As oil activities in Nigeria continue to take a heavy toll on human lives and the environment Investigative journalist Gabriel Ogunjobi in this third part of his report reveals the impact of oil spill from the moribund Kaduna refinery on farmlands and water source of two communities in Kaduna.
Sometimes , Garuba Usman’s face lights up and the smile that emerges is contagious. At other times, a reminder of his past shrinks his face, dampening the mood. The 70-year-old is one rare Fulani from Kaduna whose occupation is farming; he says he has never reared a single cow, the most common business of his kinsmen across Nigeria.
But farming, which Usman has done all his life , suddenly turned horrible last year. The reason, he said, was the oil spill from the refinery less than a kilometer away from his farmland.
He is one of the 15 farmers waiting to be compensated by the Kaduna Refining and Petrochemical Company (KRPC) for the spill which occurred a year ago.Although the Kaduna refinery, like others ,has been shut down since 2016 ,residents of the Kapam community in Kaduna believe the spilled oil was the residue content in pipelines that were left unattended to.
“The people gathered the names of farmers affected but to the best of my knowledge, none of them has been compensated,” says Joseph David, a youth leader in the community.
In the more than 40 years that Usman has lived in Kapam, he has raised a family and built a modest bungalow from the profits he made cultivating vegetables and crops like rice and cassava.
Before joining me under the mango tree in his farm that afternoon, he and his youngest son had ben pilling cassava streaks. Behind him were beds of vegetables germinating brightly in the scorching sunshine.
The farmer says he had, in 2021, his lowest harvest in most recent years. Ironically, he had high expectations not only for that year’s farming but also his family . One of such was the planned wedding of his son.When expected funds were not forthcoming, he went borrowing.
“I barely harvested five bags of rice last year,” he stated as his luminous gesture began to fade away.
During a good season, Usman said he could harvest up to 30 bags of rice from the large expanse of land.
Kaduna has been in a dire strait for several years now because of attacks by armed groups in the agrarian southern part of the state. In 2021 alone, no fewer than 1,192 lost their lives to banditry and other forms of violence in the state, while a total of 3,348 persons were kidnapped during the same period.
But it was the terrible condition of the refinery that brought about the worst woes to the two agrarian communities of Kapam and Rido flanking the KRPC. Usman epitomizes the parlous experience the people endure; it would later lead to a pent-up anger among the youths who felt cheated and attempted to protect their land rights.
When officials of the Kaduna State Vigilance Service (KADVIS) accompanied those of the State Urban Planning Development Agency (KASUDA) to demolish some houses on the borderline of the refinery, the people protested. The protest got out of hand when KADVIS personnel applied force, killing one of the protesters.
The community chairman and elder brother of the victim refused to speak on the incident but Adamu Alkali, another protester narrated how he survived to tell the story.
After the demolition of over 10 buildings on March 28, Alkali was thrown into a van belonging to KADVIS , and driven away, bloodied. “They left me for dead in one hospital,” he claimed, threatening a lawsuit against KASUDA, upon full recovery.
At the time he spoke, one of his eyes was bloodshot red, the other shut ; his occiput was bruised as the heavy-stomached man writhed in pain on a sofa chair.
KPRC denied sending KADVIS on the bloody operation demolition but the community said the management has a history of not taking responsibility for the action of its men.
ABANDONED WITH A PLAGUE
Rido is less than 3km off the Abuja-Kaduna expressway that has become frost by bandits in the last few years. Not only are the residents at the mercy of armed gang using forests as hideouts, they may have lost their source of portable water . No thanks to the refinery, says Jonathan David, who stays at the Railway Quarters within Rido.
The length and breadth of this community with more than 3000 inhabitants, according to the 2006 National Census, is by far remote and the road linking them to the federal highway in a terrible shape. As if to mysteriously preserve the unwholesome history of its existence, livelihood inside the Railway Quarters, on the exit wing of the community, is particularly squalid.
In January 1980, the borehole water system was launched alongside the government’s quarters built opposite the KPRC. When the minister of petroleum back inspected the housing project, he objected to the idea that people should reside there because of the environmental hazard the refinery would pose.
The remaining buildings were not completed but the Nigerian Railway Corporation took over the finished blocks for the temporary lodging of railway staff.
Today, over a hundred people — both NRC staff and non-staff — live there having to contend with a severe shortage of potable water.
“Each time there is an equipment failure or whatever, we see oil flowing out of the outlets into our farms,” the non-staff resident David, noted. “We started noticing traces of oil in our well.”
According to him, the borehole wasn’t working when he moved into the quarters in 2006. So, contaminated wells were their source of water.
A forensic research conducted on by the trio of Louis Buggu, Funmilayo Yusufu – Alfa and Abigail Abenu for the Ghana Journal in 2020 found out that the streams and other sources of water linked to the Rido River were contaminated by discharged effluents.
•At that moment he spoke, one of his eyes were bloodshot red, the other sealed; his occiput was bruised as the heavy-stomached man writhes in pain on a sofa chair.
Ten water samples were collected and tested for Arsenic (As), Cadmium (Cd), Chromium (Cr), Copper (Cu), Iron (Fe), Lead (Pb), Manganese (Mn), Mercury (Hg), Nickel (Ni) and Zinc (Zn).
The results revealed that in the dry season, six heavy metals, namely As, Cd, Cu, Mn, Ni and Zn, presented mean values that were higher after the point of effluent discharge; while Cr, Fe and Pb had lower values and Hg was not detected.
In the wet season all the heavy metals tested, except Hg, increased in values after the point of effluent discharge. The values of As, Cd, Fe, Mn, Ni and Pb after the discharge point, in dry and wet seasons, were greater than the maximum tolerable limits set by the Standard Organisation of Nigeria (SON) and the World Health Organisation (WHO). The values recorded for Zn and Cu at both dry and wet seasons were below the limit set by the Standard Organisation of Nigeria (SON) and the World Health Organisation (WHO), but the value of Cr was lower than the maximum tolerable limit only in the dry season. The contamination of the river with heavy metals poses a grave danger to human health, as its water is used for diverse purposes.
The researchers recommended that the wastewater treatment plant of KRPC should be rehabilitated and the wastewater can be pre-treated before it is discharged into the river.
The two contaminated wells shutdown is about five meters from the outlet and the borehole is even closer. With the well abandoned, the major source of water is the borehole whose purity is also erratic.
The other source is at a distance at the refinery military lodge off the rail link. They are not the only people depending on the tank. A neighboring Ungwan Bulus fetches there too. Bulus was in the news on March 31. It was attacked two days after the March train hijack.
A railway staff, who doesn’t want to be named says: “we are abandoned here,” bemoaning risks to their lives by the water they drink, yet the marauding bandits in their forest.
Garba Deen Muhammad, the NNPC spokesman didn’t answer calls to his line for interview over the contamination of Kaduna communities by the refinery.
With Nigeria’s regulatory failure on oil refineries, the nation’s old heritages — farming and fishing — are at a low ebb. The lack of environmental remediation across parts of Nigeria where oil is either explored or refined, has advanced the advocacy to halt oil processing in the country. Whilst the government is yet to be accountable for the ripple effects of crude oil, communities on the fencelines of refineries suffer for these. There are peculiar instances of sea surge and difficulty for fishing in Lagos with aquatic splendor. Across the Niger Delta, the overwhelming menace is the lack of standard environmental clean-up, sometimes leading to sudden or steady deaths while Kaduna communities, already ravaged of insurgence, reeks of soil and groundwater contamination.
This report was funded under Health of Mother Earth Foundation’s fossil politics programme.
They were full of life and hope when they left Nigeria for Europe through Libya between 2016 and 2019. For Kemi, Bright, Cynthia and Ore (surnames withheld to protect survivors), they only wanted to travel to the United States of America, Italy, Spain and Germany to become successful and help their families. However, fate or dubious human traffickers and migrant smugglers had other ideas.
In their desperate bid to travel to Europe, these young Nigerians gave up their means of livelihood back home, with three of them selling all they had to raise money, which they paid to supposed travel agents in the hope of bettering their financial conditions in the first world countries only to be smuggled to Libya, extorted and abandoned by supposed pushers meant to ferry them to Europe.
The migrants were caged in “connection houses” for sex slavery or sold to Bugas (masters) who delivered them at the homes of Arab bosses as domestic workers without payment for many years.
Tired of the inhuman and degrading treatments they were subjected to in the North African country notorious for organised crimes and armed violence, the young Nigerians, who were among the 175 returnees assisted back home by the International Organisation for Migration (IOM), received on Wednesday morning by the National Emergency Management Agency (NEMA), National Agency for the Prohibition of Trafficking in Persons (NAPTIP), the police and other stakeholders, relived their various nightmarish experiences in separate interviews with our correspondent.
According to them, Libya was no longer a safe place for Nigerians as they were daily forced into slavery or held hostage so that their families back home are forced to pay endless ransoms.
The slave masters who hide under the guise of spending millions for victims to be brought into Libya even when some of these youths pay their ways through, connive with dubious Arabs to keep them in perpetual bondage until they become spent and worn out.
Raped, robbed and starved
For 22-year-old Kemi, her journey to Libya in 2019 was not by choice. The young woman who lived in Kwara State, was an apprentice hair stylist and a local herb trader before she was lured by a human trafficker who promised to take her to the United States of America (USA) to serve as a housemaid.
