Reformed militant and leader of Niger Delta Peoples Volunteer Force (NDPVF), Mujahid Dokubo-Asari, did not only lose his fear factor when he traded his guns and grenades for government contracts, he has since become the butt of jokes for his actions and utterances.
Recent images of him leading an anti-Bring Back Our Girls protest are the stuff cartoons are made of.
Bearing placards with inscriptions such as “There are no girls to bring back”, “Chibok kidnap is a northern political agenda” and “Chibok scam…no parents…no pictures…no girls”, Dokubo is shouting at the top of his voice that the reports of more than 200 schoolgirls abducted from school dormitories by Boko Haram is a fraud engineered by Northern elements.
“Can we use our brains instead of allowing others use them?” he added in a message posted on Facebook.
Unlike in the past when he led a dreaded army of young men who pulled the trigger before seeking to know “who goes there”, the former Ijaw Youth Council (IYC) president could only mobilise for his latest enterprise a handful of people who looked like they would rather be engaged in something more rewarding.
Gone are the days of submachine guns and explosive devices; Dokubo-Asari, born Melford Dokubo Goodhead Jr, is now a hashtag activist.
That is what happens when you trade the mosquito-infested and brackish waters of the creeks for five-star hotel accommodation.
Asari is not the first person to dismiss as a scam the tragic abduction of female students from Chibok, a remote village in Borno State. Many in the corridors of power also quashed it as another ploy by desperate elements to discredit President Goodluck Jonathan and portray him as a Commander-in-Chief with no clue about how to deal with the full-blown terrorist activists in the North East.
If there are people in government circles who still think the Chibok abduction is fake or masterminded by enemies of the state to make Abuja look back, they have since seen the wisdom in keeping quiet – publicly at least. With all eyes on Nigeria, the government can no longer live in denial even if freeloaders tells us that all is well.
Dokubo-Asari, who was interrogated by the Department of State Security (DSSS) earlier this year over threats that Nigeria would be made ungovernable unless Jonathan secures a second term in 2015, is not the kind of cheerleader Mr President needs right now.
Whatever the federal government pays former militants to maintain peace in the Niger Delta should not go into people’s heads.
The Wall Street Journal disclosed in 2012 that $9 million was paid to Asari in 2011 for his 4,000 foot soldiers to protect oil pipelines. Two other repentant militants, Ebikabowei Boyloaf Victor Ben and Ateke Tom, got $3.8 million each.
The man with the lion share is Government “Tompolo” Ekpumopolo with $22.9 million. But while others manage to stay out of the public, Dokubo cannot seem to stop hugging the limelight.
Born in 1964 to a middle class Christian family headed by a court judge, Dokubo-Asari fighter” received primary and secondary education in Port Harcourt.
He dropped out of the University of Calabar because of problems with the school authority. An account of his life says he later studied guerrilla warfare in Libya.
After receiving what proved to be take-off grants from politicians, Dokubo-Asari built an army with an arsenal that could rival that of some African countries. From breaking pipelines to stealing petroleum products, they moved to illegal refining of crude oil.
While he did not succeed in his attempts at holding an elective office, he got money from politicians who wanted a share of the illicit oil trade.
As such trades go; Dokubo-Asari and his men soon launched full a scale war on oil installations in the Niger Delta. Some of his sponsors later withdrew their backing and transferred it to Ateke Tom’s Niger Delta Vigilante (NDV). Both men were arrested by former President Olusegun Obasanjo and released in 2007 by the late President Umaru Yar’Adua.
One of the major programmes of the Yar’Adua administration was an amnesty for militants who surrendered in 2009. Yar’Adua did not live long enough to see what became of the amnesty but his Deputy and Niger Delta man, Jonathan, has been calling the shots since 2010.
While the fortunes of the region have not matched its status as the chief producer of Nigeria’s foreign exchange, those of the former militants have.
Taking a cue from what Yar’Adua did with Asari and his cohorts, Jonathan has also reached out to Boko Haram insurgents to lay down their arms and embrace peace.
The current scourge, which began in Borno in 2009, has dwarfed the havoc wreaked by Niger Delta militants. In a show of desperation over pride, Nigeria has called for and is receiving help from the United States, United Kingdom, France, China and Israel.
Jonathan, the kinsman of Dokubo-Asari (whose re-election Dokubo-Asari has sworn to campaign for with the last drop of his blood), has publicly admitted that schoolgirls were kidnapped in Chibok.
It is callous to wave the destruction of lives, dreams and property going on in the North as a scam.
