Niger Deltas Descent Into Rags
By Josef Omorotionmwan (opinion)
Can the agitation by the people of the Niger Delta or the occasioned "war of survival" ever end? Would such operation of having some section of the country as "scrap or spare parts", only for the maintenance of the other parts ever cease?
Truly, the defining moments of Nigeria as a continuing united entity will be determined by the answerers to these questions in not too distant time from now. A country made up of different ethnic groups, in the simplest term, could be likened to polygamy. Nothing sustains a good polygamy as wisdom. A marriage of convenience contrived by the colonial masters, in which they unsolicitedly wedded different ethnic nationalities to a common husband, the Federal Government, and gave the husband the unhindered instrument of coercion to sustain the matrimony, cannot be said to be a perfect union. After all, even a marriage of convenience that is predicated on the use of excessive force must, sooner than later, hit the rock.
With the suffocation of the Niger Delta of erstwhile autonomous entities into a subjugating alliance and the derogatory appellation, "ethnic minorities" boldly engraved on them, no one would say that it is an act of omission that everything portends to a grand design to suppress and possibly compress the Region of Niger Delta.
A recent Report by the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) on behalf of the Federal Government of Nigeria presents a most sordid but true picture of the Niger Delta as "A Region suffering from administrative neglect, crumbling social infrastructure and services, high unemployment, social deprivation, abject poverty, filth and squalor, and endemic conflict"
Even at that, right from the biblical days, maids who surreptitiously found themselves on the matrimonial beds of their masters, have sooner or later, ascribed on themselves privileges of their newfound status. Faced with a seemingly moral transgression of a maid, however, the products of such transmogrification have invariably demanded their entitlements as heirs. If today we find the youths of the Niger Delta in such melee, should they be branded militants because they are refusing to be fated as their progenitors? Can we at this point also feign total ignorance of the fact that one man's terrorist is another's freedom fighter?
While successive Federal administrations are aware of the problems they have inflicted on the Niger Delta Region, regretfully, not much could be said to have been done by way of remedies or affirmative actions. The portable and discriminating display of interest by the Federal government should not be a riddle to the discerning mind.
And so soon, it has become convenient for the federal government to forget that the Independence Constitution of 1960 as well as the Republican Constitution of 1963 gave the States 50 percent of the total revenue derived from their Regions, which policy lasted for as long as WAZOBIA held sway in the Regions.
Today, there is all the noise that so far, the creation of the Ministry of the Niger Delta, with all its imperfections, is the boldest attempt at bringing succour to the oppressed people of the Region. If subsequent palliative measures have been far from successful, what assurance should anyone now have that the new Ministry would make the essential difference? Not much, perhaps. At least, the signs on ground are not encouraging. True to type, the Commander of the army of occupation has established his command base in faraway Abuja and he will be launching out from there when development is supposed to be about the people and the area. Again, if it is true that morning shows the day, the paltry initial allocation of N50 billion for the Ministry in this year's appropriation is nothing to write home about as it can hardly cover the overhead costs, talk less of development. By the Niger Delta standard, it could be said that the Federal Capital Territory, Abuja is fully developed. Yet, the same FCT, Abuja has a whopping allocation of N137 billion in the current budget. This is like putting more water into the pot that already contains water and leaving the empty pot still empty. And in the telling years of the development of Abuja, apart from plump allocations to the FCT itself, large sums were allocated to every Ministry for its infrastructural development in Abuja. That was how we saw the development of Abuja within an integrated context.
When it comes to oppressing the Niger Delta and its people, anything goes. Is it by accident that indigenes of the South-South Region have been constructively excluded from the management of their God-given resources? Just imagine the following sad scenario: It is now 23 years since Rilwanu Lukman was this nation's Minister of Petroleum Resources. The only open sign of his indispensability is that today he is back to the same beat. A new Group Managing director has just been appointed. As usual, he is from the North. The NNPC has seven Executive Directors. In the life of the Organisation, no indigene of the South-South has ever been appointed as an Executive Director. The Group Executive Director, Corporate Services is considered the very nerve centre of the NNPC as he occupies the gateway to the organisation, in-charge of employment, promotion and postings. In four quick successions, the occupants of this position have been invariably from the North. As for the LNG in Bonny, the Executive Managing Director has always been an expatriate while the Deputy Managing Directors have been Northerners. As for the king of them all, the Petroleum Development Trust Fund (PDTF), the Executive Secretary is always from the North, perhaps as an inalienable right!
