– Speaker Konbowei Benson of the Bayelsa state House of Assembly reveals the entire issues surrounding militancy in the Niger Delta region– The speaker also speaks on the many challenges facing his state and heaps the blame on all the arms of government– He tells the federal government that confronting the militants will never resolve the crisis in the Niger Delta and gives possible solutions– Reveals how how he indirectly became a victim of kidnapping in his own state and how, as a politician, he is endangeredIt is not often easy getting a speaker in Nigeria to answer questions for long. However, this was not so with the speaker of the Bayelsa state House of Assembly, Konbowei Benson. His state, which produced immediate past President Goodluck Jonathan, is considered one of the most volatile in the country because of militant activities. In this interview with Eromosele Ebhomele back in Mauritius, the speaker dissects the problem of Bayelsa, how he also became a victim of militancy and what the government must do to calm frayed nervesSpeaker of Bayelsa state House of Assembly, Konbowei BensonWhat have you been able to gather from the CPA conference?I want to sincerely thank the executives of the CPA. They have always been an encouragement to the legislative houses from the various commonwealth countries. By the grace of God, I have participated in several meetings acrossvarious areas. And for this particular meeting, the issues that were brought up for discussion includes women and gender as well as the participation of women in politics and other appointments. Quite frankly, it has not been that encouraging in the African region because the issue of women emancipation,though it has always become a global issue, has not been well attended to because of certain factors that were raised, like religion, education and other tribal indicators are very much on the disfavouring end for the women.Again, a second issue was raised on water and sanitation. Looking at the Nigerian concept, a lot of cities and even the rural settings are always affected by this lack of pure or accessible water and so it is actually a point of challenge and I don’t really know where we got it wrong and how we will continue to get it right to ensure that we provide portable drinking water for our citizenry because it contributes largely to the health system of our people. If you have a very poor water condition, that goes to mean that your health is affected because water forms about 75 percent of the human body. So the existence of the human body is dependent on what you are taking in toyourself. If we are not provided with this basic need, how then would the people live and how long would they last on earth?In recent times, it has been observed that our people fall sick of various ailments and solutions to those ailments are very few and the reason, perhaps, may not be far-fetched. It is related to lack of good water and others. Whether or not the World Health Organisation has said something about our sanitation, within us, we know how poor it is. Our environments areso deplorable and nobody is taking care of which environment he lives in or come from. So there should be a kind of legislation that would be able to discourage this.READ ALSO: Opinion: The waste and corruption militants need to knowAgain, the mindset of the people, their attitude towards this legislation is another issue. We have made laws in the past, but these laws are not attended to, they are ignored, rejected. People see the laws as not effective. But the attitude towards these laws is what will change the environments where we live. These are some of the things we will take back home and consider.Who do we blame for Nigeria’s woes?From where our dissections come from. You know, from when we were given independence and then the operatives of the independence, the struggle for regions and the attendant issues and of the civil war and the post civil war period when we were managing and struggling to identify with what we are supposed to have and don’t have and all of that. We have just come out of a leadership struggle, particularly the military which took over power for so long. So the area, actually, to blame in Nigeria is leadership, not only at the federal level, but state and local government levels.We must admit that those advancing to take over power or leadership must know what to do, what they are driving at and what they intend to give to their people. That is what we are lacking. It is not all about going to obtain a position to enrich yourself or your immediate family. If you are giving a contract to somebody, what do you intend to achieve at the end of the day? When we are campaigning, we come up with lofty ideas but implementation becomes lacking. It is a major problem.Your state is considered the smallest in Nigeria and there is belief that you make a lot of money, especially from revenue, 13 percent derivation and others. However, the state has very little to show for it. What do you say to this? Any defence?To defend my state, Bayelsa, I would say that from inception, I have been around the state even though I had not participated at the early stage. At some point, I started participating. By the grace of God, the era that ushered us to where we are, that is the 1999 democratic era, had quite a lot of challenges because Bayelsa state was seen as a place of nothing, that is a place with virtually nothing. There was no road, no infrastructure of any kind, no housing, no electricity, no water. Everything was just flat, yet it was the revenue-generating state of the federation.READ ALSO: Militants tells residents to vacate oil facilitiesSo, for us to attend to all of these issues at a time became a major challenge because where you don’t have any foundation for electricity, good water, education, good roads and this almost became an impossibility. Yes, people say much was going in there, but no matter what you put it into, it was so insignificant. Our deltaic situation did not also help in the management of ourdevelopment. For you to construct a road of about 10 kilometres, you would be spending billions of naira. And so, you would hearing how much comes into the state, but what is going to infrastructure, is so much and in the eyes of people, it is nothing to go by.It is not like I am defending the chief executives because there are a lot of lopsidedness, a lot of wastages that also were made in both 1999 being the first dispensation headed by DSP Alamieyeseigha, and other governments that had come, particularly the government just before the current one that we have now. A lot of wastages were experienced, a lot of borrowings were done. Right now, we are indebted so much to the World Bank which we are still managing to pay. Every month, we pay out N1.2 billion even at this time of our economic challenge.So much is heard about how much is coming into the state, but poor management of resources has also been affecting the state. Thank God for this present governor, a lot has been taken directly to affect the needs of people. I give him kudos for it. That is why some of us have been so much out backing him up to ensure that he drags and directs the people to the rightpart.The speaker and other members of the House with Governor Seriake Dickson, the state governor, during an engagementI’ve not been to your state, but from what we hear about it, there is the general impression that the whole place is burning as a result