President Goodluck Jonathan holds a dual mandate. The first is that of President of the entire federal republic of Nigeria, requiring that he do good to all manner of persons in line with the letter and spirit of the Nigerian constitution. The second is an unstated mandate to renew the social and political contract between the peoples of the Niger Delta and the Nigerian federation through rapid reparatory development of the region. The expectations of each aspect of this mandate are divergent but mutually inclusive. One is the other.

This duality is not new in African politics. It is in fact one of the challenges of contemporary African political philosophy in the postcolonial period. It is what I may call the phenomenon of 'our son, their president'. Because African nation nations were cobbled together from divergent ethnic groups, political contest under a formal constitution is most often a contest among contending nationalities for political supremacy. Therefore, nearly every African president since after independence has worn the hat of Janus. He flies the national banner but has a consciousness steeped in a specific ancestry.

He is an Akan President of Ghana, a Yoruba president of Nigeria, a Wolof president of Sierra Leone, a Zulu president of South Africa or a Bouale president of Cote d'Ivoire etc. While the nation sees him as 'Mr. President', a symbol of national sovereignty, his people see him as their ambassador, 'our son' on the national platform. In the former role, he is expected to manage the expectations of the entire national populace. In the latter, he is expected to bring home his people's share of the commonwealth. If he succeeds as 'the president', he graduates into a national hero and a global icon. Nelson Mandela​, Joachim Chissano, Jerry Rawlings​, Meles Zenawi​, and Paul Kagame​ easily come to mind.

If he succeeds more as 'our son', he returns from power as a tribal hero to be greeted with myriad chieftaincy titles, war dances, and gifts of damsels. The rare story of success is the president who succeeds in both capacities simultaneously- a worthy son of his people and a remarkable president of the

nation. The road of Nigerian history is littered with the political corpses of men who have failed disastrously in both capacities. In recent Nigerian political history, this duality has had added to it a further category. We now have presidents produced by a growing tradition of national moral concession who are however marketed as products of electoral outcomes. In the period since after the civil war, a certain tradition of politics of moral concessions has been building up in the nation.

The tradition is one of political injury and subsequent restitution. The war ended with the bloodying of the Igbos. That necessitated some restoration and restitution. By 1970, the consensus in Nigeria was that the Igbos and the war territories required rehabilitation, reconstruction and a form of reconciliation that would restore the ties between the Igbos and the rest of the Nigerian fold. That was largely achieved even if the Igbos have not yet been rewarded with the presidency of Nigeria. That was not the issue in 1970. The cancellation of the unfolding results of the June 12, 1993 elections and its bloody aftermath compelled Nigeria to concede that the Yorubas of the South West had been injured and needed to be assuaged and re-assured.

The rest of Nigeria had before now cried relentlessly about the domination of federal power by our northern (mostly military brothers). The tragic logic of national history made the continuation of that hegemony untenable by 1999. That is how come we had Mr. Obasanjo foisted on us for another 8 years as a moral concession to the Yorubas of the South West over the injury of June 12. The basis of the moral concession in the instance of the Niger Delta is a sense of strategic inevitability. You may not like the faces or Panama hats of the political gladiators of the Niger Delta. But the truth of the moment is that the business of a Nigerian federation long sustained by the abuse of oil wealth could not go on for one day longer if we did not heed the wails from the creeks.

The basis of the moral concession is the admission, by all sensible Nigerians, that the Niger Delta had for too long unfairly borne the brunt of the national economy with little or nothing to show for it. That moral stance was translated into an electoral mandate under the auspices of the ruling party at the last presidential elections. Mr. Jonathan, as the beneficiary of that grand political armistice, therefore, has the unstated part of his larger mandate well defined. It is based on the common sense realization that no one can love a people in politics more than their own son or daughter. It therefore prescribes first that the president should restore justice, equity and sincere trust in the relationship between the larger Nigerian federation and the peoples of the Niger Delta.