Was it also by accident that in the dark days of the Emperor, not Emperor Haile Selaisse, but Aremu Obasanjo and his kinsman, Engr. Kokpolokun, they established the Olokola LNG Plant between Ondo and Ogun States. We hear that this plant is the largest in Africa and it has a capacity to employ more than 4,000 workers. To the Core Delta, entry into such a juicy area is verboten.
This army of occupation has every reason to be uninterested in stopping gas flaring, in spite of all the hue and cry we hear from them. After all, revenue from penalties and fines on companies engaged in flaring ranks very high; perhaps next to the realization from actual sales of crude oil and gas. Rather than pass this revenue to the areas that suffer the degradation, the Government has a field day sitting on, and wallowing in, the plundered wealth.
We have always believed that when a part becomes greater than "the sum of its whole", then, the end is in sight. The only question is when. Even with her giant size, Nigeria's problems are subsumed in the problems of the Niger Delta. Whereas President Yar'Adua's seven-point agenda more than capture Nigeria's problems, the problems of the Niger Delta Region can only be accommodated within the context of a ten-point agenda:
(1) The essential demilitarilisation of the Niger Delta region;
(2 The genuine and sustainable development of the region;
(3) The rehabilitation, education and gainful employment of the agitated and angry youth;
(4) The non-politicising of award of contracts for projects in the Niger Delta;
(5) The equitable substantial allocation of funds for the timely development of the region;
(6) The deployment of penalties and monies collected for gas flaring and the like to the appropriate regions suffering the damage;
(7) The considerate quantum of employment of the people of Niger Delta in Oil companies and their subsidiaries;
(8) The adjustment of the imbalance in the ethnic compositions of those controlling all companies and parastatals established by the Federal Government in the Oil industry;
(9) The review of the allocation of oil blocs to make the people of Niger Delta part of the beneficiaries; and
(10) The non-politicizing of citing of Petroleum related Projects;
Essays like this are supposed to end with predictions but predictions are pretty hard to make. Fortunately, some genuinely concerned citizens of the world are already doing a good job elsewhere. We are reminded of a recent Report by the United States of America, which sees Nigeria as gradually gliding towards disintegration. We are not equipped to think that this does not appropriately capture the Nigerian situation. Neither do we expect that this Report should be tossed out of the window with the left hand, much as we pray and hope that the prediction does not come to pass.
All the same, the will to survive remains a natural and fundamental principle. And as expressed in most civilized Constitutions, including Nigeria's, the right to survive is a fundamental phenomenon, worth upholding and fighting for. Guided by this understanding, a lot can be achieved on the side of progress. For all we know, there can only be modest development; there are no modest revolutions. And pushed to the wall, even the goat would bite!
-e-mail: joligien@yahoo.com
Source: This Day, 19th February 2009.
Tasks Before Niger Delta Ministry
Ifeatu Agbu (opinion)
The drive to fast-track development in the oil-rich, but neglected, Niger Delta region is gathering momentum as the Minister of Niger Delta Affairs, Chief Ufot Ekaette, and the Minister of State, Elder Godsday Orubebe, have continued to engage the various stakeholders in the region. They have visited the state governors in the nine Niger Delta states where they held meetings with key players. They have also met executives of oil companies and the Niger Delta committees of the National Assembly. All these meetings were intended to enlist the cooperation and support of the stakeholders as partners in the onerous task of rapidly transforming the Niger Delta.
This is a commendable initiative by the new ministry and it needs to be sustained because the socio-economic transformation of the Niger Delta is too complex to be left for only one or two agencies of development. Undoing the damage wrought by decades of neglect and injustice requires partnership and synergy. The ministry and other relevant agencies should serve as rallying points for harnessing the energies and ideas needed for the comprehensive development of the region.
Virtually all the stakeholders agree with the new ministry that there is high level of poverty and underdevelopment in the Niger Delta. To give effect to the urgent task of transforming the region, several strategies and options are being considered. In all, however, funding remains the most critical factor. There is no doubt that the N50 billion allocated to the ministry in the 2009 budget is too meager to make any appreciable impact. The minister recognizes this fact, but pleads that they be allowed to commence work with what is available.
While one agrees that there is no time to waste, the process of getting a supplementary budget must be initiated now as a-N50 billion budget, which in real terms makes provision for only N18 billion for new projects, would obviously do no more than merely scratching the surface. The big ticket projects in the Niger Delta need massive injection of funds for them to be translated into reality. For instance, the coastal road envisaged in the regional master plan would cost well over N50 billion to complete.