Already tired of her sufferings since the death of her father and abandonment by her mother whose new husband did not want her in their lives, Kemi felt that luck had smiled on her with the woman’s promise. Hence she did not hesitate to do all she was asked for the trip to the USA to materialise.
But her dreams for a better life was shattered when instead of USA, she arrived Libya and was taken to a “connection house” where she was forced to sleep with 20 men daily for N7,000 each, which her trafficker pocketed with claims that she had to repay all the money they spent to bring her to Libya.
According to her, she suffered the worst forms of abuses at the hands of her traffickers.
Aside not given any dime from the proceeds of the forced prostitution, she was denied basic care including food or maintenance allowance, and had to survive on food bought for her by some of the men who came to sleep with her daily.
Jumoke, who could barely walk, said: “It was some of the men who slept with me that usually bought food for me when coming or they gave me money to eat so I could have the strength to serve them.
“As I am talking to you now, I am very sick. I have pains all over my body, especially my stomach, due to the excessive sex I had with different men.
“I am 22 years now. I only attended primary school and then I went to learn hairdressing. I was learning hair dressing and selling agbo (local herbs) when I was introduced to a woman in Asaba.
“It was agbo I went to sell in Asaba when I got introduced to the woman.
“I lived in Ijagbo, Kwara State with my friends because my mother’s husband did not want me in their lives. My father died and my mother remarried, but her husband never liked me.
“Since my agbo business was not very lucrative and I got introduced to this woman who promised to take me to USA as maid, I was overjoyed that at least, my life would amount to something.
“I did not even tell my mother I was travelling as there was no communication between us.
“The woman told me that I would work for them as a house girl and I would be well provided for. She didn’t disclose the actual destination to me, which was Libya.
“Immediately we got to Saba, they took me to connection house; the place where they engage in prostitution.
“I did not want to oblige but I was threatened that if I did not do it and pay them, I would be killed. I did the job for two years and I paid them roughly N4.2 million.
“Once I finished serving them, I would not be able to do anything for myself because I would be left with no strength.
“Different kinds of men slept with me from Abokis to Ghanaians. Every day, I slept with eight to twenty guys and I got paid an equivalent of N7,000 each which I handed over to those that brought me as the money they spent in transporting me to Libya.
“I ate once a day if my customers dashed me money or bought me food.
“I have a friend in Libya who advised me to go and register and go to Nigeria to take care of myself. I am thankful that I am back. I will pick up my life from the scratch once I feel better.
“I have learnt my lessons to never trust anyone who comes to me with fancy promises. I am glad that I had no abortions while on the job.”
Traumatic desert experiences
Ore, who said she actually paid N450,000 to one Fatimah she knew through her friend Abosede’s in-law in order to travel to Germany, narrated how they were forced into a vehicle from the hotel they were kept in Kano during Ramadan period and ferried through the harsh desert weather without water or food.
She never suspected anything untoward since Abosede, whose brother in-law was the one who linked them to Fatimah was also with her on the trip, and because she had paid them the requested N450,000 that was supposed to take her to Germany in a flight they would board at Kano Airport.
She said: “I am a hairdresser. But before I travelled in 2018, I was working at a restaurant in Ikeja.
“One day, my friend Abosede told me there was an opportunity in Germany she heard of through her in-law. She said they needed a hair dresser. I sold my things to raise money and I paid Fatimah, the supposed agent, N450,000.
“Then Abosede also indicated interest to go. I do not know if she paid anything. But what I know is that we were told to board a bus to Kano, that we would fly to Germany from there since it was Ramadan period.
“Myself and Abosede boarded a bus, and when we arrived Kano, we were kept in a hotel.
“At night, they came and said we should take our bag and enter a bus that would take us to the airport for our trip. But instead of a plane, the next thing I saw was that we had entered Niger Republic and afterwards, Gatron and then Agadez, and from there into the (Sahara) desert.
“The journey from Lagos to Libya took us about one month. They kept changing vehicles, and when we got into desert, it was Toyota Hilux they used to carry us.
“We were more than 200 from Nigeria, Ghana, Ivory Coast and neighbouring countries, but Nigerians were more.
“From the desert to Libya was one week, and that was the most dangerous part of the journey.
“I saw five of my co-travellers die and they were abandoned in the desert. They died from thirst because there was no water or food and the weather was harsh. It was just once in many days that we were served drops of water mixed with petrol.
“Then, when people tried to rush the water, they flogged us like animals. They also raped many girls while those who couldn’t control themselves willingly submitted their bodies to the smugglers.
“As the Hilux galloped, those who couldn’t sit well fell off and they flogged them. It was a traumatic experience but we could not do anything as we were already trapped in it.
“Finally, we reached Libya and I thought there would be respite, but that was just the beginning of the suffering.
“Abosede and I were taken to the same Buga (master). He is a Nigerian slave master there. He assigned me to an Arab policeman’s family as nanny and maid.
“I was told that I would work for 18 months before I could regain my freedom. I worked for those 18 months under very demeaning conditions. I was never given a penny by the Arab family.
“All the money I worked for, I learnt, was paid to my Buga. The family gave me food once a day and they usually locked me inside when they went out.
“I had no freedom, no phone, no access to the outside world. They treated me with disdain.
“The worst was one evening when their three-year-old son lied to his mother that I beat him up. The woman didn’t even want to hear from me or check their cameras if it was true. She just threw me out of the house, and it was raining heavily.
“I was outside under the rain till morning with nothing to cover my body. No phone to call my master, no money and nowhere to run to; just stranded in the rain till morning when she came and opened the gate and ordered me in.
“So, after the 18 months, I thought freedom was finally here but it never came.
“I was taken to my Buga where I stayed for three days and after that sent back to the policeman’s house.
“I was there for another year still without a penny paid to me. It was during this period that I started thinking of a way out.
“One day, I was on top of the house spreading clothes when I suddenly saw a man walking on the streets and speaking Yoruba. It appears he was receiving a call.
“My Arab masters were not in, so I shouted in Yoruba so that the man could hear me. He heard my cry for help, came closer and I quickly told him my experience and that I wanted to go back home.
“He gave me his number and told me to find a way to call him from inside the house so that he could have more information about where I was.
“I was able to do that and I kept in touch with him whenever they were not around. He kept telling me to come out but it was not possible until one morning when the opportunity presented itself.
“That was how I ran out and he took me to the embassy and they facilitated my trip back home.
“So many Nigerians are suffering in Libya. Some people are sick there and these Bugas are wicked. They even kill people without mercy.
“One girl is back in Nigeria with broken legs because she refused to be forced into prostitution. Her Buga broke her leg.
“She has been in the hospital since February and her family is so poor that they cannot even take her to a good hospital.
“I did not come back with anything. I sold everything I had when I was leaving and then I did not even get a penny despite working for 30 months in Libya.
“Not a kobo was given to me. I learnt the Arabs paid equivalent of N70,000 monthly to my Buga which is N2.1 million, but not a dime was given to me.
“I have not heard from Abosede since I came back. I do not know if they ever looked for me or asked after me from the Arabs.
“That her in-law who introduced us to Fatimah has also returned to Libya. I have not seen or heard from any of them.
“All I need now is money to start all over with my life here in Nigeria. I need help to buy some of my tools back.”
Camp of horror
Bright also travelled through the desert after paying N400,000. Unlike Ore, he was aware his journey to Italy would be through the desert until he arrived Libya and then he would be ferried via a boat to his destination.
According to him, his desire to succeed and help his family when he got to Italy was greater than any suffering in the desert, so he made up his mind to weather it all.
But the zeal to get into Italy at all costs disappeared the moment be saw how people like him were being killed or kidnapped as they attempted to cross to the other side.
Bright also narrated how his fellow camp members waiting to be crossed by pushers took ill with some dying helplessly as a result of dehydration, hunger and infections.
Unable to bear the sights further, he said he decided it was time to return to his fatherland before he suffered the same fate as others.
He said: “I was not trafficked and no one lured me. I actually heard about the possibility of entering Europe through Libya and so I paid N400,000 to embark on the journey.
“I saw how people died in the desert from lack of water. It was not easy but I was determined to arrive Italy, which was my destination.
“It took us more than three weeks to arrive Libya. When I got to Libya, crossing to Italy became an issue.
“I was practically detained and I spent a lot of money for pushers to cross me over without success.
“I spent N150,000, N170,000 and another N150,000 but I could not cross. While in the camp waiting to be crossed, I saw different types of operations in Libya.
“I saw how people were being kidnapped and killed all in an attempt to cross over to Europe so I became scared.
“I decided to return to my country where I can be free. I kept hoping that I would cross to Europe; that was why I spent three years there. I was doing meniai jobs like car wash to survive.
“The first time I tried to cross, the pusher man we paid money to didn’t push us. We waited and some of us were getting sick in the camp, some dying and we couldn’t do anything.
“The Libya people who pushed us to the sea to cross are the ones who camped us. I can say that Nigeria is the best country I have ever seen because it is like I am in a free world. I have freedom of speech.
“When I was in Libya, I was like someone without a voice. My advice to people who want to travel is that they should avoid going through the desert. Travel through the proper channels. Do not go to Europe by land.
