James Ezema
17 August 2008
interview
Alhaji Yerima Shettima, national president of the Arewa Youths Consultative Forum (AYCF), is noted for being outspoken and blunt in addressing national issues. He has been in the forefront of the struggle for adoption of Pro-National Conference Organisations, PRONACO's draft constitution for Nigeria. He is also one of President Umaru Yar'Adua 's 'twelve apostles' constituted to advise government on how to resolve the Niger Delta debacle.
In this interview, he alleges that the president betrayed them because their recommendations were not followed as government opted for military campaign in the Niger Delta. Shettima insists that both the military option and the aborted Niger Delta Summit initiatives were fundamental errors. Speaking with Sunday Vanguard after a marathon meeting with his executive members in Lagos, he wondered why some people in the North should oppose 50 percent derivation for the oil producing communities. Excerpts:
THE Federal Government finally abandoned the proposed Niger Delta Summit in favour of harmonisation of former reports on the crisis in the region. How do you see that?
You see, there are two things in life and those things are either you want to face reality or you don't want to accept your responsibilities. I started by saying so because the issue of summit is not a new thing to Nigerians, especially on the Niger Delta crisis. Over and over, summits have been held during the dark days of former President Obasanjo administration for eight years. There were summits, symposia and so on and so forth.
But one thing remains, it is not about what you discuss with government that matters. It is about how far government has arrived in implementing policies and recommendations. And over and over, such meetings have been held under many guises at the expense of the people's welfare. You cannot meet with somebody who has no contact with those people who are involved in the Niger Delta crisis and expect positive result. It is not done.
So, over and over, this has happened. Partly, it was what we saw in the abandoned proposed summit by the administration of Umaru Musa Yar'Adua, with Prof Gambari on board. I was one of those who opposed the nomination of Gambari in principle. I opposed Gambari because credibility matters in such issue of national importance.
What we are talking about is of national importance and credibility matters in whoever you are going to saddle with a responsibility of that magnitude. Of course some of us know his antecedents and the role he played under the late General Sani Abacha's regime on the issue of the Ogoni Nine that consumed one of our foremost activists in person of Ken Saro-Wiwa. He lacked acceptance to steer a major summit of that importance if government was fair, honest and sincere about it. We have major stakeholders they could have brought on board and they would have been acceptable to the Niger Delta people.
I'll name one or two for you. Somebody like Yusuf Maitama Sule, a man of principle and when he speaks you make sense out of whatever he says. He was one of those who worked to bring about the idea of OMPADEC on how to resolve the Niger Delta crisis. It is not an issue that started today. Even during the military days, they had been speaking on the issue of resource control, issue of how to develop the Niger Delta and empower them as a people of Nigeria and how to overcome this crisis. People have been working.
Private meeting with Yar'Adua:
As a matter of fact, I was privileged to be part and parcel of the move initiated by some prominent northern leaders in solving the Niger Delta crisis. Presidency asked them to inform me to facilitate a meeting between Mr. President and selected Niger Delta leaders. That was about ten, eleven months ago. I was able to facilitate that meeting. I brought some core Niger Delta youth leaders on board. Asari Dokubo was one of them, IYC representative and some prominent Ijaw leaders, about twelve of us were there. The first meeting we had was a private meeting. We discussed this issue extensively. We had a chat with Mr. President and he asked us to go back and put our thoughts in writing, which we did. We had to stay back in Abuja for eleven days to come up with a blueprint; road map to resolving those issues bordering on the Niger Delta crisis.
One after the other, we made recommendations to Mr. President. We had another meeting with Mr. President, four of us, including some of those leaders and we also discussed extensively. He had to even send his economic adviser who came on board too. He met us in our guest house and we discussed extensively, believing that 'yes, we have discussed with people who have a voice, we have discussed with people who have a link with the same people we are talking about.' We call them all sorts of names; militants, criminals and so on and so forth. We discussed extensively, believing that at least the president will look at this matter thoroughly and work accordingly so that we could now try and see what will come out of it.
After discussing with Mr. President, we came back. To our greatest surprise, it is almost one year now; none of those resolutions was adopted by Mr. President to be a step in a good direction to help us achieve the peace we intend to achieve. Quite saddening and above all, the next thing we heard when we were expecting Mr. President to say, 'based on those things these people recommended, let us feed them back to see how we can revisit this same issue', was the commencement of a military campaign in the Niger Delta.
