Paying for Guns

---

Though Priye’s grammar is simple and his conjugative skills poor, he sounds enlightened about the issues affecting the Niger Delta and has some understanding of the history of neglect that sparked the conflict in the first place. His knowledge, though flawed in specifics, is still impressive coming from someone who barely had two years of secondary education.  For four years, Priye was a member of one of the militant groups in the Niger Delta which fought an insurgency that saw crude oil production in Nigeria drop by a million barrels, almost strangling the Nigerian economy.  Reports say the amnesty deal will cost the federal government some sixty-four million dollars: the government is expected to pay out a grant of sixty-five thousand naira to each of the 15,000 militants (although Henry Okah, erstwhile leader of MEND, is on record as saying that only 500 of that number are true militants and that he suspects that all the others are a rented crowd) as part of its demobilization programme. After payment, the boys will sign a document that obligates them to be of good behaviour.

The rehabilitation centres where Priye and the other decommissioned fighters were sent after they surrendered their weapons are public properties, like schools and abandoned health centres, with basic facilities. Within the premises these boys hang around with little to do.  They share jokes, they eat, they sleep—they are beginning to get frustrated by this seeming redundancy. They complain that they have not been paid the money they were promised.  Priye explains: “I don dey frustrate . . . at least make we know wetin government want from us and wetin they want do for us. All we dey do na just to laugh and to remember old times . . .”  He admits he still nurses some fears about the amnesty deal, but he sees the need for it.  He only worries that the authorities do not renege on its promises, for that—he says with a scowl—will not portend well for the country.

From one of the rehabilitation camps sited in Edo State about four hundred and fifty boys were recently transferred to Priye’s camp, which is located near Warri. Most of these boys do not expect a life much better than the ones they left behind to join the insurgency: after six years of violent protest there is little improvement in the social condition of their communities.  Electricity remains a pipe dream in most towns and villages, clean water is almost always sourced from community taps provided by multinationals, and even these represent a fraction of the solutions demanded in the delta communities.

Priye and his former comrades-in-arms complain that their experiences so far have been unpleasant. Reactions to their arrival have been varied—while many consider them more as heroes than villains, some within the Niger Delta river communities look back to the years before the fighting with some nostalgia. Then, there are those who see these young men as nothing more than bands of marauding criminals who cannot be reformed.

The sincerity of the government in implementing the terms of the agreement reached with the militants is a point of concern for many. A number of the boys based at the Warri rehabilitation centre voiced the suspicion that the amnesty may be the first step in a ploy to encircle the Niger delta communities by luring the militants from the creeks so that federal troops can move in to secure the militants’ abandoned bases.  Even the governors of states in the region have indicated some scepticism about the amnesty.  However, in Delta State, efforts are in full gear to accommodate these new recruits. But the government’s efforts are meeting with some opposition and for good reason too: many people claim that, as part of the state government’s plan for rehabilitating the youths, they intend to create job vacancies in some government agencies that many say are already overcrowded with ghost workers and inexperienced relatives of top government functionaries.  How the state government intends to cope with a new influx of workers who have no training in office administration—and many lacking even the requisite academic qualifications—when they have not been able to fully incorporate the services of the experienced hands they have loitering around their premises with no assigned duties, is left for us to see.

Regardless of the government’s intentions one thing is apparent: not every one of the 15, 000 reformed militants can be accommodated in the civil service.  It is also unclear how these boys, who are used to easy money, will be discouraged from returning to the creeks to continue their militant activities. Even if the government is able to counter this possibility by establishing a strategic presence in the creeks, the options on land seem even more frightening: in September a situation boiled over in Bayelsa State when former militants, who had returned from the creeks under the amnesty agreement, stormed the state capital, ordering residents to stay indoors and firing Kalashnikovs in the air.  They later said they were protesting the non-payment of their allowances some weeks after the (supposed) submission of their arms.

Incidents like these expose the possible dangers if the amnesty deal fails.  But even if it works, there is a general feeling that it may have succeeded in bringing a menace that was conveniently locked away in the creeks to the government’s nerve centres, where it can strike harder. In many parts of Nigeria, but especially in the Niger Delta, rivalries between politicians are settled in violent clashes and a lot of money is spent in securing the services of youth gangs to tilt the balance during elections. This plays out in street conflicts where rival gangs fight for control of constituencies, terrorising voters from coming out to vote.  The elections of April 2007, adjudged one of the most corrupt Nigeria has ever seen, exposed the consequences of allowing youth gangs be part of the political process. However, feelers point to a deadlier conflict ahead. The recipe is simple: put an estimated 15, 000 battle-ready youth on the streets, add a crumbling economy, the availability of guns, ethnic sentiments, a corrupt system of governance, and finally garnish the whole mix with a failure to implement terms of the amnesty agreement.  The consequence, obviously, is conflagration.

But back to Priye: asked if he would be willing to return to the creeks, he chuckles, turns his bloodshot eyes on me and—without waiting for me to complete the question, to reel off the list of reasons that could provoke such rash action—he retorts, “Why not?”

Ejiro Barrett is a freelance journalist.  He lives in Warri.