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Nigeria: On Declaring an Emergency

Adamu Adamu

11 July 2008

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Abuja — Isn't it obvious enough that there are too many cynics milling around today? Cynics, as you already know, are said to know the price of everything and the true value of nothing.

The government wants to-or, more correctly, wants to want to-declare an emergency. The cynics are accusing the government of having failed to do so. And both the cynics and the government are wrong, or are they?

An emergency is supposed to be a sudden, serious event or situation requiring immediate action to remove the problem caused or stop further harm from happening or stop the situation from deteriorating further. So far as we know, by Nigerian standards, nothing sudden or serious has of recent happened in this country. Things are pretty normal and nothing extraordinary has happened.

Of course, there is no power supply, petroleum-crude or refined-is being illegally bunkered, there is kidnapping, there is assassination, there is free-for-all violence in the Niger Delta, and elsewhere across Nigeria there is insecurity in homes, high streets and highways. That's the way is it; and that's the way it has always been: these things are pretty normal. So, why are these cynics expecting, calling and preparing for an emergency and accusing the government of not declaring it?

Is it because some persons-within and outside the country-are busy stealing the nation's oil resource? Why, this has been going on for ages and the country has not ceased to exist. And these darned cynics! They should learn to be objective. If in the past they have accused the government of promising and failing to declare an emergency; shouldn't they be fair enough to admit and acknowledge that it has at least declared other things? Surrender, for instance.

Within the last two months it has made a declaration of surrender - twice, indeed; one, when it decided to co-opt Niger Delta militants to protect what they have themselves been sabotaging; and, two, when, having surrendered and lost all hope of ever stopping the surreptitious theft of its oil, it appealed to the nations of G8 and, by extension, the international community to stop buying it. If there is no demand, supply will have to stop; and simple economics will have come to the aid of a complicated problem.

But can't these cynics ever learn? They must begin to learn to pity the government. It is outnumbered and outgunned, and internationally 'out-propagandaed.' Its soldiers cannot get into the creeks because of the barrage of militant fire power. Its style is happy-go-luckily go-slow, but the cynics want it to go rapid-fire. It cannot mount an effective naval blockade to stop and inspect all oil-laden tankers leaving Nigeria's waters because of this very reason, and also because in the past the navy has been a facilitator. And in Nigeria, the past is always the past.

These militants have been busy for a long time; and there are many classes of them. There are the unemployed militants, there are the kidnapper-militants many of whom are now not even of the Niger Delta origin; there are the very well employed militants and there are the elite militants. Against which of them will the emergency be declared? The cynics have not said so. But just declaring an emergency is really an admission of defeat, not victory. Why can't these cynics see the other things that can also be declared?

Indeed, if it is a mere declaration that they want, isn't it curious that they won't advise the government to consider declaring the whole Niger Delta Federal Territory for the common good of all, and relocate the people to dry lands of neighbouring states? It will not be the first time that this will be done. The entire people of New Bussa were relocated to give way for the construction of the Kainji Dam that supplies the whole nation with electricity in the same way the Niger Delta supplies it with oil. Gbagyi people were relocated for the construction of Shiroro Dam; and they were dispossessed and moved en masse to new locations to give way for the building of the Federal Capital Territory of Abuja.

If this hasn't crossed the minds of cynics, they should have applied their minds in other directions. If declaring the Niger Delta is not feasible, why didn't the cynics point out the futility of holding a summit? There are other easier, more viable, prosperity-enhancing alternatives. They should have considered packaging a gigantic World Bank-assisted $20billion turnkey contract to turn the Niger Delta area into a replica of the Rotterdam District? The city of Rotterdam was riverine and littoral like the Niger Delta but with the ingenuity of man, it had been turned into an industrial and economic and business showcase. The turnkey contract could be awarded to the Dutch, or to America's Bechtel Corporation, a company that has experience in building industrial cities or to Dar al-Handasah.

Within five years the Niger Delta could be transformed into the Rotterdam of the mid-Atlantic, with its riverine streets criss-crossed by elevated highways, and its industrial district teeming with refineries, petrochemical and shipbuilding industries and fertilizer plants; and within a decade, it could begin to enjoy one of the highest standard of living on the continent, if the World Bank loan is not, as is to be feared, stolen by Federal bureaucrats and officials of multilateral institutions.

Or, are the cynics calling for an emergency to be declared because of the level of embezzlement, graft and outright thievery going on in the corridors of power? But even this has been going on for ages. Unfortunately, in Nigeria, you can't catch a thief because the thief-catcher is often a bigger thief than the one he is trying to catch.

Perhaps it is time Nigerians legalize abuse of office. Since every one is doing it, and since everyone is benefitting from it; and since they believe the majority has the right to change the law, why not go ahead and do so? Perhaps henceforth letters of appointment should be written to say it out boldly that in addition to drawing their salary grade, whatever they can grab while in office will be regarded as legitimate fringe benefit.

Or, is the demand for a declaration of emergency on account of the unreliability of power supply? But, is it specifically because there is no power at all, or is it because of the billions allegedly missing in the attempt to increase generating capacity? Indeed, in this, it is the government itself that is so keen to declare the emergency-on account of power failure.

Some came, saw and conquered; but when Obasanjo came, he didn't see enough to get ready; and he was therefore conquered by each of and every one of the problems he promised to help. He met about 4000 megawatts on the ground; he spent more than $13billion trying to add to it; and he retreated from the job a defeated and unfulfilled president, leaving the nation with barely 2,000 megawatts. And, even with the threat of emergency declaration, total power generation continued plummeting down until it hit 1,000 megawatts; and now, according to the cynics, it hovers around 900 megawatts. The problem is that the problem has to be studied in depth and in detail in a go-slow manner; otherwise every other thing will be problematised with aspects of the problem.

Perhaps in Nigeria what we do have is not really power failure; because power failure presupposes that, to begin with, there is power that often fails; but the real situation is that what is there is failure that is elliptically interrupted by a few minutes of power supply. And it is only in Nigeria that the matter is like this. For comparison, let's see the situation in other African countries. Recently, I was in Gambia, Senegal, Ethiopia and Sudan. Except for Gambia, which is the smallest, all the others are bigger than Nigeria in land area and poorer-much poorer-in cash and kind; and none of them has a Kainji or an Egbin, yet none of them experiences power failure as a fact of life.

Now, if a government or Nigeria announces an intention to declare an emergency next year, what exactly will that mean? Is the government going to pray for the arrival of Hurricane Katsina [I beg your pardon, Katrina]? Or has it got such an efficient, technologically advanced seismographic early warning system that tells it that the next 8-point-on-the-Richter scale eruption is going to be on the seabed of the Bight of Biafra; and that the resulting tsunami will wipe out the whole of Nigeria's South? Or, has the fire that will decimate Nigeria's rainforest already been kindled? Or, is the rainlessness of the past few weeks up North a real harbinger of that predicted drought? Or-the dread of dread-has Cameroun finally decided to invade Nigeria?

How very sad indeed that it fell to Nigeria's lot to be saddled with a go-slow administration that in many ways is comparable to a decrepit-a World War II relic-sucked into clear-air turbulence without navigational aid. After slowly swaying up and down, it has since then, in the inimitable words of that respectable personage, graduated to a government at a standstill. Tired of its own inertia with its driver in automatic-pilot blindfold, it then put itself in reverse. Now, it is permanently parked at a road block.

Ladies and gentlemen, the cynics are completely wrong; there is no need to declare any emergency in Nigeria, because we are already in it.

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