At the back of this concession is a certain belief that the incumbent so empowered is capable of being both son of his people and president of the nation simultaneously. But the Niger Delta leg of Jonathan's mandate is however limited in time and definite in scope. In common parlance, it is a limited leasehold on Aso rock Villa, granted to a son of the Niger Delta, through a political shorthand, to use the office of the president to begin to right the wrongs that have been done to his people over the years. Jonathan may find it convenient to outsource the larger function of the President of the federal republic of Nigeria to his ministers and sundry others. But he cannot by- pass that aspect of his mandate that requires that he address the urgent developmental challenges of the Niger Delta.

But in order to discharge this historic obligation, Jonathan will need to quickly sort out some of the complications that surround his suitability for the imperatives of roles that his office dictate. First his political qualification for being the ambassador of the Niger Delta remains controversial. Some argue that he is constitutionally more qualified to be president of Nigeria than ambassador of the Niger Delta. I do not know, for instance, the depth of his linkage to the traditional political structures of the region. I also am ignorant as to whether he is the most illustrious political son of the lot. There is similar haziness and controversy as to his linkage and extent of control of the militant forces whose activities energized the strategic threat that drew increased attention to the Niger Delta.

No one knows exactly why MEND continues to bomb or threaten to bomb his administration into irrelevance. I also do not, at this stage, understand the relationship between his Ijaw micro nationality and the myriad other ethnic groups that have now been conveniently lumped together into the Niger Delta or South South political/economic movement. Even worse, I do not understand the links that bind the peoples of what has become the South-South geopolitical zone. Is it geography, ethnicity, linguistic affinity, political history or a common scramble for proximity to oil dollars? I am still a bit confused on these matters.

Whatever it is, Jonathan needs to walk this maze and rise above it all in order to make the impact that the peoples of the region expect in the next couple of years. The burden of the Niger Delta is an overwhelming one. Jonathan's commitment to national transformation must begin from the transformation of the Niger Delta. He must transform the mood of the peoples of the region from one of despair and hopelessness to one of optimism about their future in the Nigerian federation. He must transform the attitude of the people from one of waiting for oil manna to that of becoming active creators of wealth from the polluted ruins of their farm lands and fishing grounds. He needs to transform the landscape of the region by ensuring that the people of that region begin to see the bright lights of development replace the age long gloom and darkness of the creeks.

In order to justify the immediate source of his mandate, the president's transformative agenda as it relates to the Niger Delta must have the following attributes:

1. Be visible in the lives and landscape of the region,

2. Be tangible as to be showcased as value for the money and institutions being committed to the service of the region,

3. Be massive in a manner commensurate to the powers granted to the President to intervene through resource appropriation and, most importantly,

4. The gains to the Niger Delta under Jonathan must be irreversible and, above all

5. Be sustainable.

Great moments of opportunity in the history of a people do not come so often. And when they come, they must be seized. But those moments also come with inbuilt repercussions for paths not taken, for decisions not made or those wrongly made or badly timed. We are at that unique moment of opportunity for the Niger Delta. If Jonathan seizes the moment, he will get the gratitude of his immediate constituency and the rest of the country. If he squanders it, his years out of power may be very uncomfortable. If, for instance, militant restiveness returns to the Niger Delta after Jonathan's presidency, the rest of Nigeria, whose memory is legendary, will remind us all that in response to the wails from the creeks, Nigeria took certain measures: created OMPADEC, graduated to NDDC and even created a dedicated Federal Ministry of the Niger Delta. Our presidents negotiated with sundry militants and paid them off handsomely.

We instituted an Amnesty programme under which youth from the region were either encamped or sent abroad for skills training with handsome monthly cash handouts. People will insist that the running of these projects, agencies and programmes was largely in the hands of sons and daughters of the region. To crown it all, we will all be reminded that our politics of moral concession rewarded the long suffering of the Niger Delta with the ultimate political prize- President and Commander in Chief of the Federal Republic of Nigeria. Some people will bring out their calculators and crunch the figures for the sheer quantum of cash that was committed to the service of this political cum moral armistice- billions or even trillions of dollars.

By its national and strategic nature, the Niger Delta question can be resolved in a manner that also dissolves the dichotomy between the president as the 'son' of the Niger Delta and as a national leader. This convergence is the real summation of the defining mission of the Jonathan presidency.

The Niger Delta Expects