Lifting peril, desperately and eloquently: A review
It is thus germane that public discourse, open dialogue in every, and all forms, summits and workshops, must subsist, even as official action on the Niger Delta Regional Development Master Plan for the region, progresses. This is why the recent book, titled Lifting the Peril: A Root Cause Resolution of the Niger Delta Crisis authored […]
It is thus germane that public discourse, open dialogue in every, and all forms, summits and workshops, must subsist, even as official action on the Niger Delta Regional Development Master Plan for the region, progresses. This is why the recent book, titled Lifting the Peril: A Root Cause Resolution of the Niger Delta Crisis authored by a petro-chemical engineer and a rare breed politician, the immediate past Deputy Governor of one of the more visibly progressive littoral States, Akwa Ibom, Patrick Ekpotu and published by the National Institute for Policy and Strategic Studies, is a fresh and welcome intellectual addition to the discourse corpus of the Niger Delta phenomenon. The author lifts his gaze beyond the common approach of seeking resolution of the crisis only from government circles. In a passionate, lucid and fluent prose, enhanced by uncommon courage and analytical, scientific prescription, the book broadens the horizon of discourse on our national development aspirations, sustainable growth, national security and the erection of the fundaments of enduring peace in the Niger Delta region and the nation at large.
Fresh from the oven and awaiting public presentation by a combined enterprise of the publisher (the National Institute, Kuru) and the author, the book has received several mouth-watering comments from individuals of un-ignorable, coveted and sought-after opinions. In their various styles and rhetorical formats, the proffered opinions appear single-minded. They identify and applaud the objectivity of the author’s approach to a subject in which he is a ‘victim’— as a Niger Deltan and political leader. They define his ‘immense political courage’ in delineating and analysing the issues thrown up by the Niger Delta crisis and its accompanying social and humanistic trauma. For a leading instance, Professor Eze Chukwuemeka Ike, a first-generation Nigerian creative writer, praised the author’s deployment of his ‘experience and eagle-eyed vantage position as a respected Deputy Governor of Akwa Ibom State,’ to examine with dispassion, ‘the malaise that has plagued’ the Niger Delta region of ‘his beloved nation, its economic exploitation, environmental degradation, flagrant abuse of fundamental human rights, criminal neglect, ‘etc. His rating of the book is superlative when he says that the book ‘should change the tempo and focus of discourse on the Niger Delta, a region in which criminal kidnappings and other heinous crimes are now masked as militancy and agitation for resource control and emancipation’. He concludes that the on-going re-branding project of our government will find a critical instrument in Lifting the Peril. Professor Eze Chukwuemeka Eke, author of Toads for Supper, The Potter’s Wheel and Our Children Are Coming is a visionary voice on the Nigeria literary landscape and his comments on a subject like this must be taken seriously. This leading delineation of the author’s prognosis of the Niger Delta ‘warfare’ was espoused by other commentators. Nigeria’s former Minister of Foreign Affairs, Professor Bolaji Akinyemi concludes his remarks on the book when he states that ‘If there is hope for the Niger Delta and the future of Nigeria, it would be because of the likes of Engineer Patrick Ekpotu who confronted the dangerous and complex issues’ of the Niger Delta with ‘immense political courage’ by taking the ‘long and hard road of the public good.’
Bishop of the Catholic Church in Sokoto and outspoken public intellectual, Matthew Hassan Kukah, states that he had pondered on the ‘impact of the(se) foreign do-gooders and how we are reaping some of their sour fruits.’ It is the ‘excellent manner’ in which Ekpotu, whom he describes, graphically and unflatteringly, as a thinker and a politician by happenstance, has captured the situation that lent a critical insight into the problem. Ray Ekpu, veteran journalist and media administrator, surmises that the book’s potency lies in its ‘clinical, scientific analysis of the author, and from the richness of his imagination, which is helped by the helicopter view that his official position offers him’ in addition to the author’s fearlessness and candour for controversy and unorthodoxy. Clement Ebri, former Governor of Cross River State admits that the author articulated well crystallized solutions to the seemingly endemic problems of the Niger Delta, in a manner that ensures ‘consolidation of social justice among millions of marginalized, displaced indigenes of the Niger Delta.’
These, among numerous previews of this book, further attest, not only to the topical nature of the book, the rife-ness and relevance of the perceptive and cognitive offering of its propositions but the justification of its publication by the apex think-tank of the nation—the National Institute, whose mandate includes the publication of policy-prone, researched and incisive works of intellection and knowledge invention on critical matters of national development, in her compulsive drive towards a better society.
This stint is a mere synopsis—a throat-scratching offering before a proper review at the moment of presentation. It is meet to expose the other areas of the book’s preoccupation outside of those already highlighted by these eminent commentators. First is the imaginativeness of the titles and their aptness of the content of those chapters to the subject preoccupying the entire landscape of discourse. We find this trend in titles of chapters, such as The Swamp Dwellers and History—a title that echoes and resonates the title of Wole Soyinka’s early play of the same title. The Swamp Dwellers, written in the mid-sixties, The forgotten Ethos, The Smokescreen, The Promise of Purification, and so on—including the title of the book, Lifting the Peril. They all convey evocative and lucid metaphors of transformation from the point of conflict to the point of resolution. People of creative flair will gain great insight into the enlightening potential of this book, especially with reference to the Niger Delta conundrum and the search for transformative options to the security question of our nation. This is more so at this point of the lethal rage of Boko Haram!
The other area of delightful relevance of this new book is its unyielding boldness and lucid capture of the approach of government to securing resolution to the Niger Delta Crisis, which came as an epilogue—after the main book has been written. First is its clear-sighted perception of the three-pronged key concepts of government’s resolution strategy of disarmament, rehabilitation and integration. Disarmament, he defines as ‘the component which requires every militant to voluntarily and without precondition, give up the ‘profession’ by surrendering self and weapon. Rehabilitation, he describes as ‘component of stabilization’ while Reintegration is the ‘component of the component that aims at getting ‘the militant’ back into the society to live normal life and get gainfully employed.’ The other perceptive depth of the book emerges from its clinical and comprehensive statement of the dialectics of ideology and politics—the search for power for money and money for power which is the humanistic greed that renders resolution of the Niger Delta warfare seemingly intractable.
The search for an enduring resolution of the Niger Delta warfare and the security and development trajectory of this country requires critical discourses like Lifting the Peril that Patrick Ekpotu has offered us. This eloquently scripted book is a must-read for its timeliness and unquestionable relevance at a time when security has become a veritable emergency on our nation’s political agenda.
Prof. Obafemi wrote in from National Institute for Policy and Strategic Studies, Kuru