Militant Escalation in Nigeria
Video Transcript:
Video Transcript:
The leader of the Niger Delta People's Volunteer Force has threatened war on northern Nigeria and the Islamist militant group Boko Haram should President Goodluck Jonathan be attacked. The threat does not mean a declaration of imminent war between the north and the south. However, it reveals the deep tensions in Nigeria and spell more lasting trouble for the oil-producing country.
Mujahid Dokubo-Asari issued the threat from the capital, Abuja, where he has resided in part during the government's Niger Delta Amnesty Program. Asari's home base is Port Harcourt, the hub of Nigeria's oil-producing region, and the militant leader enjoys support from regional politicians and grassroots activists for his charismatic defense of the region's socio-economic grievances.
During his group's height in the mid- to late-2000s, Asari commanded an armed militia consisting of a few thousand supporters of his ethnic Ijaw Youth Council. Operating alongside the Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta, Asari's band of militia destabilized the oil-producing region to the extent that upward of 800,000 barrels per day of oil production were taken offline due to pipeline sabotage and other attacks.
Tensions in the Niger Delta have been moderated as a result of President Goodluck Jonathan, who like Asari is an ethnic Ijaw from the region, giving the region's elite prominence and influence over national political and economic decision-making. But Jonathan's gains for the Niger Delta from occupying the presidency have meant a loss to others, notably northern elites who had held the presidency under Umaru Yaradua, who died of natural causes in 2010. Jonathan, then vice president, succeeded Yaradua, and while this succession complied with Nigeria's formal constitution, it upset an internal power-sharing agreement that would have seen Yaradua represent the presidency on behalf of northern interests until the 2015 national elections. The relative loss of power in northern Nigeria has inflamed tensions to the extent that Boko Haram and the other Islamist militant group, Ansaru, carry out attacks on northern Nigerian soft targets almost every other day. Though these groups don't have the capability to spread beyond the north, their insurgency is intended to wear down the Jonathan government in hopes of extracting political concessions.
Niger Delta militant groups and northern Nigerian militant groups have similar agendas: to act as tools for political patrons battling to claim national prominence. The militants have a degree of freedom to maneuver and conduct their operations, which have largely been constrained to their home regions. They each aim to make their home regions ungovernable and with a high price to resolve. Conducting terrorist attacks against civilians is the primary tactic used in northern Nigeria, while conducting attacks against energy infrastructure including pipelines, personnel and shipping is the tactic in the Niger Delta. Because national elections in Nigeria are not going to be held for another two full years, there is little room to negotiate accommodation in the short term, given the ultimate objective of securing political office. It is premature at this point for either Jonathan or his political opponents in northern Nigeria to concede one's campaign and become a lame-duck politician with no influence. Militant operations, in the Niger Delta and in northern regions, must still be waged before political factions yield to appeasement.