“What I went through in Libya in desert I cannot explain. Some of us died from dehydration. No water. The cloth you wore from Nigeria is what you will wear till you arrive Libya.
“From Niger Republic to Libya, some spend between two weeks and three months in the desert without food or water. Some would be crying while others would die painful deaths.
“I am using this medium to advice everyone hearing my voice to steer clear from travelling to Europe by land.”
Endangered species
Warning Nigerians to stop going to Libya, Cynthia said criminally minded Arabs there believe that Nigeria is a very rich country and so are determined to make money off her citizens. She said she went to that country in 2017 but decided to return after five years because things were getting out of hands there.
“A lot of things happened in Libya to especially Nigerian girls last year and early this year. Libya is a danger zone for female Africans.
“The problem majorly is the opening of connection houses where women are forced into prostitution.
“It is not only in the desert that people die; so many lost their lives inside Libya and while trying to cross to Europe.
“Our women are being deceived that they would be taken to Spain and Italy for jobs only to turn them into sex slaves.
“Those who cannot do prostitution are held hostage and asked to call their families back home to send money for their freedom. That is what is happening.
“Now they also sell men as well. They ask them to control money from Nigeria. Nigerians in Libya who run these connection houses are the ones doing it in connivance with Libyans.”
Statistics
Receiving the latest batch of returnees at the cargo wing, Murtala Mohammed International Airport (MMIA), Lagos, NEMA’s DG, Mustapha Ahmed, said the Boeing 737-800 Al Buraq Air with registration number 5A-DMG that brought them landed at about 11:50pm on Tuesday.
Ahmed, who was represented by NEMA’s Lagos Territorial Office Coordinator, Ibrahim Farinloye, said the batch comprised 64 adult females, 12 girls, five infant females; 77 adult males, 11 boys and six infant males.
•Some of the IOM assisted returnees being received, prpfiled and screened by officials of NEMA, Port Health and other relevant agencies after their arrival at the cargo section of the MMIA.
He said four of the returnees comprising two men and two women had medical cases.
In a report released earlier this month, the IOM revealed that 56 per cent of human trafficking victims in Niger Republic were from Nigeria and 23 per cent from Niger and other sub-Saharan African countries.
It said the report also showed that women and girls constituted 69 per cent while men and boys were 31 per cent of victims and survivors of trafficking in Niger, thus making trafficking in persons a gendered issue, affecting disproportionaly women and girls.
According to the IOM, 666 victims of trafficking were between 2017 and 2021 assisted at IOM’s transit centres in Niger for vulnerable migrants, the government-run centre in Zinder, or outside these centres.
“Victims were mainly registered in Zinder, Agadez, Arlit, Dirkou, and the region of Niamey. They are between four months and 66 years old with an average age of 20.
“Victims were mostly adults (62 per cent were 18 and over), but children represented a significant 37 per cent of victims…
“The study also reveals that most victims come from Nigeria (56 per cent), Niger (23 per cent) and other countries in sub-Saharan Africa.
“Those trafficked for sexual exploitation, forced prostitution and intended sexual exploitation constituted the majority (38 per cent), followed by labour exploitation, forced labour and intended labour exploitation (21 per cent), whereas 23 per cent were for purposes of begging…”
Determined to combat human and organ trafficking, the National Agency for the Prohibition of Trafficking in Persons (NAPTIP), has adopted an all of society approach to addressing the menace.
Its Director General (DG), Dr. Fatima Waziri-Azi, during a press conference to mark this year’s World Day Against Trafficking in Persons in Abuja, outlined efforts taken to make the society more aware of new tricks and trends adopted by human traffickers.
She said the realisation that human traffickers operated online as much as they did offline necessitated the United Nations to theme this year’s commemoration “Use and Abuse of Technology.”
Waziri-Azi said: “If COVID has taught us anything, it is the re-enforcement of the need for digital channel of communication which has led to a massive digital transformation. The fact remains, while technology has come as a great relief and a major boost in the way of life of people, the same has left much to be concerned because human traffickers have also caught on to this digital transformation.
“There is a shift from physical recruitment to virtual recruitment through virtual assessment of victims and proxy negotiations.
“The Internet provides easy access to a larger pool of potential victims because geographical limitations no longer exist, thereby increasing the ease with which traffickers can locate and recruit their victims; control and organise transportation for victims, communicate amongst perpetrators, and hide criminal proceeds.
“At NAPTIP, we have seen an increase in fake job advertorials and fake scholarships via social media as traffickers use it to recruit and cat fish unsuspecting victims. Traffickers also use technology to control their victims. For instance, besides oath taking, they make nude videos of their victims and threaten to share the explicit images online.
“While technology is frequently misused to facilitate trafficking in persons, its positive use helps in combat trafficking and support anti-trafficking work, such as aiding investigations that in turn enhances prosecutions, scaling awareness campaigns, development of technology-based tools that support victims and survivors and enhancing international cooperation…”
For this year’s celebration, NAPTIP and her partners premiered a short film on organ harvesting titled “Pound of Heart” which was produced by the agency’s drama club. It also organised an inter-university debate for four schools in the Federal Capital Territory (FCT); an anti-human trafficking walk and sensitisation exercises across the country, among other activities.
The North East Development Commission (NEDC) has embarked on various development programmes aimed at empowering the youths. It recently trained 900 of them in waste management and donated a 600-capacity lecture auditorium and a mega library to the Mega Secondary School at Gashua in Yobe State. The NEDC is creating jobs through Information and Communication Technology (ICT), writes DUKU JOEL
The North East Development Commission (NEDC) is aggressively working to meet its mandate: the development of the insurgent-devastated region.
Among many other initiatives, it is also focusing its empowerment programmes on the youth and education sectors.
The NEDC is the focal organisation charged with the responsibility to assess, coordinate, harmonise and report on all intervention programmes and initiatives by the Federal Government or any of its ministries, departments and agencies (MDAs).
It also helps to implement such programmes as designed by states and other development partners in the Northeast states of Adamawa, Bauchi, Borno, Gombe, Taraba and Yobe.
No doubt, the effects of the devastation of the Boko Haran insurgency in the Northeast are still noticeable, so a lot of rebuilding and empowerment work is needed.
Insurgency dealt a blow to the infrastructure with attendant consequences on the human capital development of a traumatised population.
To narrow it down to demography, the youth are most vulnerable and are prone to recruitment by insurgents.
Unemployment has also remained one of the biggest problems facing the region.
The NEDC was established in 2017 by the Federal Government with an ambitious commitment to rebuild, reconstruct, resettle and rehabilitate the region.
The commission is bringing smiles to the faces of traumatised population.
The commission has in less than five years become a key partner and a driver of development in all the six states of Adamawa, Borno, Bauchi, Gombe, Taraba and Yobe in the region.
Through its strategic multi-sectoral interventions, the infrastructural deficits of the region are gradually been achieved.
The human capital development of the unemployed population especially the youth is also receiving serious attention.
ICT training for youths
The commission has undertaken the training of 10,000 youths annually in Information Communication Technology (ICT) across the region.
Already, a total of 30,000 of those youths have acquired the training in the last three years in the states.
Managing Director of the Commission, Mohammed Goni Alkali, accompanied by his team and the Minister of Humanitarian Affairs, Disaster Management and Social Development, embarked on the donation of the ICT centres.
The third batches of the beneficiaries graduated from various institutions of higher learning across the regions.
Each of the trainees underwent training in ICT, including computer graphic designs and smartphone repairs.
Each of the graduates was given a starter pack which contained a laptop, scanner, printers, tools for repairs, and accessories, among other cutting edge equipment and some cash.
Alkali also inspected the multi-billion naira intervention projects in education at those institutions.
Among them is the 600-capacity lecture auditorium to the Mega Secondary School at Gashua in Yobe State. It also donated a mega library to the school.
While making the presentation of one of the ICT centres at Yobe State University, Alkali said the choice was strategic.
The aim, he said, is to help tackle youth unemployment in the region and make such beneficiaries economically self-reliant.
He noted that the modern world has gone digital and the commission has to key into such ideas as a deliberate way of empowering the youth in the region.
Alkali said: “We have established and fully equipped three CT centres for Yobe State including Damaturu, Potiskum and Gashu’a.
“I believe this is a major step to ensure that our teeming youths are empowered.
“Each of these centres will graduate 600 youths annually. We are going to support them with the necessary tools required.
“One of the centres is situated here in Yobe State University.
“We have approved to build a 250 lecture theatre which we cost about N500 million.
“The education sector is important to us; we will support them. We will continue to rebuild institutions and empower our people across this region.”
‘Youths must take advantage’
Speaking at the graduation ceremony of the ICT trainees at the Federal University Gashua, Alkali urged the youths to take advantage of the programme to maximise their potential.
The commission under his leadership, he vowed, is committed to empowering the youths and letting them realise their dream.
Addressing the graduates, he said: “It is said that the youths are the leaders of tomorrow, but you are the leaders of today and tomorrow.
“This is your time to take advantage of the ICT revolution and actualise your dreams.
“Under my leadership and my team at the North East Development Commission, we will ensure that we provide you with the best platforms to actualise your dreams.
“I will be the happiest person to see your success through this training that you have acquired.
