We solidarize completely with the demands of the Niger Delta stakeholders. We are calling for [1] an end to militancy and the withdrawal of the army of occupation by the APC led Nigerian government, [2] the urgent institution of a political solution to the problem of the Niger Delta and indeed Nigeria. That is the restructuring of Nigeria into a union built on justice for all constituent nationalities, big and small.
Meanwhile, as peoples of goodwill are canvassing for peace with dignity, a group of ambulant commentators, roaming Abuja and Lagos, are baying for blood. They are calling on the APC led government to militarily and summarily deal with the Niger Delta and thus the Nigerian question. And these men have infested TV or radio stations in Abuja and Lagos with war-war howling.
Well, it is democracy and anybody however poorly briefed is in freedom to say anything. And matters get more virulent when these men get deluded they are patriotic, even if ignorant of the matters in issue. But what is troubling however is that these men are described by the television and radio stations where they canvass their views, as security experts.
Well, ours is a democracy and any journeyman can ascribe expertise to himself in unregulated markets. Apparently the supply of security expertise is one. However, it becomes dangerous when by default, a respectable third party confers such honours on rogue experts.
In America for instance, to be taken as a security expert you would have authored critically well received and cognate books or monographs. But of these TV belligerents who hit the airwaves, no one has ever sighted any paragraphs written by them. Retired Captain Blaze Aliyu and Max Gbanite, are two recurrent auctioneers of militarism against the Niger Delta. So, how they became experts may be one of the mysteries we have to untie together with those of the padded budgets.
But let us leave them as security experts and go to the rotten meat of what they are saying. Blaze for instance canvasses that if he were APC’s Buhari, he would have handed the Niger Delta peoples a 90-day ultimatum, after which he will invade. That shows that he is no security expert.
Now, let us warn the APC and relevant authorities. They should never allow themselves to be misdirected by self-elected security experts into the accelerated ruin of the Nigerian nation-state. Before we go a comma more, let us put things in perspective. To quote Dr Dele Cole
: ‘’… the post of the National Security Adviser could not be confined only to the military or trained spies…. the examples of Kissinger, Brzezinski… and several others in the U.S., France and Great Britain who were National Security Advisers but were not from any military intelligence background or narrow security background. Indeed, a lot of the problems of that office had been the restricted base from which its occupants were chosen. ‘’Bolaji Akinyemi and the black bomb’’. THE GUARDIAN, 16 August 2016
The point in issue is this. Security expertise as it has developed is not a militarily technical thing. Now to speak of security, even in solely military terms, involves logistics as the German General, Rommel, discovered to his chagrin in North Africa. And logistics is not just about movements of supplies and munitions, it is also about availability. Now, Hitler invaded Russia because he was prospecting for a granary of supplies by which he purposed to capture the rest of the known world. And if one took lessons from Professor Paul Kennedy [The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers] the inevitable fall of all empires are essentially economic. That is the inability of the stock exchanges and industries to finance a state in its policing roles will bring it down faster than any invasion.
If these ‘storm-lets’ come together, ala logistics, granaries and economy, we will have a perfect storm. At that point any security expert who can spell the word security, will know that the Niger Delta is a singularity and therefore impregnable. The Niger Delta is a singularity because she alone is our granary and our industry. Even President Buhari admitted that much himself, perhaps without intending it. After surveying the fall of crude oil prices [99.999% of which are from the Niger Delta] and the consequential state of the nation’s economic health, the president declared in earnest; we have suddenly gotten poor. The accent is on ‘’suddenly’’. The meaning of this is that the Nigerian industries and Stock Exchanges, to the extent those exists, are derivative assets of the Niger Delta crude. Dry up the oil and the Nigerian industries and billionaires, so called, will flatten out like exhausted volcanoes.
Again any security expert who is it, will discern that the Niger Delta as war theatre can only be assessed topologically, that is qualitatively, not quantitatively. Now, the Niger Delta is a specific terrain and has been a habitat to indigenes for millennia. So, as persons in the ecology, they are well adapted to its diseases and pathologies. Additionally, the Niger Delta is an impenetrable topography except for experienced wayfarers. Its marsh and jungle can only be subdued by the immunity of being born there or having trained extensively in that specific terrain. Have our soldiers done that? That is why America Marines train in deserts, in oceans and everything in-between.
