Nigeria: Niger delta insurgency - full text
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Mujahid Dokubo-Asari, leader of the separatist Niger Delta People's Volunteer Force (NDPVF), was freed from prison on June 14 on health grounds by Judge Peter Olayiiwola of the federal High Court in Abuja. Dokubo-Asari had served nearly 21 months in detention awaiting trial on treason charges. Dokubo-Asari’s discharge coincided with the release on June 17 of seven Indian oil workers, captured by undisclosed militants in Eleme on June 1, the online news service allAfrica.com reported on June 18. Apparently, Dokubo-Asari's supporters had offered to release the oil workers in return for Dokubo-Asari’s freedom.
The release of Dokubo-Asari came just days after June 11, when an unnamed armed gang claiming allegiance to the Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta (MEND--the largest militant group in the Delta, similarly oriented as the NDPVF) released 12 hostages captured earlier in June. The released hostages were three US citizens, five UK citizens, two Indians, a Filipino, a South African, and a Nigerian, according to a broadcast by the AfricaFM radio station on June 13.
Immediate Context
Several insurgent groups operated in the Niger Delta: in addition to the NDPVF, MEND and the Movement for the Survival of the Ogoni People (MOSOP) were pursuing a separatist struggle against the government and oil industry.
MEND in January 2006 said that it intended to "totally destroy the capacity of the Nigerian government to export oil," according to the Jan. 17, 2006, edition of UK newspaper The Independent. MEND carried out kidnappings and bloody assaults on oil facilities, and its stated goals were to localise control of Nigeria's oil revenue and force oil companies to pay for environmental damage.
MOSOP alleged that the Anglo-Dutch company Royal Dutch Shell and its Nigerian subsidiary grievously harmed the Delta environment and that Shell security personnel colluded with government forces to harshly repress opposition. Animosity to the oil companies amongst local peoples in the Delta was exacerbated by the 1995 hanging of MOSOP leader Ken Saro-Wiwa. His execution resulted in Nigeria’s suspension from the Commonwealth and an interruption in foreign aid and co-operation from the US and EU. Community activists from the Ijaw, Ogoni and Igbo tribes in the south-east said they received relatively little revenue from oil operations and accused government officials of squandering oil riches and contributing to pollution and deforestation.
Reaction and Outlook
After his release, Dokubo-Asari was quoted in the June 19 edition of the Nigerian newspaper This Day as condemning kidnapping and armed attacks on oil installations. But he also described himself as powerless to end them. In a June 19 Associated Press report, Dokubo-Asari said that he would support recently inaugurated Vice President Goodluck Jonathan, a leader from the Ijaw majority in the Delta region, if Jonathan "acts in the interest of Ijaw and Niger Delta peoples." Resolving the federal-Delta conflict would be his number one priority, Jonathan had said in the June 15 World Politics Review.
In another event related to the dominance of the oil industry in Nigeria, the country was slowed as Nigerian labour unions went on strike to protest proposed fuel price hikes, bringing parts of the country to a standstill. The strike was resolved after four days, according to a June 24 article by the Agence France-Presse news agency.
Historical Context
On October 1, 1960, Nigeria gained its independence from the UK and the country entered a brief period of democracy. However, north-south divisions soon began to derail the balance of power.
In a May 1961 plebiscite, a portion of the south-east voted not to join Nigeria, but rather to attach to neighbouring Cameroon. Later in the decade, the south-east would become the site of the Biafran civil war.
The February 1966 takeover of the federal government by Gen. Aguiyi-Ironsi, a member of the south-eastern Igbo nation, gave way to a military takeover by northern leaders just a few months later. This resulted in reprisals against Igbos in the north, and an exodus of hundreds of thousands of ethnic Igbos to the Delta. The military governor of the Igbo-dominated south-east, Col Odumegwu Ojukwu, citing the northern massacres and electoral fraud, proclaimed the secession of the south-eastern region from Nigeria as the Republic of Biafra, an independent nation on May 30, 1967. The conflict developed into the bloody Biafran civil war, which ended in the 1970 defeat of Biafra.
Igbos were Nigeria’s third largest ethnic group, and although the Biafran War caused many of them to flee from the south-east, Igbos continued to seek greater representation through the Movement for the Actualisation of the Sovereign State of Biafra (MASSOB). MASSOB saw the recent release of Dokubo-Asari as an opportunity to regain some autonomy for the peoples of the south-east, including the Igbos, according to a June 26 article by London-based Nigeria expert Uche Nworah published in the Global Politician.
A failure to reduce ethnic instability remained an obstacle in the way of Nigeria’s efforts to democratise and reduce corruption. The country has continued to extract itself from a series of military dictatorships that ended in 1999.
The militarily installed Gen. Ibrahim Babangida ruled from 1985 until 1993, when presidential elections were won by Yoruba businessman Moshood Abiola. However, in June 1993, Babangida nullified the elections, plunging the country into political turmoil, which ended with Defence Minister Sani Abacha being installed as president, and Abiola being sent to prison for treason. Starting in early 1995, Abacha stifled union and opposition political dissent, including carrying out the execution of Ogoni activist Saro-Wiwa, and imprisoned opposition politicians from the south-east and other parts of the country. Abacha appeared poised to take control again in elections to be held in 1998, but he died in June of that year, in suspicious circumstances.
Since 1998, Nigeria moved from the Abacha regime, returning to civilian rule under Olusegun Obasanjo, who was elected first in 1999, then re-elected in 2003.
Obasanjo, a Yoruba from the south-west portion of the country, and former military head of state, took steps to curb corruption, but was also accused of election-rigging. In the eight years since the end of military rule, the Nigerian government was reported to have shown improvements in attempts to tackle corruption.
Delta separatism was part of an overall national history of confrontations between ethnic groups, which included the Yoruba in the west, the Igbo and Ijaw in the east, and the predominantly Muslim Hausa and Fulani in the north. In May 1999, violence erupted in Kaduna state over the succession of an Emir, resulting in more than 100 deaths.
In November 1999, the army destroyed the town of Odi in Bayelsa state and killed scores of civilians in retaliation for the murder of 12 policemen by a local gang. In Kaduna in February-May 2000 over 1,000 people died in rioting over the introduction of criminal sharia (Islamic law) in the state. Hundreds of ethnic Hausa were killed in reprisal attacks in south-eastern Nigeria.
Nigeria was admitted to the Organisation of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) in 1971, and began concentrating its economy around oil production, to the detriment of light manufacturing and agriculture, according to the US State Department. In 2002 oil and gas exports accounted for more than 98 per cent of export earnings and about 83 per cent of federal government revenue, the US government reported. The result for the south-east, however, was reported to be increased unemployment and environmental devastation that harmed traditional agricultural ways of life.
