TAM DAVID WEST SAYS, NO TO AMNESTY!

One of Icheoku's most favorite son of Niger Delta, Professor Tamuno David-West has told the Northern mullahs to go to hell and stay there until it freezes over? As far as he is concerned, President Umaru Yar'Adua can stuff his amnesty in his you know where, HIS SORRY FULANI GAUNT ARSE! His conclusion, no retreat, no surrender; the Niger Delta must be free of northern arrogance and northern exploitation!

Condemning the ill-advised feudalistic Nigeria federal government’s purported pardon to so called “repentant” militants in the Niger Delta, Professor Tam insisted that such measure will not halt belligerence in the oil-rich region; because the amnesty and the proposed mechanism to drive it would not engender enough trust and confidence in the militants, which are crucial in achieving lasting peace.

Describing the amnesty as vacuous because it failed to address the fundamental issues fuelling the agitation, Professor Tam David-West emphasised the need to internationalize the peace process, to involve all stakeholders including Britain , France and United States as well as their multinational oil companies under the supervision of the United Nations as guarantor for the peace. With such assurance, the militants will come out on their own and there will be a ceasefire for the period of negotiation and any erring side who breaks the agreement, will become the problem of the UN? Such conditionality cannot be guaranteed by the worthless Yar’Adua amnesty. Icheoku agrees with this position which we earlier canvassed in some of our opeds on the Niger Delta crisis. However our reasoning varies with that of the learned professor as we were more interested in securing a lasting deal for the people of the Niger Delta which international clout will ensure, since the northern Nigeria government never keeps its words!

Offering his opinion on President Umaru Yar'Adua, the professor said, Yar'Adua has found himself in a place he did not prepare for. He was foisted on Nigerians by Obasanjo and because of this, he makes a lot of fundamental mistakes. As Machiavelli said in his book, The Prince: “To be well advised, the prince himself should in the first place be wise; but President Umaru Yar'Adua is a tabula rasa, he is blank and receives bad advice. Continuing his salvo on Umaru Yar'Adua, Tam David said, 'here is a man (Yar'Adua) that is split between the morality of the academic and that of the politician, which regrettably does not always go together, such as when he equivocally said, “My election was not free and fair based on his academic morality and at the same time, jumping to enjoy the office based on political convenient morality? Icheoku will like to add, President Umaru Yar'Adua is also deathly sick to figure out anything helpful to Nigeria!

Firing off, the professor said, you do not compel amnesty by fixing a deadline within which it must be accepted, otherwise no deal? According to the professor, this in-built threat will sabotage the offer as no militant will surrender under such a cloud of threat? Also, the amnesty did not address the fundamental issues the militants are fighting for; since you do not cure a disease with mere diagnosis and prognosis. There must be the in-between treatment by medication and therapy where necessary to fully cure a sickness. According to the professor what the Hausa-Fulani North is doing is tantamount to a dress-rehearsal trying to masquerade 'what is for what they would rather is' in their warped minds? There is also the question of trust and confidence-building which has determined the Nigeria central government not worthy of their spoken words based on precedents? It has been all promises and no result hence why trust them again? Icheoku says, if in doubt, ask the Biafrans with the promised three Rs by another blood-sucking northern vampire, Yakubu Gowon!

Professor Tam also berated some very cowardly bastard Niger Delta intellectuals taking contracts in Abuja and selling their birth-rights for such a pittance pot of pottage! However he left the most virulent of his venom for those 'useless Northern leaders and pseudo-intellectuals' who have for so long, looked down on Niger Delta people in their writings and pronouncements over the years? According to the professor, Nigeria does not only need re-branding but has to be psychologically born-again in its relation to the Niger Delta people, for there to be a way forward out of the imbroglio? Continuing, Professor Tam David-West mentioned specifically the example of a very stupid mallam Tanko Yakassai who said Niger Delta people were a nobody and that he would send an army against us? Maitaima Sule too, said we (Niger Delta people) do not exist by his calculation, stating that only three groups of people exist in Nigeria - Hausa/Fulani, Yoruba and Igbo? Siemens bribe-taker, Senator Jibril Aminu, who pretends to be a professor, said that oil had been there ( in Niger Delta) for million of years before the people came there, so technically it is a ruse to say that the oil belong to those people there? According to his crazed-out logic, God put the oil in the Niger Delta as fossils and not as a gift to the people who inhabit the terrain? Stringing Jubril Aminu out for this claim, Professor Tam admonished that Jubril Aminu forgot that there was no Nigeria millions of years ago, that Nigeria just started only in 1914 and hence by extension of his ill-logic, Nigeria, too, cannot claim ownership of the oil either? Vicerating these loony northerners, Professor Tam said were it not for some 'saner and more responsible Northerners' that serve as the glue holding 'us and them' together, may be Nigeria would have since become defunct! It was his position therefore that were oil to have been found in the North and not the Niger Delta, people like Aminu, Maitama Sule, and Yakassai would have broken away from Nigeria a very long time ago! Icheoku says, speak on Professor as you are stating just the fact which many 'cowardly bastards of Nigeria' are too afraid to mouth!

Professor Tam David-West said that it does not matter the outcome of the current military adventurism in the Niger Delta; that even if the North wins the war, they cannot win the peace, which in essence will become a mere Pyrrhic victory; they having built up a groundswell of animosity against themselves. He fired on that they cannot defeat a people fighting a moral battle, notwithstanding the infiltration of some criminal elements therein. He compared the North with Hannibal , the great Carthaginian General who always won his wars but never the peace; before finally being killed by a simple strategy known as the Fabian strategy? Hammering home his chastisement, Professor Tam David-West added, killing the militants will not solve the problem as 'Caesar dead was more powerful than Caesar alive'!