Immediately after the April elections, government officials sounded optimistic about significant early improvement in the Niger Delta. Instead, the intervening months have seen increasingly incendiary threats from MEND and continued volatility in the creeks. On 1 December, at the closing ceremony of the army’s largest combat training program, “Exercise Eagle Ring 5”, Defence Minister Yayale Ahmed expressed concern that despite government efforts toward ending unrest in the Niger Delta, the situation remains a threat to national security, “as militants are still busy carrying out their operations”.
The Yar’Adua administration has taken the first tentative steps toward confronting the region’s problems but these have to be deepened and sustained. Improving security and building peace in the Delta requires not more rhetoric but determined efforts by government, oil companies, international development agencies and the people of the region alike. The government must go beyond seemingly interminable consultations and quickly come to grips with the core issues that have defined the conflicts in the region for over two decades. If it wastes the present opportunity, worse violence and lawlessness is highly likely.
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