“I want to hear success stories that you are using your skills in graphic and design to win big wedding contracts or smart tech engineer proficient in phone repairs.
“These are stories that we wish to be associated with at the commission.”
Interventions strategic, says VC
Yobe State University Vice Chancellor, Prof Mala Daura, described NEDC’s intervention in the education sector as strategic.
The former Vice Chancellor of the University of Maiduguri said: “There is no discipline today in the world over that can survive without ICT.
“This occasion is a big development for us at Yobe State University because we already have an ICT programmme running.
“Therefore the donation of this centre is a huge boost to our resources.
“The intervention is coming at the right time and we as a university will take good care of the facility and sustain it even beyond fifty years.
“In the past years we have been hearing about the Niger Delta Development Commission (NDDC) and today we have NEDC.
“This commission has come to stay and we have started seeing you physically on ground and I am sure we will continue seeing your impact on this institution down the ladder,” Prof Daura said.
Governor hails initiatives
Governor Mai Mala Buni was excited by the projects the commission is carrying out across the region since its establishment in 2017.
He spoke at the presentation of business starter packs to the graduands at the Federal University Gashua.
According to him, the interventions in education are in line with his administration’s objective in reversing the state from an educationally backward or disadvantaged state.
The governor, represented by the Commissioner for Higher Education, Science and Technology, Prof Muhammad Munkaila, said his administration at the inauguration in 2019 declared a state of emergency in the education sector as a bold step to tackle illiteracy in the state.
“Our government is giving greater priority to the education sector.
“We have from the beginning made education as one of our major priorities as a government by the declaration of a state of emergency in the education sector on the first day I was sworn into power as governor in 2019,” Buni said.
The governor directed the NEDC Focal Person in Yobe, Dr. Ali Abbas, to closely track and monitor all the beneficiaries to stop them from selling the starter packs, and to ensure they deploy them to enhance their livelihood.
Beneficiaries grateful
One of the beneficiaries, Amina Husseini, expressed appreciation to the NEDC and other stakeholders for empowering the youths to become self-reliant and entrepreneurs.
She promised to pay close attention to her trade.
“This is an opportunity that I will not take for granted.
“I will from this moment become more committed in my trade and ensure I make a good living from this skill in computer graphics and designs,” Amina said
As part of efforts to produce highly trained and dedicated teachers to feed the demands for Universal Basic Education, the Federal College of Education (Technical), Potiskum in Yobe State made the long list of beneficiaries of ICT centres from the NEDC.
The Provost of the College, Dr. Muhammad Madu Yunusa, while thanking the NEDC, also appealed to the commission for more capacity-building projects at the institution to enable them to produce quality teachers that will compete all over the world.
He said: “In line with that vision, there exists a close relationship between the College and the NEDC.
“As should be noted, the vision of this College is to become a centre of excellence in ICT, Science and Technical education to meet the 21st-century challenges.
“Without a doubt, the incubation of such training in this college was not a sheer coincidence but orchestrated to consolidate on the gains so far made by the College in providing Teacher education in the North East region and beyond.
“The organisation of such a high-demand ICT skills centre is generally the result of close cooperation among several institutions and individuals.”
He pledged that the College would continue to remain an ICT hub and promote the consolidation and streamlining of opportunities that ICT offers.
“We remain optimistic that the efforts to NEDC shall forever remain beneficial to the target population and the society at large,” Dr. Yunusa said.
Observers have hailed the commission for its initiatives towards achieving its lofty mission of rebuilding a region struck by over a decade of insurgency despite dwindling revenue.
They note that in less than five years, the NEDC has made modest progress in addressing some of the problems of the region as it embarks on its reconstruction, rehabilitation and resettlement mission.
One of the factors that determine the American elections is economic sentiment. It will not be different as Americans make their electoral choices in the 2022 midterm elections. The Foreign Press Centre (FPC) hosted a briefing on understanding U.S. elections. Two briefers from Rutgers University speak to the state of the U.S. economy and the influence it may have on American voters’ sentiments. One of them is Dr. James Hughes, Dean Emeritus, School of Planning and Public Policy at Rutgers University. United States Bureau Chief OLUKOREDE YISHAU, who was part of the session, captures Hughes’ points on what to expect in terms of the role of the economy in the midterm elections. Excerpts:
Starters
So baseline starting question: Where is the United States in the business cycle/economic cycle? Let’s start with a brief glance in the rear-view economic mirror. February 2020, 29 months ago, was the last peak of the U.S. business cycle. That’s the middle of the slide, shaded in yellow. It was the final month of a record-breaking 128-month-long economic expansion, which started way back in June 2009. By February 2020, we had record high job levels, record low unemployment rates, and ultra-low interest rates. Yet inflation was in full hibernation, not to be found. It was an unprecedented set of positive economic conditions.
But unfortunately, we have yet to invent a boom that lasts forever. Truth be told, expansions in the United States rarely die of old age. They rarely die in their beds. They’re usually murdered by the Federal Reserve sharply increasing interest rates to combat inflation, obviously, one of the most worrisome economic concerns of today. However, in February 2020, the record long expansion was done in by an unforeseen assassin: COVID-19. We experienced nothing less than a hyper speed economic plunge. We had a dramatic, draconian shutdown of the economy that caused a two-month loss of 22 million jobs across the country. Essentially, livelihoods were sacrificed to save lives, in health terms. But two months later, April 2020, marked the turning point: the technical end to the great contraction shaded in yellow in the slide. At that point, the restart button was hit, and the current expansion began.
The subsequent 26-month rebound from June 2022 is the last data point shaded in yellow in the slide. Between April 2020 and June 2022, total employment in the United States increased by 21.5 million jobs. So, in a little over two years, the nation recovered 97 per cent of the jobs lost during the recession – 97.7 per cent. The sustained recovery pattern (inaudible) is shown in this slide. Extraordinary record employment gains in the early months of the recovery – that’s the left side of the slide – were followed by strong, continued monthly gains through this past June. The employment increase in June was 372,000 jobs. Now, to put that number in perspective, that was more than double the average monthly gain experienced during the pre-pandemic record expansion. So employment growth is still going strong.
Unemployment
As a result, the unemployment rate plummeted the past two years. By June the unemployment rate was 3.6 percent, close to the lowest level in 50 years. Yet labour force shortages are inhibiting job growth as employers face a very significant struggle to find workers. “Help wanted” signs are still pervasive everywhere. Unfilled job openings are still at record levels. The last data point was April 2022 – unfilled job openings nationally totaled 11.4 million. And the 11.4 million unfilled job openings far exceeded the 6 million people who are unemployed and seeking work. So that is a record almost two unfilled jobs, actually 1.9 jobs, unfilled jobs, for each unemployed person seeking work – again, an unprecedented situation. This is the highest ratio in the 21-year history of the statistic – 1.9 jobs available for each unemployed person seeking work.
However, a basic paradox, a vast disconnect, the U.S. still has a very powerful, robust labour market; yet substantial consumer unease, substantial consumer dissatisfaction. The arrow in this slide shows that current consumer sentiment is at a historic U.S. low. Households appear to be the most depressed they have been since the University of Michigan began its consumer sentiment index in the 1950s. Essentially, consumers are saying that 2022 is the worst economy ever. Now that may be an overreaction, but other metrics do suggest a very worrisome economic situation. For example, gross domestic product, the nation’s total economic output, declined in the first quarter of this year and is forecast to decline again in the second quarter. And that economic metric is more consistent with consumer sentiment, and the danger is that sour consumer sentiment will cause a significant cut in consumer spending, which will bring on an economic slowdown and recession.
The Federal Reserve
So the Federal Reserve is closely watching consumer habits in determining how far it will need to go with raising interest rates to tame inflation, and inflation is soaring. In June, data released just this week, the U.S. inflation rate reached 9.1 per cent year over year, a 40-year high. Unfortunately, it’s eroding consumer buying power, savings, and wages. That has put even more pressure on the Federal Reserve to be more aggressive to slow price increases. It is already raising interest rates at the fastest pace since the 1980s. In June, it increased the benchmark rate by three quarters of a percentage point to try to combat the inflationary surge, and it will at a minimum match that increase later this month, and this will certainly slow demand and slow the economy.
One example of its impact is mortgage rates. The upward surge is evident in this chart, sharply increasing interest rate in 2022 for a 30-year fixed mortgage. And this has resulted in a slowing housing market. At the same time, for the first six months of this year the stock market has plunged by 16.6 per cent. So in the context of surging inflation, housing market difficulties, and sinking financial markets, it’s not surprising that consumer sentiment has soured.
So key question: Will moving the economy to a correction mode – and that’s what the Federal Reserve is attempting to doing and what – it is where we are today – will that ultimately lead to a recession mode? Or can the Federal Reserve engineer a soft landing? A soft landing is the process of shifting the economy to slow growth, approaching but avoiding a recession, and reducing inflation to the 2 percent level.
Unfortunately, the Fed has not had a good record in accomplishing soft landings during past rate-hiking cycles. During the last five instances when inflation peaked above 5 percentage, the Fed’s subsequent interest rate increases caused a recession. So the Fed’s current attempt to engineer a soft landing is going to be a very, very difficult task for them. Worst case scenario if they fail – now, I think it is well recognized that I’m really the only totally objective person in the north-eastern United States, and it is my objective forecast that around election day we will either be in a recession, or if technically not in a recession, it will certainly feel like a recession. The good news, however, is we are not going to slide into the economic abyss. So that’s my forecast, I’m sticking to it – until next work.