of militant activities. But you don’t look tensed…Well, the issue about insecurity in the state is not far-fetched from what I have earlier said. You provide and contribute so much to the centre, but the attention you get is so small. Apart from the 13 percent derivation which, perhaps, anybody would see as the basis for which we are even existing, every other indices is zero. We have only three or four local governments, perhaps the headquarters, that are accessible to motorable roads; all the other four local governments which make up the hub of the state where the oil revenue is derived from are cut off from the mainstream of events.READ ALSO: Some important questions militants need to considerIn where I come from, for over 50 years of independence and the 100 years ofNigeria’s existence, I have no road to even my local government headquarter.So what are we talking about? How do you develop and how would your people be well informed? There people, who, over the decades, have not seen a vehicle, not even a motorcycle, until they leave this world. So what should such a people be thinking and doing? We are more still like in the primitive days because doctors are not there in our communities, we don’t have good water, we don’t have light, we don’t have roads. So what do you expect from these people?It is always a song of revolution. Everybody is saying: “let us die with these people since they refused to provide these things for us. Why are they comingto our environment?”That is why whether oil discovery is a blessing or a curse is not known to the people. In fact, what we see ourselves back home is that people have invadedour environment without making any effort to develop the same environment where the golden egg is being laid. So what do you think of an uneducated mind?And for you to have left a people for so long, if you now manage to educate him, you have only gone to arouse his mind and open his eyes. These ex-militants, when they would learn, you would be surprise about their performances. But the situation is now like the nationalist movement that led to our independence. When they were taken abroad and they returned, they started asking for independence and writing in the magazines and establishing newspapers. They started agitating. That is what is happening now concerning the agitation. After training them, there is another challenge, another area of study concerning how you can absorb these people into areas of meaningful use.So would you say that going violent against the agitators is not the solution?Going violent against those agitators means that you don’t appreciate what the people are saying. And to be very frank, nobody seems to appreciate the environment where we come from, nobody seems to listen to what people aresaying, nobody seems to actually picture what these people are suffering. All the time, what we get as feedback is: “Destroy them. Kill them.”READ ALSO: Four soldiers drown in Bayelsa stateIf you kill a people who are asking for reasonable provisions of basic amenities in their area based, perhaps, on what you are collecting from them and are enjoying, other people would still come, our children would still come up experiencing the same darkness and lack of water, experiencing no infrastructure. What would they do? After some time, they would carry on with the same type of agitation.Boro started it, some other people supported him. And then Ken Saro-Wiwa came. What was he clamouring for? “Give us a better living environment. Clean up our environment that you have degraded, train our people. And that has gone to mean committing an offence. That is why many times we ask: “Where did we go wrong by asking for a proper placement, a fair treatment?”In return, what we usually get is: “Kill them, who are they, how many are they? Go and clean up the place.” And then they forcefully enter. Yes, it is truethat you cannot carry arms against the government, but when you are pushed to the wall sometimes, you become a mad man in the midst of nothing.I spoke with Ledum Mitee sometime ago and he said giving stipends to repentant militants should not be seen as an end, but that what should be permanent is the actuality to develop the area…Yes, to meet the needs of the people, create an environment for absorption and for people to participate and also believe that you are part of the general society. That is it. If elsewhere, factories are built and manufacturing companies are built, then what about our area? What concerted efforts are made to ensure that these factories are also built?Sometimes, we are made to even suggest to our multinational companies: “You are operating in our environments, but we don’t even see you and your offices in our regions. So if we have an immediate problem, who do we go to and how do we access you? We have to travel for days. In the course of travelling to you, a lot of things could have happened. Who would provide the resources to even go around looking for them? We are not seen around governmental activities. We are also not seen around multinational activities.And so, each time they see the multinationals, they conclude that these are our enemies instead of friends in progress. We now see government officials as enemies of progress. That is why some of us who are now in government have also become enemies of the people. Like in the days of slavery, they now see us as those joining hands with those people who are oppressing the them. We have thus become a sight-and-shoot members of the militant groups and so we are kidnapped now and then. My younger brother was kidnapped, my mother was kidnapped, my mother-in-law was kidnapped andin the process, her hand was broken which led to her death.READ ALSO: Married women now prostitute to feed families – EgberongbeIf I want to go to the village right now, I have to prepare so much with security apparatus so I can go successfully and come back. It is not as if the people are not friendly, but we have been subjected to a kind of condition thatthe people see us no longer as friend. For us to pacify that, there has to be an aggressive educational system. That is why this governor had to go into every village providing the infrastructure for education. It is only when peopleare educated and informed that they do not need to carry arms. They need education to be able to compete with the larger society. That is when they would be able to come out as well-behaved persons. Like as I am here, I won’t go to carry arms against government or anybody because I was early informed of the need to participate in society as a good citizen. That is what is lacking in our environment.We are calling on everybody, the government, the multinational companies and the international community to actually see the need to develop the people both intellectually and otherwise. Then, the problem can be minimised.I think there should be a continuous effort by people like you and your state governor to cause the federal government to develop the state and the Niger Delta region…I see that happening, but I don’t know how we are going to do this. I, for one, have the passion to see that we are not just silent over certain areas. But quite frankly, taking a matter up with the federal government is always not just an easy thing. I know the media and other supporting agencies can join us to push our way through. We need a lot of collaborative efforts in this regard.
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