allAfrica.com: Nigeria: Niger Delta Summit - Gambari's Exit And Other Matters (Page 1 of 2)

Prof. Ibrahim Gambari's volte face at the weekend on his appointment as chairman of the Steering Committee of the proposed Niger Delta Summit by President Umar Yar'Adua is very interesting. Interesting in the sense that in the final analysis, most people conversant with the issues of the Niger Delta and those that know Prof. Gambari fairly well, will not but give him kudos for yielding at last to the popular opinion that he should not chair the proposed summit.

The Niger Delta Summit is an initiative of the President Umaru Yar'Adua-led administration intended to the get to the root of the problems of the oil rich region with a view to finding a lasting solution to them. But what are these problems? Why have they defied any solution?

The Niger Delta problems have remained virtually the same since the exploitation of oil minerals started in that region, following the discovering of oil in 1956 at Oloibiri, Rivers state. It is a known fact that oil exploration and exploitation have their ancillary havocs, including environmental degradation, water and air pollution, ecological deterioration, loss of farm land for cultivation, loss of water for fishing, health hazards due to gas flaring and pollution, degradation of natural habitat and the reluctance of the government to develop the area.

These problems have been heightened by the activities of the militant Niger Delta youths who went beyond the normal agitation for a better deal for the oil rich region to engage in kidnapping (both expatriates and Nigerians), vandalising oil facilities, burning down of police stations, attacking and sinking of naval boats, and in fact, killing and maiming of people. Worse still, those taken hostage are released after some mouth-watering ransom has been paid, a situation that has made some people believe that the present crop of the Niger Delta militants have deviated from the initial agitation for liberation, and fair treatment as envisaged by Adaka Boro when he made what became known as the 'Kiaima Declaration' in the 1960s.

Analysts argue that it is the dangerous dimension which the militancy has assumed in the Niger Delta that compelled the federal government to come up with the proposed summit, considering the fact that Nigeria was losing over 30 per cent of crude oil production daily due to the activities of the Niger Delta youths. They recall that just a couple of weeks ago, the militants bombed the Bonga oil platform belonging to the Shell Petroleum Development Company (SDPC), forcing the government to ask the company to give up its exploration activities.

To deliver the be all and end all blow to the Niger Delta crisis, President Yar'Adua settled on Gambari, a Professor of Political Science and International Relations and who was a one-time Nigeria's Permanent Representatives at the United Nations.(U.N) No doubt, the President had reasoned that, given Gambari's exposure, intellectual capacity, international contact and experience in conflict resolution, he would be able to direct the steering committee on the right path in making recommendations that would end the Niger Delta crisis once and for all.

It was against this backdrop that President Yar'Adua applied formally to the Secretary-General of the United Nations (UN), Mr. Ban Ki-Moon, to release Gambari who is serving as his Special Envoy to Myanmar and Iraqi Compact for the Niger Delta Summit. Last month Ki-Moon obliged Yar'Adua.

However, there was a public outcry against his choice to chair the committee, leading to the rejection of Gambari by groups and individuals from within and outside the Niger Delta region. For instance, the Ijaw National Leader, Chief Edwin Clarke, Chairman of the Ijaw National Congress (INC), Prof. Kimse Okoko, the nine governors of the oil producing states in Nigeria, Prof. Wole Soyinka, Dr. Fredrick Faseun, Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta (MEND), Federated Niger Delta Ijaw Communities among others vehemently opposed the appointment of Gambari to chair the Steering Committee of the Niger Delta Summit. Their grouse against him was that based on his antecedents, he had displayed his unhidden bias against the cause of the Niger Delta region. They cited his role in the killing of human rights activist, Ken Saro Wiwa and eight other Ogoni sons in 1996 by General Sani Abacha. According to them, Prof. Gambari who was then Nigeria's Permanent Representative at the UN had the opportunity of saving their lives, but he did not. He described them as "common criminals" when he appeared before the Heads of State of Government at the Commonwealth Conference in justification for their murder after a tribunal had found them guilty of killing Edward Kobani and three Ogoni leaders.

But the erudite scholar and diplomat was not moved by the deafening outburst of his rejection initially. Analysts recall that confronted with his statement in 1996 concerning the "Ogoni nine" and the opposition of his choice by a cross section of the nation, Prof. Gambari merely dismissed their opposition by saying that a statement he made 13 years ago is a long time to be remembered. To refine his defence, he said he did what he did that time out of patriotism so that the sanction that was dangling on Nigeria's head could be obviated. He went on to say that his statement was quoted out of context, denying that he never said they were common criminals.

In his bid to down play the weight of his rejection by the stakeholders of the summit, Prof. Gambari went ahead to clarify that the proposed summit was not restricted to the Niger Delta region alone, being a national summit. As a first step of confirming his chairmanship of the Steering Committee, he called for a 90-day cease fire, advising the militants to embrace dialogue and consultation.

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