Nigeria’s government wants to go to the bargaining table with militants in its oil-producing Niger Delta region. But activists in the region are divided over whether negotiations will bring peace, or encourage more militancy.
To some, meeting with the Niger Delta Avengers is the surest way to head off a bloody military confrontation between the group and Nigeria’s military.
Godspower Gbenekama is a member of the traditional ruling council in the Gbaramatu Kingdom, which has been the sight of several attacks on pipelines.
“[A] military solution is never a solution and can never be a solution. Dialogue is the only way forward,” Gbenekama said.
But to others, talks would simply encourage people in the oil-rich, but poor, region to take up arms as a way to extract concessions from the government, says attorney Oghenejabor Ikimi, a human rights activist in the city of Warri.
“If not because I am a lawyer, if I were living in the creeks, I would just form my own too, so the government could just come and dialogue with me. But there is no sense in all this,” Ikimi said.
Appeasement
This would not be the first time Nigeria has gone to the bargaining table with militants in the Niger Delta. A similar insurgency calmed in 2009 when the government started paying off militants and offering them job training in exchange for peace.
Talks with the Avengers may have already started to bear fruit. An official at the state-run oil company told VOA last week the Avengers have agreed to a cease-fire with the government, though the group denied any agreement.
Months of attacks by the Avengers dropped Nigeria’s oil production per-day by as much as half. Junior petroleum minister Emmanuel Ibe Kachikwu told Bloomberg news this week production had mostly recovered.
The Avengers have demanded more development for the Niger Delta. But they have also branched into calling for the release of a jailed separatist leader.
During the weekend, they said on Twitter that Nigeria should hold a referendum on breaking into separate countries, much as the United Kingdom just voted to leave the European Union.
Anarchy feared
Institute of Human Rights and Humanitarian Law Executive Director Anyakwee Nsirimovu says heeding the militants’ demands will simply lead to more militants.
“Anybody from anywhere can just pick AK-47, create hell with the pipelines, and expect the federal government to come and negotiate with them. That would be anarchy.”
As the Avengers have grown in profile, various other militant groups have emerged with their own demands for President Muhammadu Buhari and his government.
Ikimi said the best option to end the militancy would be what militant and activists alike have been demanding all along: develop the Niger Delta.
“Do not even dialogue with any of these groups. Just start your development. All these groups will fizzle out,” Ikimi says.
But with the economy heading for a recession and the military committed to fighting the Islamist Boko Haram insurgency in the northeast, dialogue may be the Buhari administration’s only option.
Hilary Uguru contributed to this report from Warri, Nigeria.
via Voice of America http://ift.tt/29h6cxL
No comments:
Post a Comment