The destination of amnesty

By Tony Momoh
THE Niger Delta issue today is so important that I believe it is diversionary to take part in the argument to do with what meaning we should assign to the word amnesty. I know what section 175 of the Constitution says.

It has to do with the power of the president to grant pardon to citizens who have wronged the state. Yes, he must seek the endorsement of the Council of State which is made up of all the governors of the federation, the president of the Senate and Speaker of the House, all former heads of state and former chief justices of the federation, and the attorney-general of the federation.

Of course the president and vice president are there as chairman and deputy chairman of the body respectively. All the president needs to do is to be convinced that the person or persons being pardoned committed offences against the laws of the land and for which they had been convicted. He can grant reprieve on condition or without condition.

But there is one other way he can grant reprieve, and that is if the person pardoned was concerned … with any offence created by an Act of the National Assembly. All the offences in the Criminal and Penal Codes are Acts of the National Assembly for which reprieve may occasion either because the one being let off had been convicted by a court of law or he had been accused of committing such an offence.  He does not even have to have been arraigned. Read section 175 (1) of the Constitution ten times.

Why I do not want to be drawn into the arguments as to whether the president can do what he did in the Niger Delta is that whatever was done, as in every case in which the state has a stake against a citizen, was a political decision. Don’t hang me in your thoughts.

Every decision of the state to prosecute an offence against a citizen is a political decision. That is why even the one who wielded the axe in a murder case can be called as a witness and go his way after those needed to cool their heels in prison had been done in. And is that not also why the attorney-general has power to withdraw any criminal case at any stage of the proceedings before judgment, even without giving reasons why he is doing so?

Why do you think Okah was released? It is not because man pass man but because sense pass boast. He may well have remained in detention, been tried for treason and be given the maximum punishment for the offence, but he was released to create room for another way to attend to problems such as the Niger Delta posed, problems force had proved to be unable to resolve. I do hope that no one pushes the point that the issues would have been resolved neatly in the battlefields!

No, they could not and they can never be resolved in the battlefield because there can be no battlefield in the creeks in which federal forces will face the militants and exchange fire. Guerrilla fighters are not interested in taking and running towns and villages.

They target regular forces and strike where they are not looking. I know the issues enough to enable me argue a case whether or not what was done in respect of the Niger Delta stalemate could be done by the president with or without precedent steps being taken. For whatever reason he had to declare amnesty for the freedom fighters of the Niger Delta, I say that the declaration is of interest to me.

Why, in many pieces too many to count, I have always pleaded that no conventional war can be won in the Niger Delta. Besides, the country would lose the propaganda war because the world always, in spite of whatever provocations may have led to reprisals by government forces, sympathises with the underdog, the one seen to be oppressed.

So in spite of the fact that many of our children, both those who are claiming rights and those protecting the status quo, died doing the work they had to do, it was a bold decision for the president to have initiated a stop to the war by declaring an amnesty without conditions. And I am happy that he also had to meet the leaders of the different groups.

It is for this reason I believe that the president should continue to accommodate the doubts some militants have in respect of the amnesty. Some see it as patronising, for they claim they had never committed an offence for which they would be grateful if pardon is granted.

They see themselves as victims of injustice and must be in love with US labour leader and socialist Eugene Victor Debs (1855-1926) who was jailed for sedition in 1918 and was released from prison on the orders of President Harding in 1921.

Debs said it was the government that should ask him for pardon for the injustice he had suffered. So, from a strictly ideological stand point, many in the Niger Delta do not see the amnesty as a favour to save the militants from punishment. For some, it is a journey, and a journey has a beginning and an end.

For them, it started with the declaration of amnesty and ended at midnight of October 4. But for me, what happened between August and October was the preparation for the journey which began on October 4. The laying down of arms was meant to create the environment for the peace we need in the Niger Delta to grow it, not just to enable the resources to be tapped without pipe lines and other facilities being blown up. No, what gave rise to the war must be the starting point of resolving it.

The destination of the amnesty journey is, therefore, in the very short term, already on paper, in the Niger Delta Technical Committee Report which the Ledum Mitee committee handed over to the president 10 months ago in Abuja. If we had pounced on that report to execute the recommendations, we would have been far into making the Niger Delta a less ugly spectacle to behold.

We would have been half-way in attending to the short-term needs of the area and would have been planning for the medium term recommendations to follow as a matter of course. There were also long-term solutions to the problems in the detailed recommendations arising from collation of all reports on the Niger Delta question since the Willinks Commission Report of 1958.

We have excised the amnesty provision from the report and we can praise ourselves that it worked. But this singing and dancing will be very short indeed because if we do not sustain the tempo or excitement with work that will bring succour to a deprived people, the young men and women will move back into the creeks. This is a step the President must prevent by making a success of his Niger Delta segment of his seven-point agenda.