Apparently the smart solution to gross under-devlopment and an increasingly militarized populace in Nigeria’s Niger Delta region is to borrow a leaf from Sri Lanka (or was it a leaf from George Bush) and prosecute a war of staggering proportions on the region – ostensibly to crush the hotbeds of militancy.
Granted, the spate of kidnappings, illegal crude oil refining and taps into pipelines and other oil production assets might have been on the rise, but surely a show of force only plays into the hands of the militants? Its more like the proverbial throwing out the baby with the bath water. I dare say oil bunkering and other activities have been on-going for a while in the region - perhaps they have only gone up several orders of magntitude because self serving politicians provided the means and arms to execute private gureilla warfare on perceived rivals, which opened the eyes of the supposed militants to ways to gain a stranglehold on the booming illegal trade. And in a perverse kind of way, maybe the internet and its unremitting capacity to foster global collboration was the final piece that completed the jigsaw puzzle – tried and tested execution strategies gleaned from the Mujahedin in Afghanistan and Iraq finally met restive youth with a cause that could be exploited for great personal gain.
Perhaps, the House of Reps currently calling for an expansion of the military offensive might have better served the cause of the nation by keeping their hands out of funds meant to provide rural electricty or better still actually making laws, or at least pretending to make them by sitting their mandatory number of days!
Quite obviously, there are no easy solutions – but maybe a key component of whatever is done should have been to demonstrate responsiveness on the part of government and win the battle for the hearts and minds of the talent pool from which the militant ranks are being swelled daily.
Perhaps 26 years down the road, this offensive might work, and an elusive peace might come!
