Focus on Bayelsa emergency

Success or failure of government efforts to pacify and develop the Niger Delta will depend largely on the behaviour of police and soldiers sent to restore order in Bayelsa State, a local analyst told IRIN on Thursday. “If they are civil it will help reduce tension,” Ukowa Ukiwe, director for the Centre Advanced Social Sciences in Port Harcourt, said. Federal troops, under command of state Governor Diepreye Alamieyeseigha, rolled into the fishing village of Odi at the weekend, scene of the killing of 12 policemen early this month by irate youths from the community. On 10 November, President Olusegun Obasanjo warned he might impose a state of emergency in the area if the trouble was not abated and the killers arrested. Soldiers have closed access to Odi and sealed off the roads between Bayesla and Rivers states, and between Bayelsa and Delta states. This, Ukiwe said, was forcing travellers to detour though Imo and Anambra states before crossing the Niger River. The public, he added, must now rely on community leaders and state officials for information on events in the restricted. At this time, little information is emerging from Odi and officials of the Nigerian Army Public Relations Office could not be reached for comment on the situation. “My worry is that there is no independent monitor to tell us of the situation,” Ukiwe said, adding that the media had been denied access to the village. However, he said it was unlikely that there would be fighting between the state’s residents and soldiers because of past experience in resisting troops. The start of road construction in Yenagoa, the Bayelsa capital, is long overdue but falls far short of development targets, the director for the Centre for Responsive Politics in Port Harcourt, Nimi Walson-Jack, told IRIN. Three roads designed since the first post-independence government of Alhaji Tafawa Belewa in the 1960 have never been built and, Walson-Jack added, there has been no improvement of the state capital despite the existence of a master development plan. Government, he said, need not wait for the passage of the the Niger Delta Development bill before beginning to build the entire Delta, which produce upward 90 percent of the country’s foreign earnings. Walson-Jack suggests the immediate convening of a conference on development for the Delta and the establishment of a technical team to produce the master plan. “There must be a blueprint for development of the Delta,” he said. Although Defence Minister Theophilus Danjuma said on Thursday the military would be withdrawn after the police killers are caught, Walson-Jack maintained soldiers should be removed immediately and the police given charge. Thereafter, the entire police force needs to be equipped, armed and well trained for duties across the country. “It is a shame that a civilian government, after six months in office, must rely on the military,” Walson-Jack said.