Income inequality
Yes. Yeah, income inequality, wealth inequality, has certainly increased during the past two years. One of the driving forces has been initially the boom in the stock market. And stocks are mostly owned by the wealthy in American society, so the ultra-low interest rates that we had before the current up cycle benefited the more affluent and the like because it drove money into the stock market. So the second part was – is the housing situation. The U.S. has a deficit in housing. We haven’t been producing enough shelter over the past decade, really, particularly in single-family units. So, affluent homeowners have benefited from an unprecedented rise in home prices, increasing their wealth position. Certainly, income inequality and disparities have gained a lot of traction over the past several years, particularly before the – 2022, when the economic situation changed. And I think an issue will be if people are worried about their own economic situation, what the future holds for them, they’re going to be focusing inward rather than focusing on broader society inequities.
The indicator of United States economy entering recession
Yeah, the organization that has risen up over decades to be the official arbiter of when we are in a recession or when we are in an expansion is the National Bureau of Economic Research, NBER. They’re located in Cambridge, Massachusetts. It’s a non-profit, nonpartisan organisation, and they have a business cycle dating committee comprising a number of economic experts.
Sometimes, it’s assumed that if you have two straight quarters of GDP decline, that’s a measure or a metric of when you’re in a recession. The dating committee says that’s not the case. They use a number of individual variables, metrics, and indicators to determine where we are in the business cycle – expansion, contraction. But unfortunately, they’re usually a year late. Sometimes we’re out of a recession before they tell us when we went into a recession and the like. But there’s no simple indicator or leading – and we do have an index of leading economic indicators, but it has not been very effective in predicting or forecasting recessions.
What’s sort of coincident – a coincident indicator is payroll employment. That’s very important, and that’s released the first Friday of every month. And so it’s a current indicator, relatively timely, and the like. That’s helpful, and again, that has been signalling strong growth recently. Another one would be an inverted yield curve, that is, when short-term interest rates become higher than long-term interest rates. That sometimes signals a recession, but that recession may be a long time coming. But it has been consistent in that the yield curve is inverted before a recession, but sometimes it’s a year later before the recession occurs.
So unfortunately, we look almost on a daily basis of what indicators come out and the like, and some are nongovernmental that are released in terms of credit card data by credit card companies and the like to predict various consumer spending patterns and the like. But truth be told, that’s what keeps economists and academic economists like me in business because there’s no easy way of determining when a recession will start.
Student loan debt, and effect the midterm elections
Oh, I think there are many, many individuals out there who are saddled with student debt, and if that debt were significantly reduced or eliminated, that would certainly be a very, very strong endorsement for President Biden and the like. The only negatives to that would be, really, what does that do to the national deficit and the like, but I don’t think people are worrying about the national deficit at present.
Ojo Emmanuel Ademola, a professor of Cyber Security and Information Technology Management has a rich teaching culture that cuts across several universities in Europe, America and Africa. The Nigeria’s first professor of Cyber Security is an official of the Christian Association of Nigeria (CAN) in the Diaspora. The proprietor of the Ademola Ojo Emmanuel Foundation is establishing the first-ever University of Professional Studies (UNIPRO) in Igbajo-Ijesa, Osun State. In this piece, he shares his perspective on the APC Muslim-Muslim ticket.
The 2023 general election in Nigeria is fast approaching, and the necessary politicking is nearing frenzied heights. The actors and gladiators are helming in and pressing their advantages. The primaries have been concluded, the parties have selected their respective candidates for the various offices, and the stage is set for the commencement of full campaigns.
I wish all the parties and their candidates’ luck in their various political desires.
However, I note that the decision of the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC) to field a Muslim-Muslim ticket for the 2023 presidential race has drawn heated reactions from many Nigerians. This is because, so far, APC is the ruling party, the most formidable party, the most likely party, with the most significant structure to win the election.
While most of the reactions were borne out of the desire to be partakers in the anticipated victory of the APC, others were borne of the desire to capitalise on the religious fault lines in the country and employ the same to demarket and weaken the ruling party, thereby boosting the chances of the opposition in the coming election.
But then, I acknowledge that some adverse reactions against the APC choice are borne out of genuine concerns from some people in a country where religion has been negatively employed as a divisive and rancorous factor when it should be a uniting factor.
Having said this, I have to weigh in here and state my position and beliefs on the Muslim-Muslim ticket of the APC.
First, I must state that Religion is a spiritual affair that should not become a political tool. In this, I note that the time has come for all Nigerians to rise to the urgent imperative to detoxify the religious content wrongly built into our politics and governance by ignoring every effort to interpret apparent political and governance issues along religious lines. There should be clear boundaries that separate politics from religion, and this must be clearly adhered to if Nigeria must record progress. There is no linking chain between them. So we should stop the penchant for using the religious microscope to examine clearly political issues and offer interpretations that continue to divide us and eventually pull the country down.
During elections, we are not required to elect leaders that will lead us to heaven but leaders that will employ all indices to chart our progress as citizens and the growth of Nigeria. Christian, Muslim, Traditionalist or any other belief should not matter in leadership selection. Countries that have made real, significant developmental strides have not bothered about the religion of their leaders. They have not elevated such to the very height of their priority during elections.
Before recently, the religious belief of occupiers of political offices in Nigeria was immaterial. Thus, Chief Obafemi Awolowo contested for presidency in the second republic with Chief Philip Umeadi on a Christian-Christian ticket while Dr Nnamdi Azikiwe ran with another Christian. Prof. Ishaya Audu in the same second republic without any fuss.
What’s more, the current President, Muhammadu Buhari, governed Nigeria as Military Head of State with his Deputy, a Muslim too, and many people didn’t even notice. One of the most successful regimes in Lagos was that of Lateef Jakande, and his deputy, Rafiu Jafojo, both were Muslims and Lagosians never cared. There are legions of similar cases, and no one tried to stoke the fires of intolerance, enmity, and anger because rightly. Nigerians knew that good governance, the ultimate reward for the right democratic choice, does not depend on whether the leader attends church or mosque.
So the furore being instigated mainly by opposition politicians against the choice the APC has made is as immaterial as it is needless in choosing the next President of Nigeria.
Again our constitution didn’t make any provision for religion as a pre-requisite for political office in Nigeria. Because it is unnecessary and clearly of no importance to governance, the laws of the land clearly treat religion as a non-issue in governance. So why should we use religious adherence as a prerequisite for leadership selection?
Besides all these syndicated religious hooplas, my interests are on who is most competent, qualified, capable and demonstrably equipped to lead Nigeria to developmental glory amongst the people jostling for the presidency.
This isn’t a difficult task because Asiwaju Bola Tinubu stands many poles ahead of the others presently in the ring. He is the most competent and has demonstrated impregnable knowledge of leadership and the basic requirements of governance far above all the others desiring to govern Nigeria.
Talking of competence. Asiwaju has Lagos as an unbeatable template; no other candidate in the race can either argue or contest. Today, Lagos remains the oasis that drives the country’s survival when other states have crumbled under poor leadership such that Lagos today offers a redemptive impetus to citizens of other states fleeing from the leadership tragedy in their respective states. From the solid foundation laid by Tinubu as Lagos Governor, between 1999 and 2007, Lagos has transformed from a ‘jungle’ which then President Obasanjo dismissed it then to the fifth largest economy in Africa and still growing exponentially-all thanks to Tinubu’s vision, competence and grip in governance, which none of the contenders to the Presidency has.
It gladdens the heart that his chosen running mate, Sen. Kashim Shettima, has an equally brilliant run as Borno Governor, and both raised equally competent successors who have continued their visions in both states. No other candidate and his running mate has a similar success story! What’s more, no one, not even the die-hard religious bigot and dedicated zealot, can point to any form of religious persecution Tinubu or Shettima or their successors did in Lagos or Borno to the advantage of Muslims and the disadvantage of Christians!
Again, Tinubu is perhaps, the country’s most successful talent hunter, with a redoubtable capacity to identify and poach the best brains for various tasks. This has gifted him with perhaps the most competent and dedicated discipleship among Nigerian leaders today. As Lagos Governor, he assembled the best team ever in any state in Nigeria to govern the state, and they had the best result ever. Shettima had the same record in Borno, and it was from such repertoire of leadership acumen that the wonder boy, Gov. Zulum, was poached from. Leadership is all about identifying talents and deploying them to deal with daunting challenges. Tinubu is Nigeria’s best here, and that is why Lagos is perhaps the biggest success story to have come out of Nigeria. We are equally seeing the wonders being done in Borno by current Gov. Zulum, which is a credit to Shettima’s own capacity to identify and poach the best talents for developmental tasks.
So a combination of Tinubu and Shettima promises to be a leadership record-beater that comes once in the lifetime of any nation.
Amongst all the candidates on display in Nigeria, Tinubu is the only one with proven technocratic competence acquired while working in such octopoidal multi-national company as Mobil both in the United States and Nigeria. He is the only one with a reputable record of working for very respectable international accounting and auditing firms. This accounts for his unbeatable record in Lagos and why he is the best hand, Nigeria can boast of to turn its fortunes around. None of the other contenders comes near this record in their work lives!
