It is doubtful if he can do a soldierly sprint across a hundred metre field without pausing to rest at intervals. When Mujahid Asari Dokubo ambled past State House Correspondents at the Presidential Villa mid-June to take his place as the sole speaker at a press briefing, it was obvious to all he was not in good shape. From the sprightly leader of Ijaw Youth Council in 1998 and then Niger Delta Peoples Volunteer Force six years later, the militant has grown heavy with pounds and pounds of flesh here and there like a heavyweight prize fighter past his prime. But Dokubo still packs a punch which he delivered against the Nigerian military in his now (in)famous accusation that they are behind most of the crude oil theft in the Niger Delta. Michael Jimoh reports…
To those who know a thing or two about press conferences, Mujahid Asari Dokubo’s briefing of State House Correspondents at the Presidential Villa mid-June broke protocol. Neither a government official, party chieftain nor diplomat, Dokubo spoke against a backdrop of the Nigerian Coat of Arms, a privilege usually reserved for senior government officials and high-profile political office holders at such press meets or diplomats visiting the presidency. Also, Dokubo was alone, unaccompanied to the podium by any government or All Progressives Congress party official that day.
Curiously, the briefing itself seemed both an endorsement by President Bola Ahmed Tinubu’s administration and a denial. Tipping the scale at more than 350 pounds, Dokubo’s massive frame couldn’t quite conceal the Coat of Arms behind him. But then, there were no government officials sitting either to his right or left, as such press briefings go. He was alone, giving the vague impression that whatever he had to say (which he must have told PBAT in private anyway) he was pretty much on his own.
And what the former Niger Delta militant had to say was weighty and explosive enough. The military, especially the Army and Navy Dokubo told Nigerians and, by extension, the rest of the world, were complicit in oil theft in his benighted region. Worse still, their inaction and tardiness in genuinely fighting Boko Haram insurgents had compromised the war on terrorism in Nigeria. In other words, the military was not only breaching the Nigerian security wall they were meant to protect but also sabotaging the country’s livelihood by directly attacking its economic base – crude oil theft in the Niger Delta.
“Mr. President has been a father figure to me,” Dokubo began by telling the assembled press corp. “Our relationship spans over 30 years. I came here today to give words of encouragement to the President for the actions and policies so far made in his less than three weeks in governing a very difficult country like Nigeria. We discussed a wide range of issues, especially on security and oil theft in the Niger Delta. My brothers and I assured the President that there will be zero oil theft and vandalisation in the Niger Delta. We are going to work with the NNPCL and the IOCs to make sure that oil theft is brought to zero. I also want to say that oil theft is encouraged by the military.
“The military is at the centre of oil theft and we have to make this very, very clear to the Nigerian public. 99 percent of oil theft can be traced to the Nigerian military, the Army and Navy especially. The Army and the Navy intimidate the Civil Defence who, by status, are supposed to guard these pipelines.”
In his words, the military “receive a lot of money from NNPCL and the IOCs and just across the corner you will see a meter not far from the household, an oil bunkering refinery or tapping directly from oil well. It is very pathetic now. What has happened in the Niger Delta in the past eight years was unprecedented in the history of oil production anywhere in the world. The vandals do not only attack the pipelines, they have migrated from pipeline and gone directly from it.”
That would not be the first time Dokubo would be a guest at the seat of government in Nigeria. Sometime in 2003/ 04 at the height of youth restiveness on account of environmental degradation in the Niger Delta, President Olusegun Obasanjo invited Dokubo and dozens of his co-agitators to the Federal Capital Territory. Nothing much came off the meeting.
The militants went back to the creeks, took up arms and their campaign against the oil companies thus disrupting the cash flow of Nigeria’s main source of external revenue. Some of the militants – including Dokubo – were jailed for their pains. Dokubo was released afterwards.
OBJ’s successor President Umaru Musa Yar’Adua also extended a hand of friendship to the militants after he came to power in 2007. He even negotiated amnesty with reformed militants willing to trade in their guns, bombs and bullets for peace, promising and paying $10m every year for their rehabilitation. But then, Yar’Adua died after only three years in office. The Amnesty programme continued under his successor Goodluck Jonathan himself a native son of the Niger Delta and under whose government the militants never had it so good.
The Muhammadu Buhari administration that succeeded Jonathan’s stopped the Amnesty programme and, once again, the militants were up in arms but not as forcefully as before. Nor did PMB pay much mind to them. At least it is not on record that any of the militants had a direct dealing with PMB’s administration from 2015 – 2023.
But barely a month into PBAT’s government, the most visible leader of the militants was now a guest right in the heart of the seat of government with guns blazing, sort of, from both hips.
The speculation in some circles is that having gotten the ears of PBAT, Dokubo made clear he would repeat the same thing in public if given half the chance. His chance came that mid-June afternoon in Aso Villa and he wasted no time in seizing the opportunity.
