Fresh empowerment initiative for Niger Delta youths
By Dele Fanimo and Collins Olayinka

WHILE the face-off between government and agitators in Niger Delta, mostly able-bodied youths, lasted, only those at the battlefront could appreciate the rage and frustration driving the youths.

Indeed, sneak view of these youths in battle ready gears on waters were enough to send jitters down the spines of peace-loving Nigerians.

Part of the agitation was a direct result of massive unemployment and social dislocation in the region.

And when its seems the rave was becoming too explosive for government to handle, the latter came up with olive branch for the warlords and their foot soldiers.

Behold, they came in their thousands, war weary, thirsty for normal life and rearing to take legitimate jobs.

With the amnesty offer came a flurry of activities from government, non-governmental organisation, international agencies and other stakeholders jostling to ensure a new social order that would guarantee jobs through employment opportunities and empowerment strong enough to dissuade them from returning to the creeks.

Apparently, cueing in to the initiative, stakeholders had a parley which had “Beyond Amnesty: Towards New Roles and Involvement for Youths in the Development of the Niger Delta” was an avenue used to chart new ways of engaging the youths of the areas who were hitherto into hostage taking and other anti-social acts.

The youths laid down their arms through the Presidential Committee on Amnesty and are presently camping in various camps established by the government where they will be rehabilitated and reoriented towards getting them lawful means of livelihood, but beyond those who are in the camps, there are indeed others who lay well outside the active militancy.

There are other youths who were in state of despondency even while militancy was at peak and these youth though were not in the vanguard of militancy were also part of those that should be empowered for total peace to return to the once volatile region.

Speaking at a three-day orientation programme, the President of the Nigeria Labour Congress (NLC), Abdulwahed Omar, said that the programme was part of the on-going effort by the labour movement in the country to contribute its quota to bringing peace to the region.

“It is part of our contribution to the national efforts aimed at addressing the pressing concerns of citizens in the Niger Delta region of our country. These are concerns about rights, equity, development and peace, which have adversely affected the economy of the region and that of the country in time past. We have in the past showed considerable interest in the Niger Delta problem. This orientation programme is one of the numerous formal and informal interventions we have been engaged in,” he said.

Omar added that the latest was the second in the series saying the first programme which had “labour and the Social Dimensions of the Challenges of Justice, Development and Peace in the Niger Delta” which was held in November 2008 was meant to specifically designed for stakeholders to brainstorm and articulate a well-informed, coherent, realistic, community-friendly and implementable plan for the Niger Delta.

The overall goal of the programmes, he highlighted was to achieve effective advocacy for the rights protection, the promotion of equity and peace and the attainment of sustainable development of the country.

He stated that youth have been identified as potential instrument that should be empowered and positioned to play more dominant roles in attempts at ensuring lasting peaceful co-existence in the Niger Delta region.

The parley, he revealed, which was an offshoot of the earlier meeting and that it was mainly aimed at engendering rethinking and reassessing the dominant paradigms meant to address the Niger Delta problem, exploring very specific roles and involvement of youth in the development of the Niger Delta communities, putting in place mechanisms aimed at changing the mindsets of youth in the region on making ‘easy money” and building sustainable partnerships for the advancement of human development among all interest groups in the Niger Delta.

The NLC chief though lauded the Amnesty programme initiated by President Umaru Yar’Adua to end the militancy activities in the Niger Delta, he was quick to observe that the programme was found wanting at least in the short-term and that discordant echoes from the communities indicated an embodiment of commandist approach embedded in it as against the participatory approach that would involve the community members.

His explanation: “We have followed with keen attention the developments that led to the coming into being of the amnesty programme and the challenges which its implementation confronts us as a nation. We are of the fervent conviction that though the amnesty has merits, we do think that the measures is short term and cannot comprehensively address the Niger Delta question which is related to issues of rights, equity, development and peace. The politics of the use of the resources meant for the implementation of the amnesty programme is worrisome. The daily threat issues by youth and the communities on the need to comprehensively manage the amnesty programme show the concerns about the future of this package. The strategy is directed from the top and therefore has elements of a commandist approach. This approach does not also address in more comprehensive way of issues of poverty.”

Stating the obvious, Omar said that the decision to involve youth at this stage of peaceful engagement was influenced by the urgent need to prevent them from going back to creeks.

“We are interested at this stage in addressing the concerns of the Niger Delta youth for obvious reasons. After being retrieved from the battlefields, there is the urgent and serious need to address their concerns to avoid any retreat back to the creeks. We do think that the development and future of the region is dependent on a youth that is empowered and possess the capacity to take positions in the public and private sectors as well as in the management of the state machinery in no distant future,” he said.

