Since he came into office, President Umaru Yar’Adua, who fortunately has in his deputy a man who is also a victim of the several years of deprivation that the Niger Delta has undergone, has demonstrated an uncommon seriousness in tackling the problems headlong. While the last administration’s effort at solving the problems of the region was cynically received by many stakeholders, Yar’Adua appears to have won the confidence of majority of the people of the region.

President Umaru Yar’Adua and Vice President Goodluck Jonathan

While Yar’Adua remains the driving force in this new resolve to solve the problems of the region,  the catalytic force for the realization of this objective is Vice President Goodluck Jonathan, who is saddled with the responsibility of the direct coordination of all efforts of this administration to bring about the attainment of peace in the region.

For instance, shortly after the duo of Yar’Adua and Jonathan assumed office, it was the vice president who embarked on a diplomatic shuttle to galvanize activists on the Niger Delta matter world wide. In one of such meetings, Jonathan met with one of the leaders of the militant group, Movement for the Emancipation of Niger Delta, MEND, Henry Okah, in far away South Africa where an agreement was reached on how to move the region forward. It is alleged that the decision by the latter to breach the agreement reached between him and the vice president is responsible for his on-going trial.

Strident opposition

Indeed, it has not all been smooth sail between stakeholders in the region and this present government. When it was announced that a Niger Delta summit would be convened to allow stakeholders proffer solution to the Niger Delta debacle, strident opposition came from the region. The stakeholders opposed to the summit argued that from 1958 till date, several commissions had been set up and recommendations from such commissions had not been implemented. Convening another summit, they pointed out, would be a waste of time.

If the opposition to the summit was a storm, the opposition to the head of the committee as proposed by the Federal Government was a hurricane. When government announced the highly respected diplomat, Ibrahim Gambari, as the proposed leader of the summit, opposition to his headship was deafening. Not wanting to betray the confidence the people of the region were gradually building on the administration, the vice president quickly beat a retreat, and cancelled the proposed summit for what he called consultation with stakeholders.

For the first time in several years, Jonathan demonstrated that, indeed, you could have a leader who is sensitive to the feeling of the people and would soft-pedal when issues are not in their best interest. For the vice president, the free hand given to him by the president on the issues concerning the Niger Delta offers a rare opportunity to write his name in gold. So far, he seems to be doing everything to ensure that he does not derail.

With the shelving of the Niger Delta summit, Jonathan assembled a team of eminent men and women from the region into a Technical Committee that would proffer solutions to the seemingly intractable problems of the region. Coming at a time that the creation of a ministry for the Niger Delta had just been announced, government has demonstrated that the bid to solve the problems of the region is not only lip service but a practical demonstration of a firm resolve to blot out the shame that the Niger Delta has constituted to the national psyche and image.

Inaugurating the forty five-member committee in the State House recently, the vice president charged members to ‘ferret out’ any report on the Niger Delta wherever they may exist in order to provide a robust platform for confronting, headlong, the problems of the region and provide a permanent solution.

According to Jonathan, the choice of people from the region into the committee was informed by government’s conviction that the “resolution of the crises in the Niger Delta cannot be done outside the Niger Delta and its people. The Federal Government will support the people of the Niger Delta and all men of goodwill in its efforts to bring smiles to the faces of all citizens that are dependent on the fortunes from the region.”

While challenging members of the committee headed by Ogoni activist, Ledun Mitee, to ‘collate, review and distill the various reports, suggestions and recommenda-tions’ on the Niger Delta that ever existed, the vice president reminded them, “The task before us concerns us all and transcends individual and special interest associations.

Civil platforms

“You were nominated to this Technical Committee by the various state governments and other civil platforms by virtue of the experience you have amassed these many years on the matter of the Niger Delta. I urge you therefore to work in harmony with one another and come out with suggestions that will make the people in the Niger Delta and majority of Nigerians proud.”

Indeed, Nigerians are looking forward to seeing how the work of these forty-five ‘wise men’ would make the country, especially the people of the region, proud. For many, the caliber of people on the committee is such that they have no other choice but to make a difference in the efforts made by various governments in the past to resolve or at least mitigate the problems of the Niger Delta.
In its inaugural meeting, the chairman of the committee gave a kind of road map which sought to reassure Nigerians that there appears to be a light at the end of the dark tunnel which the region has turned to.

For many observers, Mitee’s speech conveyed an impression that perhaps he knows the firm resolve of the government to implement whatever recommendations that might come from the committee. The chairman did not mince words in stating the expectations from the committee members and what government should do with the recommendations of the committee. According to him, “We have received clear indications from the presidency that the committee’s report will definitely not suffer the fate of similar ones in the past.

While we can never provide an absolute assurance as we are not government, but I hope that we can agree on recommendations and monitoring mechanism that give answers to issues that impact on people’s daily lives.”

He added, “It is important to realise that improvement in the prospects of broader economic development in the Niger Delta would necessarily translate into greater opportunities to purchase services and products from the West, East, North and even abroad. Improvement in stability and oil production can, and should, mean a stronger economic base for us to develop as a nation.” With the commencement of work by the Technical Committee, it is obvious that the quest by this administration to tackle the problems of the Niger Delta has reached a point of no return.

As Nigerians and indeed the international community watch with bated breath on how far the government can go in treating this cankerworm, the continued political relevance of the Vice President who is on the driving seat in the whole saga would be dependent on how far government goes in matching its words with action.

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