Last Monday, former head of state, General Muhammadu Buhari, brought an interesting perspective to the issue of terrorism in the North-east. Speaking on the theme, ‘Unemployment and the crisis of governance in Nigeria’ at a forum organised by the Progressive Governors Forum in Ibadan, Buhari linked the rise of terror in the North-east to the drying up of the Lake Chad and consequent loss of livelihoods and commercial activity that had sustained life in the basin for decades.
A closer look at Buhari’s analysis indicates that the retired general (who ought to know a thing or two about the area, having served a military governor of the states now comprising Borno, Yobe, Bauchi and Gombe) has a strong argument. His position is also strengthened by the fact that as a serving general, Buhari it was, that led a Nigerian Army expedition that cleared marauding foreign bandits from Nigeria and chased them deep into Chadian territory.
Explaining his position further, Buhari told the audience that he’d once come across an old copy of the National Geographic magazine where he read an article which predicted that Lake Chad was going to decline and possibly varnish within a few decades if nothing was done to halt and reverse the trend. Buhari said he had drawn the attention of then head of state, Olusegun Obasanjo, to the report, but nothing had come out of his alert.
According to Buhari, it was on record that in the recent past, no less than 100 trucks carrying all sorts of merchandise drove into Maiduguri daily from other parts of Nigeria, while another 100 trucks drove out, carrying assorted fish, cattle and other goods to other parts of the country and beyond. Today, that trade which employed about 2 million Nigerians is practically dead, plunging millions of people into poverty and destitution.
Applying Buhari’s argument to the Niger Delta, it can be argued that the environmental pollution caused by international oil companies over the decades since oil exploration and production began in Nigeria played a role in the emergence of what eventually became known as Niger Delta militants. If random killings, kidnappings and bombing of public properties and institutions are the hallmarks of terrorists, then the Niger Delta militants were (perhaps are) also terrorists, though it is politically expedient to pass them off as ‘militants’.
The armed and violent nature of the struggle by the Niger Delta militants was probably a reaction to lessons learnt from earlier struggle for environmental protection led by late activist, Ken Saro-Wiwa, who led the Movement for the Survival of the Ogoni People (MOSOP). Unfortunately for Ken, he ran into the unflinching and uncompromising then head of state, Gen Sani Abacha, who promptly had him hanged despite pleas from local and international figures.
That brutal act kept the creeks quiet for a while until the return of partisan politics in 1999 when politicians began to arm young men for political ends. By the way, the similarity between politicians who armed Niger Delta militants in the creeks and in their Northern counterparts who also armed ‘ECOMOG’, the band that metamorphosed into Boko Haram in the North East for political gains should not be overlooked.
Incidentally, President Goodluck Jonathan plans to spend more on militants than on Nigeria’s armed forces in this year’s budget. According to the budgetary proposals submitted by the president, N63 billion will be spent to cover the stipends and allowances of 30,000 Niger Delta Militants, reintegration of transformed ex-militants and the Amnesty Programme operational costs, but the total capital budget allocated to the Nigeria Army, Navy, Air Force and Police formations is N45 billion.
At any rate, to return to the connection between environmental degradation and the loss of livelihoods on the one hand, and the rise and growth of terrorism on the other, it may be disingenuous to lay the blame for the rise of Boko Haram totally on the disappearance of Lake Chad, and to be fair to Buhari, he never made that assertion. However, Buhari’s analogy and the state of the lake points to strong linkages between the near disappearance of Lake Chad and the seemingly intractable wave of terrorism in the North-east.
The Lake Chad is the most significant body of water in the North-east and is central to social and economic activity in the region, supporting about 22 million people, 15 million of which are Nigerians. It is crucial to farmers, fishermen and herdsmen and is an essential component of the region’s ecological balance. However, the lake has been in retreat for several decades with little or no action to reverse the trend. What began as a gradual decline in water levels has accelerated to being one of the most devastating environmental catastrophes in recent times and certainly the most destructive in Nigeria.