The NLC helmsman reiterated the national labour umbrella body believed in its long-held framework for the development of the Niger Delta. According to Omar, the framework spelt out reversing the process of neglect and unequal development of Niger Delta region, the appropriate use of the benefits that flow from exploiting the oil and gas resources that are located in the Niger Delta for development in the region, the restoration of the environment that has suffered from the negative consequences of oil and gas extraction, correcting the historical wrongs through measures that provide justice for victims and their persecutors and to also prosecute the elite that pilfer the resources meant for the development of the people of the region.

Omar consequently warned of dire consequences if government as well as oil companies failed to prioritise the development of host communities.

His words: “We; therefore, call on state development agencies and all state governments in the Niger Delta region to deploy resources to meet the rising expectations of their people. We also call on all the oil companies to take their corporate social responsibility role more seriously to support the plans of the government and all concerned Nigerians including labour movement. Anything short of this will constitute a deliberate obstacle to sustained peace.”

A Professor of Biological Sciences at the University of Abuja, Omotoye Olorode submitted that the struggle of the Niger Deltans must go beyond armed struggle to also include political autonomy.

“Without prejudice to the right of peoples to self determination, autonomy, control and even secession etc., proper class analysis of nationalist and independence struggles need to be carried out pari pasu the struggle for autonomy itself. This is because while these struggles are mandated by the concrete conditions on ground, many of them after victory, like popular struggles in colonial and post-colonial Nigeria, had sustained the victimisation of the large majority of post-independence polities,” he stated.

Drawing inspiration from the Ledum Mitee-led committee report, Olorode hinted that ensuring lasting peace in the region rest squarely on welfare state or higher derivation allocation option which he reasoned, also offered itself as mobilisation tool of the working people by the labour movement.

He added: “This leaves us with what we call welfare-state/higher derivation allocation option. The Ledum Mitee Technical Committee on Niger Delta report’s recommendations approximate this option fairly well. The Nigerian labour movement, because of its history and tradition of working class solidarity, nationalism and anti-imperialism should examine that report carefully and fine-tune it generally with a view to strengthening the popular, grassroots/community control elements of it and use it to mobilise working people for the support of the Niger Delta.

“The suggested fine-tuning must also categorically assert the right of the people of the Niger Delta to disallow oil exploration on their land apart from the other guarantees and insurance relating to environmental degradation.”

The university don blamed the political class for destroying the rural slums and refusing to provide alternative as the direct manifestation of the frustration of the poor.

His words: “Apart from unemployment, withdrawal of social services, privatisation and inaccessibility of public utilities (drinking water, power), homelessness etc., ruling class regimes in the major cities have continued the fascist programme of destroying slums without providing alternatives and even exiling hordes of poor people from their ‘areas of jurisdiction.’ The poor have responded individually by turning on other citizens resulting in increased crimes especially in the urban centres.”

He submitted that a definite transformation of the Niger Delta resistance into a political platform that combines the ethos of resistance with a paradigm ethos of negotiations would be a veritable template for the overall resistance of the working people in Nigeria.

Even with oil deposit in large quantity on their land, Niger Deltans and by extension, Nigerians are still not in the mainstream of manpower of oil business in the country. It is realistic to assume that after two or three decades of oil exploration activities in Nigeria, skills of internationally certificated standards ought not to be in short supply, but it is in fact in short supply. For example, only recently the Federal Government mandated the Petroleum Technology Development Fund (PTDF) to train up to 2, 500 Nigerian welders to internationally accepted certification standards in South Africa. It is expected that those so trained will become trainers of other Nigerians.

Availability of Nigeria entrepreneurs who have the capacity to take advantage of the vast business opportunities created by the local content policy is indeed in short supply. Evidence from the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) sponsored Baseline Economic Survey of small and medium industries in the Southsouth zone does not indicate the emergence of such enterprises to take advantage of the opportunities expected to have been created.

On policy implementation, generally, the implementation of policies in Nigeria has always been a major challenge. But due to various factors ranging from limited institutional capacity, the will and staying power to implement the policies consistently over time, to downright corruption, most policies are not effectively implemented and the local content policy is equally unlikely to be an exception.

The parley, also submitted that the training of Niger Delta youth in various skills within the oil and gas industry for gainful employment may not only provide an avenue to keep youth busy from unproductive ventures but equally hold the ace to ensuring lasting peace in the once troubled region.