Guns, Gangs & Drugs Fuel Delta Violence (IRIN)
Youths armed with pistols and Kalashnikovs barricaded all approaches to Victoria Street in Port Harcourt, the main city in Nigeria's oil-rich Niger Delta, when a funeral took place there recently. With bandanas tied across their foreheads they searched people for weapons before letting them through. The funeral passed off without incident.
“Their action was meant to deter possible attacks by rival gangs,” said Benibo Alabo-Jack, a resident of adjoining Aggrey Road, who watched the scene warily from his balcony.
Traditionally funerals have been big social events in Port Harcourt and surrounding districts, providing the opportunity for the wealthy to show off by sponsoring feasting, and singing and dancing sometimes lasting several days.
More recently, funerals have provided a platform for the manifestation of an emerging gun culture that has gripped Port Harcourt and much of the 70,000sqkm delta region where nearly all of Nigeria's oil is produced, said Alabo-Jack.
“Most of those carrying weapons are youths aged 16-25,” he said.
A study in 2004 commissioned by Royal Dutch Shell, the biggest oil multinational in Nigeria, estimated 1,000 people, mostly youths, were dying every year in violence between rival militia groups in the Niger Delta.
More up-to-date figures are not available but violence in the region has worsened: It is dominated by hostage-taking targeting foreign oil workers who are usually released in exchange for a ransom, but has also sparked turf wars between rival gangs.
Worst violence since 2004
At least 20 people were shot dead on 1 July as rival gunmen went on the rampage in different parts of the city’s Diobu District. Many of the victims were innocent bystanders and included a 10-year-old girl who was helping her mother roast corn by a street corner, a pregnant woman hit by a stray bullet inside a church and three men shot dead while drinking at an open air bar.
This year has also seen the worst violence in the city since the first upsurge of militia violence in 2004, including two audacious attacks on police stations in which more than a dozen people were killed, including 10 policemen. In one of the attacks on the city's police headquarters, assailants freed Soboma George, head of a notorious militia known as the Outlaws, (who had been detained by the police following a traffic offence) and 124 other prisoners.
Politicians armed gangs?
The year 2004 had provided the tipping point for worsening violence in the region. In June that year a funeral procession led by the delta's best known militia leader, Mujahid Dokubo-Asari, for the burial of his father, was attacked by a rival gang. While Dokubo-Asari escaped unhurt, more than a dozen people were killed. Scores were killed in subsequent gang violence in the city later that year.
The violence had stemmed from the 2003 general elections during which politicians were alleged to have armed gangs of youths to help them into power. Two prominent gang leaders acknowledged they had received funding and support from Rivers State governor Peter Odili.
With the election over, many armed groups in the region turned to the illegal trade in crude oil and refined petroleum siphoned from pipelines criss-crossing the delta, taken onto barges and sold locally or to foreign ships waiting offshore. The lucrative trade provided funds for the purchase of weapons that made the various groups even more lethal.
Drugs to the fore
While Dokubo-Asari turned political, and campaigned for more local control of Nigeria's oil wealth by the impoverished inhabitants of the delta, other gangs became more deeply involved in criminal rackets.
Gunrunning, kidnapping and extortion of ransom from oil companies remain a staple of most criminal rings in the region.
However, local and foreign security sources say drugs are increasingly playing a role in the escalation of violence and widespread availability of weapons in the Niger Delta.
“We are getting information that a lot of the violence between rival gangs is over who controls the drugs that are now coming into the delta in growing quantities,” said an oil industry security expert who spoke on condition of anonymity.
West Africa's stretch of the Gulf of Guinea has in recent years become a major transit zone for cocaine from South American drug cartels seeking narcotics routes into Europe and North America. Large drug hauls have been landed in remote air strips in places like Guinea Bissau, where they are broken up into smaller packets and taken to mules located in other places in West Africa.
An increasingly lawless Niger Delta has become an attractive route and many of the region's criminal gangs are cashing in, said security sources.
“Some of the ransom payments have definitely gone towards satisfying some drug cravings and that's why we're worried the kidnappings will get worse,” said a senior Nigerian police official who did not wish to be named.
