Following the recent spate of attacks by the Niger Delta Avengers (NDA) this week, destroying 12 oil facilities in 6 days, President Muhammadu Buhari  strongly expressed that the unity of Nigeria was non-negotiable and called for demands otherwise to be drawn.

“I assure them (that) the saying by General Gowon that to keep Nigeria one is a task that must be done. In those days, we never thought of oil, all we were only concerned with was one Nigeria…So please pass this to the militants, that one Nigeria is not negotiable and they had better accept this…The Nigerian Constitution is clear as to what they should get and I assure them there will be justice.” President Buhari said this on Wednesday while addressing guests who visited the Presidential Villa for the Sallah celebration.

Socio-ethnic groups, including the Igbo socio-cultural organisation, the Ohanaeze Ndigbo, and the pan-Yoruba socio-political body, Afenifere, have faulted the position of the President on the unity of the nation. Representatives of the Afenifere body have expressed concerns that the president may not be reading the mood of the country properly, stating that the country has become more divisive under his administration than before. “To continue to insist that the unity is not negotiable is aping that bird which buries its head in the sand and believes, because it is seeing nobody, it has become invisible too,” said Yinka Odumakin, the National Publicity Secretary of Afenifere. Similarly the The President of the Ohanaeze Youth Council, Mazi Okechukwu Isiguzoro, in an interview with The Punch, opined that the principles and structures on the co-existence of the various nationalities that make up the country should be reviewed periodically, because the existing structure in place is not favourable to certain ethnic groups and that those that wish to keep the status quo without negotiation were acting in their self interest and against that of the nation. “We are not calling for secession, but a periodic review of the terms of the country’s unity is necessary for peaceful coexistence, otherwise agitations for separation would continue to grow,” he remarked.

The oneness of Nigeria is “very negotiable” as described by Wole Soyinka in reference to Nigeria’s unity last week. While governments should always show resolve when dealing with acts of terrorism and matters of state security in order to protect its citizens and deter potential extremists, ignoring the root of the agitations and underlying concerns will inevitably precipitate future resistance. The aggravation of those in the Niger Delta is not new phenomenon. Leaders in the in the oil producing part of the region have been crying foul with regards to the negligent pollution and daily oil spills for well over 35 years and little has been done to assuage their strong reservations.

Ken Saro-Wiwa, a Nigerian writer and environmental activist who led a non-violent campaign in the 1980’s and early 1990’s against the extreme environmental damage and years of indiscriminate waste dumping in the Ogoni region of the Niger Delta, was met with frequent threats by the Federal Government authorities and was eventually executed in 1995, following a military tribunal. The movement for the emancipation of delta (MEND), a militant group was formed less than 10 years later and similar to the NDA, they destroyed and vandalised oil facilities severely depleting the production capacity of the nation before it reached an amnesty deal in 2014. So, while the NDA is a relatively new entity, the underlying issues are almost as old as the nation itself and are yet to be adequately addressed.

“This demand is not peculiar to the Niger Delta region but cut across all parts of the country. For Nigeria to make progress President Buhari should dump his old fashioned approach to the unity of Nigeria and face the reality of the present day situation,” the Ijaw Youth Council said in a statement by its spokesman, Eric Omare, on Thursday. President Buhari appears to be treading a similar path to his predecessors in the military regime, even quoting former Head of State, Yakubu Gowon, whose similar stance fuelled the deadliest civil war in Africa to date. The circumstances of Nigeria, today, demands a renegotiation of the current set up of the country that has led to frequent violence and dissent for decades as this is necessary for the future unity and existence of Nigeria. Former American ambassador to Nigeria, John Campbell warned that Nigeria was “dancing on the edge,” and the country may well be tipped over if the underlying problems are not addressed and continue to thrive beneath the surface.

The situation in the Niger Delta represents one of the many disgruntled voices in several regions of the country. The tendency to ignore pertinent issues affecting the lives and in some cases generations of families until said group decides to resort to violence is a precedent that should be a cause for concern for the future stability of the country. In the case of the Niger Delta aggravations, it can be seen that the resistance from the region deteriorated from civil non-violent protests led by Ken Saro-Wiwa to the formation of violent militant groups. When peaceful protests by Biafrans agitating for a state of their own/ a confederate state, end in Military action and in a several cases the killing of unarmed protesters, and the violent attacks by members of the NDA result in several visits from top government officials to the region and invitations to dialogue with the federal government, the wrong message is being delivered. Tacit messages of this sort to the polity do not go unnoticed and risk the uprising of more extremist groups.