Among all the candidates, Tinubu is the only one that has a noble history of fighting for the present democracy. No other candidate has that history. Tinubu risked his life, sacrificed his resources, his comforts, etc., to lead the fight against the military and gift Nigeria with the present democracy. No other candidate did, so he is best qualified to lead Nigeria, having long been a stakeholder in the battle for a better Nigeria.
I just want to leave it at these few instances where Tinubu towers far and ahead of every other contender for the 2023 presidency and return to the vexed issue of religion which is where the other candidates seek to invest in to shore up their own sagging challenges.
Tinubu’s choice of a Muslim deputy is a purely political option he took. It was the only option left to him, given that as a Southern Muslim, he is a religious minority in the South. Given that his choice of deputy is informed by the need to boost his electoral chances (like every other candidate), he wouldn’t have chosen a deputy from among the Northern Christians, who equally are minorities in the North. This would have made both him and his deputy two minorities, and this would have impaired his electoral chances in a country where religion has been tuned to a tool for religious exploitation. So, insofar as we are dealing with politics and leadership. Tinubu’s choice is sound and the best option open to him.
But then, given the antecedent of Tinubu, a Muslim married to only one wife for over 40 years, whose wife is not only a Christian but a pastor, those mischievously shooting religious darts will hardly hit the target in their quest to smear Tinubu with their mischievous religious tar.
As the great development in Lagos recommends Asiwaju for the country’s leadership, his cosmopolitan, cultured and liberal attitude to religion makes the task of the religious bigots harder. Here was a Muslim governor who instituted the yearly thanksgiving by Christian leaders as an official tradition in Lagos! Here was a Muslim governor who not only handed schools back to the Christian missions but whose government partially funded those schools when they were returned to the missions!
Here was a Muslim governor with very close and enduring personal relationships with leading Christian leaders like Cardinal Okogie!
Equally, we have been overwhelmed by profuse and overwhelming testimonies by revered and leading Christian leaders on Sen. Shettima, flowing from the liberal and tolerant policies he carried out as governor. We have heard from the very leadership of CAN in Borno, who threw instant support to Shettima as soon as he was named as Tinubu’s running mate. We had heard and still hear from the very President of the Catholic Bishops Conference of Nigeria, Archbishop Ignatius Kaigama, who reiterated the position he made when Shettima was governor because of the policies of the former governor, which eschewed religious bias and intolerance.
With these, among several other compelling reasons, why should anyone or interest stoke fear, distrust, intolerance, and acrimony over these two liberalists, very competent and dedicated leaders, based on the religion they profess?
As I earlier said in this piece, choosing a president, his deputy or any other political leader, we are not choosing anyone to lead us to heaven. We are choosing leaders to tackle our problems and challenges, so whether they attend churches or mosques or worship in their ancestral shrines is very immaterial. Tinubu and Shettima emerged purely through the political process, using political criteria. God did not commission them to win souls for Him, which is the prerogative of religious leaders, so Nigerians will be shooting themselves in the leg if they allow bigots and charlatans to deceive them to employ religion to stymie their progress and future. Religion should be left to where it belongs.
As a Christian leader and pastor and a former official of CAN in diaspora, it makes no sense to me that some of my brethren are seeking to use religion to abort our best chance to improve the lots of our people. Why don’t they ask the faith of pilots before boarding planes to their various destinations? Why don’t they ask about the religious beliefs of drivers before boarding cars? Why don’t they ask the religion of doctors that attend to their health issues? Hypocrisy, purely misguided political hypocrisy! In recent years, I have seen the effect of the SUKUK bond, taken from the Islamic bank to fix our decrepit federal highways, which had left our roads far better than they were. I should have expected those zealots and bigots now desperately splashing religion all over to reject plying on these roads because they were fixed with loans from Muslim banks!
Concluding:
We should not forget that in 1993, Nigerians faced such similar scenario (though of lesser magnitude) when the late Chief MKO Abiola chose Alhaji Baba Gana Kingibe as his running mate. Religious zealots made frantic efforts to poison the political climate with similar hoopla and insipid propaganda as we have today. Nigerians ignored these evil gospels and voted massively across all states for the Muslim-Muslim ticket and gave Abiola and Kingibe an overwhelming pan-country mandate. It took the noxious act of then Head of State Ibrahim Babangida to annul this great wisp of fresh air callously, and the action nearly crumbled Nigeria.
Through Babangida’s unfortunate indiscretion, Nigeria lost a golden opportunity to deal decisively with religious bigotry-for that was what Abiola-Kingibe’s election was.
I expect Nigerians to rightly use the opportunity of the Tinubu-Shettima ticket to deal the final death blow to this religious ennui that clearly enchains our progress as a nation. I recommend we massively vote for the Tunubu-Shettima ticket firstly because it is the most competent, the most capable and the best equipped to govern Nigeria irrespective of whether the duo go to church or mosque. Secondly, voting for the Tinubu-Shettima ticket will put the final nail on the divisive religious politics that has been sowed in the Nigerian polity to divide and cause a perpetual crisis in Nigeria. It will fulfil the aborted resolve Nigerians took on June 12, 1993, to do away with the noxious infiltration of religion into our politics and governance.
In this second part of an investigation into the negative side of crude oil exploration and refining in Nigeria, Special Correspondent Gabriel Ogunjobi, reveals the effects of the about to take off Dangote Refinery on a Lagos fishing community.
LAGOS, NIGERIA
Idowu Abimbola was leaning on one of the moored boats, knitting new silk to fix a tangled fishing net. The sun had set and many of his fellow fishers had retired to their shelter.In his own case,he needed to tarry by the shore that dusk and fix his wrecked equipment.
He appeared frustrated by the hurdle that has become the nightmare of every fisher in Ibeju Lekki. When fishers cast the net into the ocean, they paddle their boats back to the shore and wait for a few hours or sometimes overnight — expecting that varieties of fishes would have been trapped on their return. This was the fishing culture for decades until dredging began on the Lekki water around 2019.
By December 2020, a lawmaker in the National House of Representatives had raised a motion alleging “an unprecedented dredging of the sea” by the Dangote Group and Lekki Port LFTZ.The dredging,the Rep claimed,was causing “unquantifiable erosion of the seashore, leading to destruction of building and fishing equipment and making fishing almost impossible.”
Aliko Dangote, 65, Africa’s richest man had embarked on a massive project: building the largest single-train refinery in the world estimated to cost $19.5 billion.
The refinery, built in a fit of pride, was meant for a period like this, when the nation experiences economic downturn from dwindling global fuel price and long-held fuel subsidy scandals. The Government-owned Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation has acquired a 20 per cent stake in the investment, hoping to end its gasoline imports through Dangote’s refinery. The refinery is complemented by a Fertilizer Plant and a private seaport for the receipt of all cargoes for the construction purposes.
With ships berthed near at the Lekki jetty, activities at the jetty and the oil refinery pose an environmental threat to the indigenous fishing communities near the Atlantic Ocean. The fish are disappearing, and the fishers’ shelters are being washed away by the Atlantic, displacing the low income-earners living on the shoreline. To these hundreds of victims, a refinery is a curse rather than a blessing.
OIL, YES, FISHING, NO!
The woes betiding the likes of Abimbola are a constant reminder of the lawmaker’s concern on the fishing community. The fisher’s had hoped to catch fish when he cast his net at the Lekki jetty axis of the Atlantic. As the net sank into the water, it caught a dredging bar buried underneath,and got entangled. By the time Abimbola managed to recover his net it had become dirty and useless. So, he paddled the boat back home. “Sometimes, we see the engineers dredging on the sea but we can’t say anything,” Abimbola complains.
A bundle of silk sells for N20,000. When Abimbola’s net was wrecked from that single expedition, it cost him more than N100,000 to procure five bundles. It is easier for fishers to run into debts with the dwindling economy of fishing business.
Back at the jetty where he narrated his ordeal, he is joined by a co-fisherman, Musemiu Safiriyu, who gave no more than a hint that their predicaments were double. Apart from their financial struggles with damaged boats and fishing nets, the climate change threatens housing in the community – and its impacts are aggravated by unregulated engineering works on Lekki water.
“Before now, if you were hungry, you just needed to fuel the boat with N1,000 and stay at the tip of ‘Olokun’ (the Yoruba lingo for the sea), your bucket would be full with fish to eat and be merry for days,” one of the women I met at the jetty on my second visit says, attempting to compare the old with the current situation.
Although Nigeria has an Atlantic coastline of 853km (530 miles), it remains Africa’s largest importer of foreign fish, with a demand for more than 3m metric tonnes each year. Some of the fishers bridging the demand gap are currently challenged by the nation’s glaring priority for oil refining.
The indigenous fishers say they now travel over 20 meters on the sea to be able to fish at all.
On my second day at the shore I met these women relaxing under the shade, there were black-coloured bowls of fish, half-full.
Another woman, Olasunkanmi Adelaja, says: “I was born into fishing over 50 years ago now. When our fathers were alive, the village Apaakin Oniyanrin was where we used to fish but we can’t do that there anymore. This year, we might have to leave our home because of the violence of the Olokun fast approaching .”
