Fighters with the Movement for the Emancipation of Niger Delta, pictured in 2008. Photograph: Pius Utomi Ekpei/AFP/Getty Images
Last month an email alert warned the headquarters of the local governor at Warri in the Delta state, in Nigeria’s oil-rich south, of an impending bomb attack. Half an hour later, two explosions, one soon after the other, caused injury and confusion.
The attack by the Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta (Mend) was another blow for the central government; it prevented a conference on an amnesty in the delta from being held in the governor’s office.
The amnesty programme had been agreed in June 2009, but was in limbo for several months after the disappearance from public life of President Umaru Yar’Adua. He had attempted to end the oil war, started in 2008 by armed groups on the delta protesting against 50 years’ exploitation of the oil fields without benefits for local people. In the first nine months of 2008, Nigeria lost $20bn in revenue, and hundreds were killed in the delta.
The rebels were winning the economic war. So the government strengthened a Joint Task Force and mounted an offensive against the militia camps in May 2009, while initiating an amnesty process. This led to a ceasefire. But then the president’s health worsened. In his absence, factions started plotting, paralysing the peace process and prompting Mend to pull out of the ceasefire in January.
Last month Goodluck Jonathan took over as acting president. He is an Ijaw, Nigeria’s fourth-largest ethnic group and the majority group in the delta. This is the first such appointment in Nigeria’s recent history, but there is no certainty that even a local man can restore peace to the region.
“No one believed in the [amnesty] programme,” said an observer from an international organisation working in Nigeria. “It was accepted because a lot of money changed hands. The oil companies had been paying. This time the government paid.” Wole Soyinka, winner of the Nobel prize for literature in 1986, said: “The process was a courageous initiative by President Yar’Adua but it was badly organised and poorly conceived.”
A budget of $430m was allocated to the amnesty and 20,000 rebels signed for demobilisation. Several sources claim 6,000 to 8,000 militia, an assessment that takes account of the armed groups’ tendency to hire members of local gangs such as the Icelanders or the Outlaws. The outlay bought a truce, enabling the oil companies to resume at least some activities. Production rose to about 2m barrels a day but the delta was no closer to peace.
Chris Newsom, of the Stakeholder Democracy Network, which has been working here for 10 years, has no illusions: “Money buys peace … but only until tomorrow. What does the law on amnesty offer the militia? Stay home as long as you get paid. It institutes a form of peace racket. And the delta is still in a pitiful state.”
The consensus is that there has been a total lack of transparency in the management of the funds and that the main militia leaders have most of the loot. So they have left the delta creeks and moved into town, forming a Hummer caste. At the same time smaller fry, who took no part in the share-out, have had to mount operations to maintain their visibility. “The more noise they make in the field, the more attention they get at the negotiating table,” Newsom said.
The acting president is trying to find solutions for his region. Kathryn Nwajiaku, a research fellow at Oxford University, said he was “the man of the moment” capable of decisive negotiations on the delta; “an Ijaw in charge of the country is symbolically very powerful”.
Talks with influential delta figures have already started. But for some of the rebel leaders the amnesty is not enough to end the violence. Henry Okah, a Mend leader released as part of the peace process, can see no future in the present negotiations.
“Thousands of rebels are waiting in the creeks. The real ones, not the hoodlums who signed up for the amnesty ... The struggle will resume and it will be tough, very tough. We want the oil firms to leave. We are fighting for the liberation of our region, not for a fistful of dollars.”
The most recent attacks on oil facilities are the work of the Joint Revolutionary Council, which advocates the division of Nigeria: secession. A JRC spokesperson said: “We are not expecting anything from the new government. This man [Jonathan] will only keep his job for a few months and then he’ll go back to his village.”
Kidnapping pays
Piracy off the coast of Nigeria is booming. A French team found there were 40 attacks last year, leading to 27 seizures. “When you look at attacks on the delta, acts of piracy and above all kidnapping are predominant,” said Bertrand Monnet, a specialist in criminal risks.
Sometimes the Niger delta rebels are directly involved. Last week they were behind an attack on a police unit on the Bakassi peninsula, which borders Cameroon, a reliable source reported. The aim was to seize weapons. Similar attacks have targeted banks along the Cameroon coast in recent years.
Monnet says there is “no chance” of piracy in the Gulf reaching the same level off Somalia, where many ports act as bases for the pirates. However, kidnapping flourishes in the Niger delta. Over a study period of nearly a year there were 77 kidnappings, 69 of them successfully concluded, proof of the “professional quality” of the organisations, Monnet said. Last month, kidnappers murdered two Nigerian employees of the national oil company.
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