How Niger Delta Avengers are killing their people and destroying their own future
Editor’s note: The Niger Delta Avengers in a bid to make the federal government respond to its demand has been blowing up gas and fuel pipelines in the region.
In this opinion, Greg Odogwu point out that the damage and danger that such actions posit and that the people living in the region are going to suffer the degradation of the land. He warns that the action is likely to cause more harm than good as there are other ways to make demands.
Never a worst time
This is really the worst of times for Nigeria. Niger Delta Avengers is a new group of militants that the country is today faced with. For the past few weeks, they have bombed critical oil and gas installations in the Niger Delta, and thrown the national economy into a crippling shock. The core reason they are more destructive and of deep concern to the government is the plain fact that they are hitting at the heart of the country’s primary source of income.
Although Nigeria has had a fair share of militants in that region especially between 2005 and 2009 when the government came up with the amnesty programme, there is something that strikes a chilling note in this new militant group. From the accounts of oil workers who witnessed them in action, they seem more interested in inflicting maximum damage to the tools and property used in oil production than in (psychologically) harming or kidnapping oil workers – the major tactic of former Niger Delta militants.
A particular oil worker who relocated to Abuja after experiencing firsthand the attack of the new militants in his oil platform, recounted how the Avengers carefully evacuated the oil workers and staff from the rig before placing explosives on the oil installations and blowing them up.
READ ALSO: Tension in Niger Delta as new militant group threatens
It seems they set out to inflict maximum harm not only on the property of the workers but on the Niger Delta environment. This new group seems to be making a statement for everybody to see: We shall destroy our land to show that you have been unfair to our land!
This is the signature of eco-terrorism. I recall that in 1984, a group with a similar name with the Niger Delta Avengers wreaked havoc in Hardesty, a United States of America community. It called itself the Hardesty Avengers.
Terror and damage to mother earth
Eco-terrorism means violence done to persons and/or their property in the name of the environment or to support environmental causes. It should not be confused with environmental terrorism. The Hardesty Avengers spiked hundreds of trees in the Hardesty Mountain portion of the Willamette National Forest, Western Oregon. Their grouse was that their community and its environment were being harmed by the American government and the tourism industry. The government had to put a reward on the Avengers, but up till now no one was arrested for the crime.
Eco-terrorism is defined by the US Federal Bureau of Investigation as “the use or threatened use of violence of a criminal nature against people or property by an environmentally oriented, subnatinal group for environmental-political reasons, or aimed at an audience beyond the target, often of a symbolic nature.” In America, eco-terrorists have used tree spiking, arson, and murder to express their grudges; it is estimated that the US government has lost close to half a billion dollars in property damage as a result of eco-terrorism.
Granted, the Niger Delta Avengers has given the government conditions for ending attacks and most of them are not related to environmental causes, but we can safely assume that every agitation from the Niger Delta region revolves around environmental justice. Nevertheless, Nigeria being what it is, every other kind of leaves and sheets – from politics to crime – are packed inside the region’s eco-portfolio.
In this wise, the only germane demand from the Avengers’ ten conditions to the Federal Government is the number six demand which says: “Ogoniland and all oil polluted lands in the Niger Delta must be cleaned up, while compensation should be paid to all oil producing communities”.
However, it will be naïve to assume that the environmental demand is the core of the Avengers’ grouse because one will be reminded that the present administration has already commenced the process of cleaning the polluted Ogoniland. The story is also twisted when we remember that the immediate past administration was headed by a son of the Niger Delta, who would have naturally pushed all the region’s demands as his administration’s priority policies and projects. But he did not.
READ ALSO: Militants blow up pipeline in Bayelsa state
It then means that we are now left in a complex situation, where every eco-terrorist strategy seems to be coloured with hidden agenda and ethno-political intrigue.
This is not good neither for the Niger Delta region nor the country, because eco-terrorism spoils everything. It is the mother of all terrorism.
The danger lurking in the shadows
The danger with eco-destructive weapons is that they turn battle into deliberate cauldron, and convert war into an Armageddon. It is against the law of nature; against the philosophy of human survival. This is why the world never allows biological and chemical weapons to be used in conflict theatres. The world never allows destruction of heritage sites. The world consciously ended the nuclear arms race because of the unimaginable impact atomic bombs has on the eco-system – permanent and hellish.
As determined eco-terrorists, the Avengers could end the survival of the Niger Delta environment by their attacks. The oil spill, gas leaks and GHG emissions from the onslaught could spell extinction for the region’s flora and fauna.
The people of the Niger Delta have suffered enough deprivation, environmental injustice and neglect even from its own elite class. These folk should not be subjected to more pollution of their air, land and water.
I am aware that the bombing of Forcados pipeline, Bonga Oil field, Chevron trunk lines and other oil and gas installations could draw immediate attention to the Avengers, but these will draw more ecological hazard to the region. UNEP says Ogoni land would take more than 30 years to clean up; therefore incurring more pollution on the Niger Delta extends the sickly years of the region and shortens the life span of every child born in the “avenged enclaves.”
The future
At the end of the day, not even all the money of the world can meet the demands of the eco-terrorists.
My thoughts are that our major problem as a nation cannot be solved through insurgency or militancy. This will be doing more injustice to the already-suffering masses. The problem with Nigeria is that we lack a sense of ownership of the Nigerian project. We see ourselves in many lights and colours, but never as Nigerians.
READ ALSO: Ex-governor advises Buhari to engage militants in dialogue
I have heard a taxi man lament that if he had some other country to run to and become her citizen, he would. But he never gave a thought to the reality of helping to change his own environment in whatever little way he could. When I suggested that, he just sighed and grumbled in pidgin English, “No be their country be this? Na my own? If you be Nigerian, u go know wetin I mean.”
I think it is time our present leaders thought up strategies to make Nigerians believe in the idea of Nigeria. Without believing in Nigeria, how can one trust its leaders, and how can one safeguard its environment? And by the way, what would stop one from blowing things up when he feels they are not his own?
This opinion first appeared in The Punch.
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