In the middle of our conversation someone came to break the news that ended our chat: Safiriyu, whom I had met the evening before, had gone missing on the sea.
He was found after a long haul. When I called him some days after, he told me his boat broke down in an unfamiliar path on the sea, making it difficult for people to come to his aid on time.
Fishers would not have to risk their lives paddling boats such long distances, if fish were within easy reach.
‘BURROWED HOMES’
When the ocean waves hurl violently at Apaakin, like other towns inside Ibeju where it is no longer possible to fish, it burrows through the coconut trees protecting the houses and pulls them down. Again, it rushes forward, collapsing the houses, mostly built of sand gathered at the shores and covered with palm fronts. The surge is no respecter of either the living or the dead.As it threatens human’s dwelling places, the graves are equally washed away.
In one of such turbulent moments, Orlando Oseni’s house was wrecked by the ocean tide in 2020. The septuagenarian says a sea rise of that magnitude is rare.
“It is no other thing than the construction works at that jetty,” he says, and adds: “as you can see, there are no boats here again because we moved all of them to the jetty since we cannot fish here again.”
His brothers’ houses were also affected but Oseni managed to rebuild his. Some residents have since relocated. Apaakin Town Hall is halved by the water as well, leaving the remainder for people to defecate in its rubble.
Oseni warned that there will be more collapses if “pillars are not built at the shore before the rainy season later in the year”.
“And we have told them but nothing is being done about our plight,” he worries.
Anthony Chiejina, the Chief Corporate Communications Officer of the Dangote Group told this newspaper that the company has no knowledge of the plights of the Ibeju Lekki fishing community. “Nobody has brought that complaint to us”, he said, before inviting the journalist for a media tour of the project site for “explanation of the processes”.
At the inception of the refinery project, Dangote Group had promised a climate-friendly refining but this investigation showed that the realities are in contrast to what the fishermen and women claim they have been experiencing.
Geographic Information System (GIS) investigation confirmed that the refinery activities are adversely affecting the communities.
As a result of this, to eke out a living has become a nightmare for the fishers, with heightened climate change threats in the last few years.
Construction of the Dangote Refinery began in 2016 with excavation and preparation of the site for further development. This preparation involves sand filling of the ocean basin, especially for the construction of a seaport. The sand filling was used to extend the coastal land surface into the Atlantic Ocean.
Sequel to this, the ocean shorelines continued to extend inland toward the coastal communities of Ibeju Lekki.
Leveling the ocean allowed the water to extend into the land, progressively redefining its shorelines. The Atlantic ocean’s boundaries have progressed inland to about 57 meters since 2015, the year before construction started. Between 2015 and 2018 the shoreline extended inland by 12 meters and between 2018 to 2022 it extended to an additional 45 meters.
Steve Trent, founder of the Environmental Justice Foundation, is alarmed by threats to the climate by the activities on the Atlantic.
“The ocean is the world’s largest active carbon sink and the greatest nature-based solution for climate change mitigation we have. It gives us every second breath, producing vastly more oxygen than all the world’s forests combined, and absorbs around a third of the CO2 we pump out. But this only applies to a healthy ocean, and currently, our marine ecosystems are under severe stress,” he told this reporter.
He added: “With fish populations plummeting around the world due to overfishing and harmful activities, we are not only jeopardising marine ecosystems, we are fuelling climate breakdown.”
This report was funded under Health of Mother Earth Foundation’s fossil politics programme
By Emma Elekwa, Onitsha; Bassey Anthony, Uyo and Chris Njoku, Owerri
How eight-year-old boy was swept away in Anambra
Flood victim rescued, hospitalized in Owerri
Residents groan as floods rage in Akwa Ibom communities
These are not the best of times for many communities in different parts of the country where the rainy season is wreaking havoc. From Lagos and Anambra states where the floods have claimed lives to Imo and Ebonyi states where homes are vehicles were destroyed and roads were washed away, it has been tales of sorrow and tears.
The development has heightened fears of more flood-impelled disasters ahead since the rainy is still far from ending.
Residents of Nkpor community in Idemilli North Local Government Area Anambra State were left in mourning penultimate Sunday after an eight-year-old boy was swept a gully by a combination of floods from the premises of Immaculate Hearts Sisters Convent and Our Ladies Industrial Centre.
The Nation gathered that the corpse of the deceased boy was not recovered until five days later at a location about half a kilometre away from the spot where he was swept into the gully with one of his hands broken.
The victim, identified as Izuchukwu, was said to be returning home with his mother around 7.30 pm when the incident occurred.
Narrating the incident, a resident of the area who identified himself as Daniel Egbo, said: “As the innocent boy and his mother approached the gully, which they had to pass through on their way home, he started running faster than his mother.
“The mother sensed danger and was calling him desperately to come back, but the more she shouted, the faster he ran until he reached the narrow part of the gully.
“As he made to jump over the gully, the surging flood swept his feet off and he plunged into it.”
Egbo added that the mother, who had a baby strapped on her back, attempted to jump into the gully to rescue her son but was held back by some youths. Otherwise, he said, the woman and the baby on her back would also have drowned.
Some sympathisers, who revealed that the family had earlier lost three members, blamed government for doing nothing about the deadly gully over the years, even if it is constructing a ring or box culvert to link the road to the streets.
A member of the community and former Chairman of the Idemili branch of Nigerian Bar Association, Mr Samuel Chukwukelu, accused successive governments of abandoning most roads in the community.
He said: “The contractor who was awarded the road project from Our Ladies Road through Uke Street to Attah Road, linking Nkpor/Umuoji Road, abandoned the project half way at the erosion prone area.
“The gully has increased in width and depth with the surging floods and has been converted to a refuse dump site by the residents.
“The boy’s death is very unfortunate and unwarranted because it could have been averted if successive governments had done the needful.”
The deceased boy’s father, Chinwike Mosolo, a vulcanizer from Ezeagu in Ebonyi State, told our correspondent in an interview that the ugly experience would remain unforgettable in his memory.
He said: “Life has been cruel to me and my wife, because we can’t understand why we have to lose three kids in the same way. My wife attempted suicide twice after we returned from where we went to bury our son, the latest victim of flooding.
“If not for the timely intervention of our neighbours who arrived at the scene promptly in the two occasions, she could have died.
On her part, the mother, Gloria, who was in shock, described the scenario that played out between her and her deceased son on that fateful day as a movie and a mystery.
She said: “I keep wondering how my son managed to break away from my grip on that night. The boy would have been alive if he had listened to my calls while he ran towards the erosion area. It was the same fate that had befallen my two other children as they also fell into the gully during rainfall on their way from school.
“My son, Izuchukwu, was everything to me since we had lost two of his older siblings. He told me he wanted to be a medical doctor and we assured him that we were going to help him to fulfill his dream. But look at what has happened. He died without fulfilling his dream.”
Gloria also lamented that her means of livelihood was under threat as the shop where she does tailoring was also affected by erosion.
She sobbed: “I am still in serious pains and shock at the moment.
“Even when I recover, there may not be anything to fall back on for now as the floods entered my shop and destroyed my sewing machines at the time we went to bury our son.
“My husband’s vulcanising work is also not thriving. We are pleading with kind-hearted individuals to come to our aid.
“We are passing through a traumatic period and need help. We hope that society will help to give us a sense of belonging.
“The classmates of Izuchukwu came to commiserate with us after we returned home from where we buried him.”
Visitor to Owerri in close shave with death
But it was not only in Anambra that flood wreaked havoc. In Imo, a young lady from Abi State identified simply as Ada Adiele only escaped death by a whisker after she was rescued from a ditch where she was swept into by a raging flood resulting from a heavy downpour in Owerri, the state capital.
An eyewitness said the victim, who was being treated at Life Spring Hospital, Owerri where she was revived, was said to have fallen into the ditch after the road was submerged.
According to the Acting Commandant of the Nigeria Security and Civil Defence Corps (NSCDC) in Imo State, Mr Chukwuemeka N. Odinmba, the victim was identified with the aid of her Zenith Bank ATM card which had fallen off her hand.
Odinmb said: “The lady was a visitor to Owerri, the capital of Imo State. The flood carried her all the way from the popular IMSU Junction to the NSCDC junction where some personnel saw her struggling in the flood and joined other good-spirited Nigerians to rescue her.”
The flood had also destroyed many structures and property worth millions of naira at Works Layout. It destroyed culverts that connected adjoining streets with other streets in the area and caused panic among residents.
Many edifices which previously housed many tenants are now on the verge of falling inside the gullies created by the erosion caused by heavy rainfall.
At Akwakuma area of Owerri North and Ihiagwa and Nekede areas of Owerri West, many people forced to stay indoors as flood took over the communities. The flood also took over the residential areas. Inhabitants of the area were seen swimming through the flood to access their houses while others were scooping water out of their homes.
The story is not different in such areas as MCC Road, Urratta. Residents, who lamented the situation, said it took them hours to leave their homes for work.
Flood wreaks havoc in Ebonyi
Ebonyi State has not been spared the fury of floods. Ogwuma Edda community in Afikpo South Local Government Area of Ebonyi State, recently suffered yet another landslide that saw economic trees, domestic animals and other valuables swept away by the natural disaster.
