesty deal, forgiveness must not be an occasional act to save oil investment but a permanent attitude to redeem the enviroment and respect for its people, therefore the JTF must be withdrawn and probably a proper barrack situated in the appropriate place like it is found in the north rather than an army of occupation littering the streets and bringing more pain to law abiding citizens, since in the final analysis the government must have proved itself wrong to think that the army can solve the problem, as evident by the dropping oil revenue, what dialogue prevented in two years the use of gun allowed in two weeks.
i have the audacity to believe that so long as the nigerdelta people and especially the ijaws are kept in a straight jacket of discrimination, with perpetual militarization of our communities, there is little hope in the land , an ideology of military supremacy against its civilian populace is as good as a military rule in a civilian regime.
knowing fully that in the last 50years the minorities have been told to wait it has became exceedingly difficult to continue to wait when every thing coming out of your backyard is used to further other regions' developmental agenda. our northern brothers are quick to accuse the southern governors of mis-managing the 13%derivation as if their own governors make better use of the monthly allocations acruing from oil. the word corruption take its roots in the Nigerian history from nothern elites, checkout the reason for the 1966 coup, the civil war, the various religious conflicts, the maiming and outright killing of the ogonis , the sacking of civilian communities led by military officers, they are all of nothern stock that is not to exclude southern conspirators, in any case the south has always conspired against itself and a quick look at those who led the country through out its hey days , you will be convinced where the most corrupt Nigerian leaders emerged from, it is still not different now,yet we are being told to wait. Armed youths are being told to drop their guns for a meal ticket, that was not what we proposed , we believed that if amnesty is given, then the root cause of the violence needs to be addressed along side becaused an oppressed people cannot remain oppressed forever as the yearning for freedom will somehow manifest itself.
on the part of armed group or if you like call them millitant, no one can win a war against his country except you wish to destroy the future of generations yet unborn, you must also note that morals cannot be legislated. while we agree that there are times when moral men will have to disobey unjust laws, this amnesty provide a window of opprtunity for you to participtate directly in a dialogue process, you therefore must catch-in and begin a proper process of dialogue with the appropriate leadership.
my submission is that the way forward still remain Nonviolent direct action and if peace is a goal that we all seek then the road to peace should be peaceful.
the greatest challenge facing the nigerdelta is that we all talk about peace as a goal but we have refused to do something that make for peace, and unless the ideals and processes are matched it is not yet huru.
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