Social crisis
As foreign oil workers become ever more scarce on the streets of Port Harcourt and other Niger Delta towns and cities, kidnappers are now picking Nigerian targets. At least four toddlers, including a three-year-old British girl, have been kidnapped in the past month by gunmen demanding ransoms. Several Nigerian oil workers have also been taken hostage in recent weeks.
“What we are witnessing are some of the worst manifestations of a social crisis that has been festering in the delta and the country as a whole in the past three decades,” said Pius Waritimi, a sculptor and art teacher who runs a government-backed skills training scheme for youths in Port Harcourt.
With most families in the grip of abject poverty, and deep-rooted corruption and mismanagement in government frustrating social development, most youths without education and skills have become cheap recruitment targets for the militias and gangs, said Waritimi.
“What is even more worrying is that for many of these youths the drug of choice in no longer marijuana but crack cocaine,” he added.
Gunmen Kill Two at Politician's Party (AFP)
An armed gang stormed a party hosted by politician in southern Nigeria's oil city of Port Harcourt and shot dead two guests, police said Tuesday.
Rivers state police spokesperson Ireju Barasua told AFP the incident occurred on Monday at a hotel in the city.
"The party was organised by the new Rivers Commissioner for Energy and Natural Resources, Mr Dilly Elbraid to celebrate his appointment," she said.
Local papers said the gunmen arrived at the venue on a motorcycle, where they opened fire indiscriminately on guests, killing two instantly.
They said one of the victims was the look-alike younger brother of the commissioner.
Youth Key to Peace & Prosperity in Bayelsa State (Daily Champion)
The creation of Bayelsa State 'the glory of all lands' on October 1 1996 by the military junta of the dreaded dark goggled General Sani Abacha was received with great joy across all the Ijaw people of Ondo, Delta, Rivers, Akwa Ibom and Edo states where they persistently played the second fiddle. The event was seen in several quarters as an epic and historic event in the annals of Nigeria. This was partly because despite the fact that the founders of modern Rivers State, King Alfred Diete - Spiff and Chief Melford Okilo, all hail from the present-day Bayelsa, there was nothing significant to show for that great feat as the area making the present-day Bayelsa was a typical rural setting. Rather, the developmental strides that were recorded by these men of history in the old Rivers State were all centred in Port Harcourt, the state capital. Another historic element to the state creation, pundits say, was its near monolithic status as a unique conglomeration of Ijaw ethnic group, in one enclave. To crown it all, the strategic importance of the state in the federation is overwhelming as it accounts for about 40 per cent of all oil and gas produced in the Nigerian federation.
The endless potentials of Bayelsa state cannot be overemphasised as is apparent in the numerous opportunities that abound in the young state. These include tourism and agricultural potentials, large deposit of solid minerals and oil and gas. For instance, I was excited when I first sighted the breathtaking Okpoma and Akassa Beaches all in Brass local government as they provide a rare opportunity to relish the Atlantic Ocean's syrupy and its charming view from an extraordinary perspective. The Port City of Twon Brass, also in Brass local government where large proportion of the oil export cargo and crude tonnage are being shipped daily with corresponding discoveries in other local government areas are good examples of the rich endowments of this state that has lately become a mix bag of paradox.
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Recently the discovery of over 400 million barrels of oil and an estimated half a trillion cubic feet of gas by Shell Petroleum Development Company (SPDC) in Gbarain in Yenagoa local government has been described as the one of the greatest of all findings by the multinational oil giant in recent times.
Agricultural potentials of the state are largely untapped as all efforts have been centred on oil exploration. For example the vast palm plantation in Elebele in Ogbia local government and the huge rice plantation in Peremabiri in Southern Ijaw local government have the capacity to mop up thousands of unemployed and restive youth from the creeks and streets if properly harnessed.
However, despite all these great wealth-creating opportunities, the state has been mired in an acme of unmitigated and traumatic crises of absurd proportion. These ugly scenarios gave birth to hostage taking, pipeline vandalisation, closure of flow stations and a general sense of insecurity in the state and other parts of the oil rich region with the snowballing consequences of enormous revenue loss, human and economic sacrifices. Bayelsa today is agonizingly a story of a rich but poor state. What an irony! There is no doubt that all these have become a boil on the state scrotum as well as other Niger Delta states.
But there is something to cheer about from Bayelsa which this piece seeks to advocate for other troubled spots in the region - the creation of Ministry of Youth, Conflict Resolution and Employment Generation.