As a matter of fact, some of us are not pleased. We feel betrayed. We spent our time, we spent our energy, and we spent our ideas to sit down for the well-being of Nigeria and we gave guideline on what should be done. The president ignored all those ideas.
The next thing we heard later was a marching order, given in the aftermath of the attack on Bonga, to fish out the perpetrators. How can you do such a thing? Why didn't you do what we asked you to do in the first place? And why do you think military option would have been the best option at that level? It is disaster. No responsible government wages war against its citizens.
The idea is not different from what Charles Taylor, Hitler, Saddam did. Yes, we agree that there are criminals among them. But we will work with those who are among them to assist us to apprehend those who are the criminals. You can't bring a total stranger and ask him to go to the creeks. If he tries to capture the criminal and he can't, the next option he has is to eliminate anybody; he begins to fire. Innocent people will suffer for it; children will suffer, mothers will suffer, everybody will suffer. At the end of the day, would you wipe out the entire Niger Delta?
If he thinks the Americans are supporting him, the same America, UK and the Europeans came up to say there was no election in Nigeria in 2007. They did not recognize Yar'Adua government as legitimate and the same people again are telling him that they are going to give him military support to invade Niger Delta. How can you trust such people? How can you leave your domestic problem and begin to work by international advice? Does it mean they want to use him at the end of the day to take what rightfully belongs to Nigerians than allowing the Niger Deltans negotiate with them? What kind of country are we running? Dialogue remains the answer.
What and what were your specific recommendations to the president as a way out of this crisis?
One of the recommendations is that some of those youths of the Niger Delta, recognized leaders, should be brought into the picture. As a matter of fact, the issue of kidnapping came after Asari was arrested. Before then, Niger Delta was not all that volatile because I know that on many occasions he addressed issues. He came to do away with all those criminal acts and addressed some fundamental issues. This struggle by the Niger Deltans is different from criminal acts.
North misplaced priority
But it's about facing reality and insisting on those things that are in the peoples best interests. If that becomes the case, I knew in the early 1960s the north has been producing groundnut, cotton, and so on and, at that time, the derivation percentage given to the north is not whatis given to the South-South. I was baffled when some government officials from the north went to the national political conference and rather than bringing a project agenda that will benefit the common man in the north, think of how to develop our people, all they totally put their strength was in negotiating derivation percentage.
Some were saying 14.5 percent, some were saying 13.5 and those people were agitating for 50 percent. If they say they want 50 percent, can't the north live without oil? Niger Delta has no soil to plant anything. They can't farm. But we have good soil in the north. So, if we go back to agriculture, we can generate more fund than what oil is doing.
If at the end of the day we resolve that 50 percent be given to the Niger Delta, I tell you, oil will not be there forever. But our own land will ever remain there. So, it means that if they are generating their own funds (and) we are generating ours, and we are all given 50 per cent derivation, that 50 per cent will be there for us forever. The Niger Delta oil will come and go. You see, people think about what they see today. They don't think about what happens tomorrow. As you, for selfish reason, do what is wrong, we have conscience and conscience is an open wound. So, it is quite saddening to have arrived at the situation we have found ourselves.
Somebody stays somewhere negotiating amount of money that should accrue to Niger Deltans and asking, 'what have they done with it?' Tell me one thing a state governor in the north has achieved. We see a lot of beautiful cities in the south. What has one governor in the north done compared to the beautiful cities in the south. What has one governor in the north done to benefit the common man in the north? If they can take care of our less privileged and make education compulsory for the next ten years for every northern child, it is enough achievement.
In this whole matter, what would you consider the way forward?
The only way Niger Delta can move forward now is for the government to make sure that they do the right thing in the right direction. One, there must be sincerity of purpose. Two, they must bring major stakeholders, not minding their age. They must bring people that work with the people that are doing all these things that are frustrating them.
They should leave those men of yester-years who have lost credibility even before the youths of that region. They must bring people with credible antecedents that can talk to them (militants), people that are very influential among the militants. And they have leaders and they listen to their leaders. Otherwise, President Umaru Musa Yar'Adua will spend his four or eight years without achieving anything there like Obasanjo.
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