In this wise, it is expected that the minister's interaction with members of the National Assembly committees on the Niger Delta would yield good dividend. The Chairman, Senate Committee on the Niger Delta, Mr. James Manager, captured the mood of his colleagues when he said that "the struggle of the people of the region is an age-long one and government at different times intervened by doing so many things. But unfortunately, the Government of the Federal Republic of Nigeria going down into history has not succeeded in creating the enabling environment for the people of the Niger Delta to realize their full potentials."
The common thread that ran through the issues raised in all the visits and meetings of the ministers is the fact that the Niger Delta region needs development urgently not only to catch up with other less endowed parts of the country, but also to assuage the anger of the restive youths in the creeks. Surely, the message is not lost on Ekaette who was confronted at every turn by people who were not convinced that the ministry has any chance of making a real difference in their lives. Ekaette confessed that most of the people were skeptical and some even cynical about the role of the new ministry. Against this background, the ministry officials have a duty to go the extra mile to convince the people of the region that they are actually going to bring something new to the table.
Indeed, most people are adopting a wait-and-see attitude to the ministry. As the latest among the several organs that have been set up to rescue the Niger Delta from the quagmire of poverty and neglect, all eyes are on the Ekaette-led ministry to see what new things it has to offer. So far, the approach of bringing all stakeholders on board appears promising and encouraging. It makes sense to pull all resources together to confront the injustice and inequality that have ruled the lives of the people in Nigeria's oil basin. The minister is, therefore, right in calling all major stakeholders, including the oil companies, to wake up from slumber. It is indisputable that the Niger Delta deserves a lot more than it is getting now. The oil companies operating in the region have only created oasis of wealth in a desert of poverty, a situation that must change now for the region to lip-frog into the modern era, replete with functional basic facilities and widespread prosperity.
The oil companies which are being accused of operating with lower standards in Nigeria have been given new marching orders to raise their yardsticks to internationally acceptable levels. Ekaete urged them to embark on special training programmes to enable indigenes of their host communities fit into some aspects of oil production in order to give them a sense of belonging. He noted that continued marginalisation of the people could only heighten tension and criminality often engendered by hunger, idleness and ignorance.
The minister, who listed host communities' grievances against the oil multinationals, said: "We have come to a point in the history of the region where we have to adopt drastic measures dictated by the circumstances of the time, to provide succour for the people. Unlike in the past when communities were contented with minor schemes and freebies, oil companies should now begin to provide basic infrastructure that can guarantee long-term benefits for the people of the region."
Not quite surprisingly, the oil firms did not take the minister's reprimand lightly. Some of the officials told the minister pointedly that they should not be blamed for the underdevelopment of the Niger Delta, noting that it was the constitutional mandate of the Federal Government to shoulder the responsibility.
Such buck passing could hardly serve any useful purpose. The records show that the oil companies have not done enough to meet their obligations to the region just as the Federal Government has not lived up to the expectations of the people. Both should change their attitude towards the region by showing greater commitment to its development.
Now, more than ever before, all stakeholders need to collaborate to lift the region from the abyss of underdevelopment. The challenges of developing the region are such that all the stakeholders must sincerely partner to achieve the desired goal.
In response to the need for coordinated efforts, the NDDC set up a clearing house called the Partners for Sustainable Development [PSD] Forum. This important organ brings together representatives of federal and state governments of oil-bearing states, youth and women leaders, traditional rulers as well as the organized private sector, civil society, the mass media and international development agencies such as the UNDP and the World Bank. Their main function is to ensure that the developmental activities in the Niger Delta by all stakeholders are synchronized. This important organ should be more alive to its responsibility and the ministry will do itself a lot of good by making use of the forum.
Now that the development efforts in the region are expected to be driven by the Master Plan, there is bound to be better coordination and faster delivery on projects that would make profound impact on the lives of the people. The new ministry has a duty here by quickly buying into the implementation of the master plan. In fact, it should join the NDDC to drive it. The 15-year period of the plan must not be allowed to run out without any significant impact on the Niger Delta.
The ministry should also move quickly to win the confidence and trust of the various stakeholders. Assignments should be given to development partners with specific time frames to ensure optimal performance. The wrong notion that the Master Plan belongs to the NDDC must be jettisoned for good.
History beckons on the ministry led by Ekaette to bequeath an enduring legacy by ensuring that all the development agencies in the region work harmoniously for the overall good of the Niger Delta.
Source: This Day, 19th February 2009.