The tripod ministry has a clear cut mandate of addressing youth matters, conflict management/resolution and employment generation with matching directorates to be guided by seasoned professionals; Nengi J. James (youth development) Richard Ogugu (employment generation) and Philips O. Okolo (Conflict Resolution). Being the first of its kind in the region, the import of the ministry must be seen from its proper perspective as the most important bureau in the state that must be supported by well-meaning Nigerians especially the oil companies. It also goes a long way to say the government of Bayelsa State has been in touch with media commentaries and newspaper editorials about the region, contrary to critics' conjectures. Despite the fact that cynics have received the move as one of those usual government platitudes, the idea behind the ministry if properly harnessed by all stakeholders in the state, will go a long way in addressing the combined problems of youth restiveness/conflict and unemployment and other sundry crimes which have bedevilled the state in recent times.
The underpinnings of the three-in-one-ministry if carefully nurtured will give room for a coherent and penetrative cure-all to the problems of negative youth activities in the state considering the personality appointed to head the ministry. It is time we promoted the central dogma of politics in our clime. It is said that politics is valuable only when it is geared towards guaranteeing social felicity to the citizenry.
The Bayelsa example is worthy of note because it refines the whole concept of modern youth activism, as youth with ethical deficits may not be given a chance in governance. Integrity here seems a compulsory qualification, perhaps that was the reason behind the appointment of an esteemed youth leader, Mr. Maxwell Oko, as the pioneer head of the ministry. For those who know the youthful 32-year-old commissioner, his name is synonymous with Ijaw Youth Council (IYC). As the central zone Chairman and Vice President to Alhaji Mujaheed Dokubo-Asari, Mr. Oko, among other leaders like the pioneer President of the youth pressure group Felix Tuodolor, had a genuine dream.
They inspired their fellow youths with the legitimacy of their vision, they were purpose-driven chaps; they were never an amorphous gang of hostage takers. The common good of the Ijaw nation inspired their greatest vision and drove their untainted resolve. They were true patriots. The present leadership of IYC can learn a lot from their successes and challenges as they managed the struggle as an entity without splinter groups. Mr. Oko led his group in a more organised struggle that was devoid of factions and bickering as represented in today's agitation. They asked à la Kennedy, what they could do for Ijawland, not what the oil rich region can do for them or how much they can extract from expatriate oil workers via hostage taking. The emphasis then was on what they can contribute; they knew then that when their troubled land was good, everybody including an Igalaman in Kogi State will benefit. And when it implodes into brazen criminality as the case today, the negative tendencies will configure itself into social dissonance that will culminate into economic loss to the nation and the local communities.
Having worked in the oil and gas sector as pioneer Special Adviser to the immediate past Minister of Energy, Dr Edmund Daukoru, the onus now is on Mr. Oko to bring his experience to bear especially as regards the challenges facing hundreds of qualified Bayelsans that have been 'denied' access to professional jobs in the oil and gas sector. Also the oil companies should tell the ministry the total number of Bayelsans under their pay roll. Having worked as an erudite consultant on youth development/employment generation to many companies and development agencies in the region, the honourable commissioner must jettison the glamour and allure of office and work tirelessly as he did during his tenure as Central Zone Chairman of IYC for the emancipation of the state that has continuously become popular albeit negatively.
While the oil companies seek meaningful partnership with genuine government policies and agencies aimed at addressing the lingering problems of the region for proper business environment, the Bayelsa model should be explored as various militant groups have publicly pledged to support one of their own in finding a lasting solution to the problems of the beleaguered region. The Yenagoa example has several lessons for other youth in the creeks to learn from - that beyond the veneer of activism lies great benefit for unadulterated and educated youth leaders. This can earn the Niger Delta youth an enviable place in the society, what with the appointment of another young and dynamic IYC stalwart and former National President of the National Union of Bayelsa State Students (NUBSS), Mr Samuel Ogbuku as the Chief of Staff (COS) Government House Yenagoa.
In summary, the government of Bayelsa State has understood the prevailing circumstances of the region and made youths empowerment a cardinal state policy. This tendency carries enormous weight as global attention has been on the state as a hub of boisterous youths' activities. Happy youth, happy Bayelsa, happy Niger Delta and prosperous Nigeria!
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