“Buhari’s Biggest Mistake is to Crack Down on Niger Delta Avengers” -Femi Fani Kayode
On 29th July 2016 CNN reported that “the Nigerian government is preparing troops for a crackdown in the Niger Delta if peace talks fail”.
This is sad and ominous. As United States Senator Ted Cruz once said “the light of truth is stronger than the terror of darkness”.
It follows that the biggest mistake that the Buhari administtation can possibly make is to attempt to “crack down” on the Niger Delta and kill innocent civilians.
If this ever happens, for whatever reason, it will set off a chain of events that will lead to the end of Nigeria as we know it.
Nigeria will disintegrate before Buhari’s very eyes if any more innocent blood is shed and if the towns, creeks and villages of the oil-producing states are shelled and reduced to rubble.
The cause of the people of the Niger Delta, and indeed that of the Igbo people of the eastern states, is just and their struggles and aspirations are legitimate and reasonable.
Self-detetmination is a right. It is a concept and principle that is universally accepted and that has the backing of international law.
You do not threaten and bomb those that seek to exercise that right: you treat them with respect, decency and decorum and attempt to persuade them to stay.
This is a point that is lost on President Buhari and those around him. The Avengers are not Boko Haram: taking them on in the field of battle would be a monuemental error.