The military, Dokubo went on, were not only purloining crude from the Niger Delta but they had also failed in their mission to tackle Boko Haram, banditry and sundry insurgents in the country. Delivering a spiel worthy of a self-serving salesman and at the expense of the military, Dokubo insisted that “there is a full-scale war going on…the blackmail of the Nigerian state by the Nigerian military is shameful. They said they do not have enough armament and people listened to this false narrative. They are lying. They are liars. I repeat they are liars because I am a participant. I am a participant in this war…We have lost so many men and in all these engagements, we don’t even have one percent of the armament deployed by the Nigerian military; one percent, and we have had resounding success. So, this blackmail must end. They have enough resources to fight. Instead of fighting, they are busy stealing.”
The rules of engagement between the military in Nigeria and the civilian populace is nearly always one-sided and we know who most times carries the big stick or gun, if you like. Even politicians who appoint service chiefs dread them for the simple reason that the men in khaki can, on a whim, edge them out from power. Now, here was this ‘bloody civilian’ talking down the military like no Nigerian has done before and without apologies.
Commenting on the Dokubo press briefing in the Presidency, Lasisi Olagunju wrote in his column in the Nigerian Tribune of June 20 headlined “Asari Dokubo in Aso Rock Villa.”
“I watched Niger Delta chief militant Asari Dokubo,” Olagunju began, “addressing the press inside the Presidential Villa, Abuja, on Friday after his meeting with President Bola Tinubu. He exuded the very awe of power as he waxed lyrical boasting brazenly of his efficiency as a protection entrepreneur. The man sat with absolute confidence; directly behind him was Nigeria’s national Coat of Arms, the solemn symbol of the authority of the government and of the sovereignty of the Nigerian State. Only the president, and, maybe, the vice president are statutorily allowed that privilege in that complex. But the militant enjoyed it on Friday and nothing happened. That is what you do when you think you have the king behind you. Everyone and everything, including the law, rose to meet this big man at our seat of government.
“Dokubo spoke not like a sovereign but as a sovereign. He sells security and the Nigerian Armed Forces are his competitors. At the press conference, the man maximally used the hallowed grounds of the State House to advertise his business and do a very negative review of the ‘enemy’ and their operations. He attacked the Nigerian Armed Forces using the very visible platform of their Commander-in-Chief. He said our forces and their men were felons who would rather steal than protect what they were employed to guard. Then he adroitly advertised his protection business and rammed its ‘efficiency’ down the throat of a terrorized nation. The big man from the creeks announced that he was in charge of security from our Federal Capital, Abuja to one, two, three, four, five, six states of the country.”
Most worrisome to Olagunju was the vapid response from the military following Dokubo’s accusation. “I have read the very tepid responses from the Army and the Navy. They both denied being thieves. One said their accuser should name names; another took a politically safe lane and merely listed its achievements in curtailing crude oil theft. The replies were not as they would be if the accuser were an ordinary foul-mouthed lout. But this one was a presidential guest who had just enjoyed a photo op with the Commander-in-Chief.”
Born on June I 1964 Buguma in Rivers state to a father who was a judge, he was christened Melford Dokubo Goodhead Jr. and was meant to follow in his father’s law profession. So, he enrolled as a law undergrad at University of Calabar but found it punishing. He dropped out without much ado in 1990. Next was Rivers State University of Technology Port Harcourt which he also quit. Activism will become the main focus of his life from then on.
What might have been if the beefy Niger Delta militant known to Nigerians as Mujahid Asari Dokubo was born in Ekiti and not in Rivers state? Anthropologists say two things shape individuals: nature and nurture, that is the environment you are born in and the circumstances of one’s birth.
Asari Dokubo would most probably have been a professor of Law if his provenance had been in the southwestern state where each household is reputed to have one or two people in academia up to professorial level. But sired in the oil-rich Niger Delta with companies fouling both human life and natural habitat, a life of activism would most certainly have seemed much nobler in the minds of young people like Dokubo.
Though born into a Christian household Dokubo soon took up the Islamic faith thus the moniker Mujahid and even his sartorial preference reminiscent of tribal war leaders in the mountain ranges of Afghanistan although they are much wiry. He is not averse to brandishing AK-47s as those Asian Mujahideens are wont to now and then.
Depending on the perspective you view the Mujahideens or people like Dokubo from the Niger Delta – as freedom fighters or terrorists – sometimes governments do engage them in talks for the public good and peace. “In other to move things forward you have to talk to terrorists,” Marjorie “Mo” Mowlan, onetime Secretary of Northern Ireland said in a TIME profile of people who changed the world in 1998. “I know that their victims find this very, very hard, but it is the only way.”
OBJ and his successor Yar’Adua knew that well and so engaged the Niger Delta fighters which finally culminated in the Amnesty programme which brought relative peace to the previously combustible region. Jonathan continued the programme but Buhari scrapped it. Now with oil theft rising by the day, is PBAT hoping for the same results as his predecessors minus one?
The answer is anyone’s guess.
About the Author
Michael Jimoh is a Nigerian journalist with many years experience in print media. He is currently a Special Correspondent with THEWILL.
