Immediate-past governor of Delta State, Dr. Emmanuel Uduaghan has described how he risked his life in the creeks meeting with ex-militants while fighting for peace in the Niger Delta region when he was governor.
He narrated that on more than one occasion, he had to go into the creeks, and that on one of such trips he was almost shot by a soldier.
Uduaghan who spoke recently during a media chat on Warri where he informed newsmen that he wants to represent Delta South Senatorial District at the Senate in 2019, said it is his desire to pursue legislation that will lead to the end of the crisis in the Niger Delta region.
He said, “I was commissioner for four years under Chief James Ibori and I was close to him. I knew what he was doing in terms of peace issues. I was the first state government official to enter into creeks to meet ex-militant Chief, Government Ekpemupolo alias Tompolo in the heart of the Niger Delta as SSG to start negotiating peace with him. I did it severally when I was the governor of Delta State. At one of the outings, it was even the soldiers that pointed AK-47 at me when I was coming back.
“Sometimes, I would come back at night from negotiating peace, so I know the place in and out. I have been there in the day and at night, in fact, at one of them, I was sitting on a chair with about 20 of the boys with their guns, they were drinking, and we were there for three hours negotiating peace. I know the challenges”, he said.
let me just say this, what we did and what the government has been doing is having what I call two boxes in managing the problems,” he explained.
The former governor said the first was that of engagement, as he used his influence then to mobilize religious leaders, traditional rulers and the youths to engage the boys in the creek in dialogue.
According to him, he would have vied for the Senate in 2015, but he “decided to step down”, for the sake of peace to reign in the state, but “looking at the horizon now, the issues that caused the security challenges that made me to shelve my ambition in 2015 are no longer there.”
He said he would soon officially declare his intention to contest the senatorial seat, even as he argued, that the military, as an enforcement body was not a permanent solution to the problems in the Niger Delta as they were not very familiar with the terrain, “so, when the thing is really happening, it requires mobilizing the young people to show them the terrain or to prevent the crisis”, he stated.
He lamented that “We still have the Niger Delta Avengers bursting pipelines; sometimes, we have those hijacking boats and sometimes ethnic quarrels”.
“For us to move forward, we must have an enforcement body that includes the community; especially the youths in the community, since they know the terrain. It is easier for people in that area to try and carry out enforcement or execute security challenges; it is easier for people in that area to know those who are involved in illegal bunkering. There are two parts to it, there is the part of genuine agitation, which has now been mixed with criminality and the criminality seems to have overshadowed the genuine agitation.
“To deal with it, we need the local people to be involved in the security arrangement and that will require legislation. The Waterway Security Committee I put up for instance, there is no law backing it up, so we need to put up laws that will help us in moving forward in solving the Niger Delta crisis.”
The Itsekiri-born politician added that there were lots of projects abandoned in the Niger Delta, and specific laws were needed to revamp these projects. If there were previous laws, he said, there was the need to bring them out and tailor them to meet what is happening in the Niger Delta.
He lamented that since the crises in the Niger Delta, nobody has been prosecuted or brought to book.
“Nobody has been prosecuted so far. First of all, you cannot catch them and the people that are supposed to catch them don’t know how to catch them. I am going there to put up an enforcement body of people who know them and can get them and take them to court. If we are not serious of law and order in the Niger Delta, we will continue to have crisis.