Perhaps, it will serve these ‘experts’ great purpose to peep into ‘’Plagues and Peoples’’, by the Canadian, Professor William H. McNeill. It is a definitive work, on the role of diseases on armies, empires and history.
Now, if we get the ignorance of war-war security nationalists out of our way, the following scenario will happen per invasion of the Niger Delta. At the level of escalated warfare, it is certain that the Niger Delta as the national granary will go up in flames, burning to ashes. And if the confessions of President are meet, it follows that the Nigeria Stock Exchange will ‘’suddenly’’ collapse. That is in 6 months of allegedly winning the war, to the extent it’s won, it means that the APC Government won’t have a Naira to pay its workers, and industry would have sacked everybody. That is national governance will now be determined at the streets and barricades. And consequentially unremunerated, and hungry, military stragglers and deserters will join the barricades against the government. Then the market for chaos will begin.
And this is besides the fact that if the Niger Delta Avengers by any means are able to hold up to six months, the dynamics of the war will transcend its initial conditions, may turn nonlinear, even ‘’nuclear’’. Now, with China bidding for world hegemony, she may ‘legitimately’ strike to offer Niger Delta a protectorate status as a price for a firm foothold in Africa, oil and all. But even before the Chinese, the Americans on the promptings of the British would have been there to seize the Niger Delta on ‘humanitarian grounds’. And that looks like justice. After all they formed and owned the country in the first place. In summary, any so called security expert who advocates an escalated war in the Niger Delta, should be sent to back to Biafra or Israel where the security training is more robust. It will be a nightmare to suffer the consequences of equating technical proficiency of handling guns and daggers, with 3600 strategic or security visioning.
So after saying all these what is to be done? First of all, the APC administration has to admit it is a government of injustice, especially to us the Niger Deltans. Yes, she may have inherited an old scar, but she in her joyless cruelty has gashed the laceration into bleeding wounds. This government has studiedly excluded the South-South from its radar. It is like the South-South is now a Bantustan, and only exists to be robbed, used and abused for its oil, and abandoned. To give an example. We were in Abuja recently and sighted a document. That document amounts to the worst political injustice in Africa, since the fall of Apartheid. Its data-table reads: Federal Government of Nigeria: Summarised capital expenditure by geo-political zone for the year 2016. North-Central 85.14%. North-East: 1.89%. North-West: 3.80%. South-East: 2.71%. South-South: 1.87%. South-West: 4.58%. That is: Total North: 90.83%. Total South: 9.16%. Or South-West:4.58%. South-East + South-South: 4.58%. Is it not clear how cruelly sectarian and divisive this APC regime is? Banking on this document, is Nigeria a nation-state or an empire-state of Northern Nigeria?
And it is also on record that 2 or more of the Niger Delta most enterprising Governors, leveraging on their states’ comparative advantages, of locations and other endowments, have dedicatedly applied for licenses to build modular refineries and establish sea ports. And their applications for licenses have all been gummed up in Abuja, apparently as a form of persecution against us for being minorities? Meanwhile a certain individual from a favoured or preferred end of the country has his refinery license fast tracked into approval and take-off. And don’t believe it the projected crude for this refinery will be drained off our land, and perhaps our blood. And Lagos which already has ‘1000 ports’ now has an additional one approved for her. Is this not against the practice of so called diversification singsong of APC; or is diversification not also geographical and thus nationwide?
The question to ask: what madness are all these? How can you take money from our region and you built Abuja and are stewing us in degradation? Even General Paul Boroh confesses to it. See: Boroh: oil discovery brought hunger, starvation to N’Delta. This Day20-08-16.
These are just a tip of the injustices against the Niger Delta whose crude oil is Nigeria’s lifeline. So why are these security rookies canvassing for militarism against our innocent peoples? Are they conjecturing that injustice can bring stability and peace? Our charge is that the country must redress this injustice to have peace. And the way to it is political, a return to true and fiscal federalisms. Nigeria’s problems we repeat are political, not military, not economic. Nigerian politics is Nigeria’s greatest economic deadweight, and the Niger Delta is a sore reminder of that. No empire which is built on injustice has ever known peace of stability. APC, if this your political injustice is so hot, why won’t Nigeria burn, be an eternal firestorm?

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