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By Sunday Ani
Prof. Benjamin Okaba, President, Ijaw National Congress (INC), in this interview, speaks on activities of non-state actors in the Niger Delta region, crisis in Ijaw Youth Council, oil theft in the region and efforts of INC to restore peace, among other issues.
With the level of insecurity in Nigeria, what is the effect of the growing non-state actors in our country?
In the first place, it tells you that the formal security architecture of this country has been compromised. Ordinarily, what these non-state actors seem to be doing is the responsibility of the police, military and other agencies that are empowered to secure the lives and properties of Nigerians. But talking about the implications, definitely, we have to talk about community policing but this is not the direction it should take. In terms of some kind of stop-gap approach to dealing with the immediate issues, I don’t think they should be allowed to continue for too long.
They should be regulated or stopped entirely. Yes, some are pledging loyalty to the Federal Government but we have not seen what the responses are from the Federal Government to the extent of either encouraging or discouraging these outfits. I think the government should take a stand on these issues, if not we are heading into the proliferation of so many militia bodies and that is not good enough for this country.
What is the latest development in the crisis rocking the Ijaw Youth Council and what are the challenges?
As you know, Ijaw Youth Council is a product of collective consciousness of the Ijaw people to have a youth organisation properly coordinated to articulate their aspirations concerning the self-determination drive of the Ijaw Nation. Precisely on December 11, 1998, over 5,000 Ijaw youths gathered at the community called Kaiama, representing over 40 clans coming from several clubs and they collapsed all their structures and had what they called the Kaiama Declaration. And there, the IYC was formed as a youth body of the Ijaw Nation.
We have had successive succession in the past but on one or two occasions, we have had issues with electing the leadership. Talking particularly about the last election, the truth is that IYC has one exco and there are no factions and that is the exco led by Jonathan Lokpobiri. The build-up to the election actually demonstrated some serious tension moments but at the end of the day, the critical stakeholders met and agreed first and foremost to harmonize the composite committee.
In fact, I had the privilege of chairing about three meetings to work out a creditable and transparent transition process. Decisions were taken in those meetings that cumulated in the parliament of the IYC putting up a committee that was sworn in by the immediate past president of IYC. The committee went to work, there were issues and they came back but after meeting with the governor of Bayelsa State, who encouraged them to work as a team and play out the spirit of sportsmanship with themselves as contestants and with the delegates, they had a non-elective convention on July 19 that started from the early hours of the day to late hours.
At some point, they were to get into the election but they had issues with the harmonization of the delegates list and that took so much time. As a result, there was some level of crisis. And the stakeholders and the committee all agreed to declare the process inconclusive and that they have to meet on another day. By the next day, when the critical stakeholders were actually meeting to ensure an all-encompassing delegates list, there were rumours that arising from the 19th July meeting, some persons went to a petrol station and announced that somebody was the winner.
I’m not perturbed by that development because we had our people on ground and we monitored the election. All the critical stakeholders believed that after dealing with the issues of the delegates list, the election should now hold on Saturday. And true to their words, they were able to harmonize the delegates list, we had that election on Saturday, July 22, and it was very peaceful and credible. In fact, at the end of the day, both winners and losers embraced themselves because it was actually a test of the leadership quality and what they expect of the various persons that brought themselves for the election.
The election was directly supervised by the Commissioner for Ijaw Affairs in Bayelsa State. There is a ministry called Ijaw Affairs and that is the supervisory ministry of the INC and IYC. And past leaders of the IYC were all united in the choice of Lokpobiri and they affirmed the results of the election. And on Sunday, Lokpobiri and his team came to the office of the President of the Ijaw National Congress and I had to offer a fatherly blessing.
So, the answer to the question you just raised is that we don’t consider that there is any faction in the IYC because the election was credible and it has thrown up a winner and that winner is not in dispute. The INC has thrown its weight behind the winner and we will continue to support the wishes of the people. I also want to say this. We had early warning signals that some kind of trouble might arise, so we were very mindful of it. During the screening of the various contestants, I personally visited the place and advised them to play by the rules and that any election conducted outside those approved by the supervisory authorities and the stakeholders would not be acknowledged and the results would not be respected by us.
I made that very clear and pointedly too to all of them. The governor of Bayelsa also made the same statement while meeting with them and that they should follow due diligence in this process because, at the end of the day, it is about Ijaw Nation and our unity. Like I said on Saturday, I still maintain my stand that Lokpobiri remains the authentic and the ninth president of the Ijaw Youth Council. This is also based on the reports I got from the independent observers that went there to represent INC and my interactions and consultations with other critical stakeholders of the Ijaw Nation particularly of the IYC.
As the President of the Ijaw National Congress, are you concerned over the issues of crude oil theft in the creeks?
I thought by now we should expand the discussion beyond identifying the real thieves because we have an avalanche of evidence to show that those who believed that it was the Ijaw people that were sabotaging oil production in this country will now have a rethink. We have ample evidence and so many reports that actually showed that the real oil thieves are not Ijaw people. They are not even in the creeks. They are where we know they are. They are in Abuja. They are in Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC). They are in the barracks and they are everywhere.
We have made bold statements about it. I remember also very vividly, one of the chairmen of the Traditional Rulers Council of Ijaw Nation, also made it very clear. In fact, he has books written to unravel the riddles of oil theft in Nigeria. I think what we should be talking about at this point is; now that we have identified the people, what are we doing about them? Vessels were intercepted and on the instructions of the powers-that-be, they were burned down. This again is another level of sabotage because when you burn evidence, you are also making it difficult for us to resolve the problem of oil theft.
Then some persons were caught in the burnt ships and you are now accusing them. Those persons are helpless. Are we able to trace the real cabal from the evidence of the vessels before they were burnt, and from the evidence of the people that were caught. We are concerned because we were wrongly accused of stealing what belongs to us. We produce the oil and under a federal system that is properly executed going by the principles of resource control.
The oil is our property and the oil is our heritage. We should be engaging other agencies and make sure we control this oil and pay taxes to the Federal Government. So, why must we steal what belongs to us? And particularly, when you are talking about oil theft, the processes also involve damaging our environment. In the Niger Delta, I can tell you for free that on a daily basis we experience over 100 levels of oil spill that are so devastating to our environment and our ecosystem is almost gone.
I’m sure you are aware of the recent report on the Environmental Genocide using Baylesa as an example. We are dying in installment. But, the good side of it is that the Ijaw people are now at the helm of affairs in terms of curbing oil theft. And because the normal security architecture has failed us, we have to resort to engaging our sons to protect our land and today the results are clear because the volume of oil being produced has increased to the extent that President Bola Tinubu himself recently gave a projection of getting up to two million barrels by next year. How would that happen if there is no peace in the Niger Delta?