Some of the trees and other items uprooted by flood were deposited on the road, leading to the community being cut off from the rest of the world. The blockade has resulted in untold hardship for the people who now have to take longer routes to and from the town. Consequently, commercial motorcyclists have doubled their fares.
The foundations of many buildings were left exposed by landslides that forced the owners and inhabitants of such buildings to vacate them. Our correspondent gathered that no fewer than 20 people were sacked from their homes as a result of the natural disaster.
Fortunately, no life was lost as the people were said to have noticed the incident before it occurred. It was said that the people whose houses were destroyed by the landslide had left home immediately they noticed serious cracks on the buildings.
Mr Anya Nnachi, whose storey building is on the verge of collapse, said he had been forced to move his family out. He has also said he had moved all his property out of the house on whose walls cracks were noticeable.
He said: “You see this house? I wish to take you round it. This building is adversely affected because we have moved all our belongings from the building. We no longer live here.
“We are human beings, so if we sense danger, we have to run away. There are so many cracks inside the building.
“It was on Saturday night that we noticed that the wall was sliding. It fell by itself. No fewer than four houses were removed. You can still see the blocks there.
“Ordinarily in Edda, we have the living room and the kitchen. So, those ones were kitchen. It is only those blocks you can see there from the building. But the building was not roofed. It was supposed to be roofed this August before the landslide.
“The first time this occurred was in 2007. That was when this road was constructed by Brass Construction Company when all these retaining wall was built.
“What we saw is that since it was not filled up in that 2007, there was also landslide and the land filled up itself but some areas did not.”
Nnachi traced the genesis of the landslide to 2007 when the state government constructed the road. He claimed that prior to that, the community had never experienced any landslide.
He said: “After the 2007 landslide, another one happened in 2015 at the other side. But this one is more serious than others. This one is bigger. You can see the other compound was affected.
“This one is more serious. It is just that the land is trying to refill itself. And at the end of it, you will see water springing up from the holes created by the landslide.
“What it means is that there is water under the valley. Our forefathers lived here and there was no record of this.
“This road was the other way. It was during the construction that they delved into the other part of the road. The side they delved into needed to be filled back.
“Like ever since this one happened, there has not been another case. It was the slit made to the hilly part during the construction that made the road constructors cut part of it down before erecting the retaining walls.
“The only thing we know was done wrong as human beings is that after retaining walls, they should have filled it back. The NEMA people have been here.
“We told them that there are drainages in other compounds and the water is falling this way. What should be done is that they should create more drainage so that in the event of flood, it will follow the drainage.”
A teacher in the community, Okoro John Onu, lamented the hardship the incident has caused his job and the economy of the area.
“I am a teacher serving at Umunna Comprehensive Secondary School. Since June 27, 2023, we have been finding it very difficult to come to school because those of us serving here live at Owutu, Ezietiti, and we find it difficult to come up to Umunna because of the incident.
“Since that day we have been going round through Amigbo to Nguzu and down to Umunna. It is costing us a lot.
“Before the incident, I spent N400 to and fro. But now, I spend up to N800 to get to the school. My prayer is that God should touch the government to come to our aid. The government should help us clear the way to ease our movements,” Onu said.
A commercial motorcycle operator, Chukwu Johnson, who hails from Ekoli-Edda, said the landside has affected his earnings.
He said: “I am a cyclist. This incident has been a problem to us. We have been suffering it for about two weeks. Pedestrians find it difficult to pass the road, not to talk of motorcycle and vehicles.
“It has been affecting my daily income because we no longer get enough passengers. It has been a problem to my family and other people. It made us to hike the fare.
“We used to convey passengers for N100; now it is N200. We doubled the fare because of the bad nature of the road now. I was making up to N3,000 before but I find it difficult to realize N1,500 now.”
The monarch of the community, HRH Dickson Oboh Okorie, also bemoaned the effects of the incident on the community.
He said: “At Umunna Ogwuma village two weeks ago, we had serious erosion after a heavy downpour. We called it an earthquake, but when the educated ones came and visited me, they said it was a landslide.
“What pained us most is that one house was submerged. Also, all economic trees and economy of the community was adversely affected.
“What we did was to call for the Chairman of the local government area’s intervention. This is the third time we are experiencing this in this community with enormous damage.
“You can see how both up and down sides of the valley were affected. The landslide has blocked the road. There is no movement in that area again. I had to trek out from the village as I was coming for this meeting,” he said.
President General of the area, Onuoha Ama, lamented that the community had been cut off from the rest of the local government and the state.
He called on government to come to their rescue by clearing the blocked road and carrying out works that would ensure there is no reoccurrence.
“It has affected my community and other passersby. There has been no road there since the incident occurred. To attend this meeting, we had to cross that place on our legs to the other side before we got a bike. We have told the House of Assembly members and the Chairman of the local government area about the incident.
“So many things were affected. Like that road is being avoided by travellers. If you are going to Abakaliki now, it is either you trek or go through another community.
“Two buildings were destroyed. One was washed away while the other one had its foundation destroyed.
“The people living in the buildings that were affected have vacated them. More than 20 persons from different families were sacked from the affected area.”
Residents groan as flood rages in Akwa Ibom
Residents of some communities in Akwa Ibom State have been groaning after flood destroyed their roads and left them displaced by weeks of heavy downpour. Urua Ekpa, IBB Way, Atiku Abubakar and Ikpa Road, all in Uyo, are among the areas badly affected by flood.
Residents of Health Centre Road in Ikot Udoma, Mkpok community in Eket Local Government Area are also affected. Houses around the health centre area were submerged by flood while property worth millions of naira was destroyed.
In an inspection tour organised by some concerned youths of Eket in company of our correspondent, it was discovered that the major reason for the flood is the poor execution of the jobs done by contractors that handled the roads in the area.
The drainage system built for the roads are too shallow to channel the volume of water that flows from Idua Road into the ravine located around the broken part of Mkpok Road linking other parts of Eket.
Mostly affected is a building owned by Prince Emmanuel Edem whose entire compound was ravaged by the flood with property destroyed.
Speaking with our correspondent, Edem said that when the road around his house was being constructed by an NDDC contractor, he called the attention of the construction firm to the anomalies he discovered but was rebuffed by the site engineer of the company.
He called on the state government to come to the rescue of residents of the area through remedial attention to avoid the looming disaster as the Meteorological Agency of Nigeria has predicted heavy rains in coming weeks.
It will be recalled that a section of Mkpok Road linking other parts of Eket, along the Health Center Road, was damaged by heavy rainfall, prompting the state governor, Udom Emmanuel, to direct the state’s Ministry of Works to immediately reconstruct the damaged portion of the road.
The Council Chairman of Eket Local Government, Mr. Akaniyene Tommey, applauded the swift and timely response of the state government towards the unfortunate collapse of Mkpok Road due to a heavy downpour.
Tommey expressed gratitude to the governor during a visit to the collapsed portion of Mkpok Road and other erosion affected sites in company with the Commissioner for Environment and Solid Minerals, Sir Charles Udoh, and the Managing Director of Bulletine Construction Company, Chief Faysal Harb.
The council boss thanked the governor for keeping to his promise to tackle the collapsed road as soon as his attention was drawn to it.
Also fielding questions, the Commissioner for Environment and Mineral Resources, Sir Charles Udoh, apologized to the residents of the local government for the unfortunate incident caused by the ever increasing amount of rainfall lately.
He declared that all the necessary arrangements had been made for work to begin on the affected portion of the road, including that of Ediam and Umana Ndon Road, with immediate effect.
The Commissioner further assured that the project would be perfectly executed in a way that would prevent future reoccurrence while also revealing that the state governor, Mr. Udom Emmanuel, has executed more ecological projects than his predecessors.
What started as a mere political rift in Oyo State between Governor Seyi Makinde and his erstwhile deputy, Rauf Olaniyan, recently ended in the removal of the latter from office. YINKA ADENIRAN chronicles the events that led to the parting of ways among two erstwhile associates
Oyo State now has a new deputy governor. The state Chief Judge, Munta Abimbola, on Monday, July 18, swore in Bayo Lawal, the same day Rauf Olaniyan was sacked by the House of Assembly. Political watchers saw it coming, but none ever anticipated the mannerism, power play, politicking and swiftness deployed in carrying out the mission.
The removal also put to rest the speculation and denial by the lawmakers of preconceived plans to remove Olaniyan after years of suspected rift and disharmony between Governor Seyi Makinde and Olaniyan. Until the swearing in, Lawal was the chairman of Oyo State Housing Corporation. He was also recently announced as the running mate of Governor Seyi Makinde for the 2023 governorship election.
The swearing in of a new deputy governor
The swearing in and oath of office was held at the Executive Chamber of the Governor’s Office, Agodi Secretariat, Ibadan, Oyo State. The event followed the removal from office of former Deputy Governor Olaniyan, after members of the Oyo State House of Assembly adopted the report of a seven-man panel set up by the chief judge to investigate Olaniyan. The panel, in the report, said Olaniyan was guilty of all allegations, which include gross misconduct, insubordination, financial recklessness, abandonment of duties, among others, levelled against him.
The swearing in had in attendance top government functionaries, including the Speaker, Adebo Ogundoyin, who led other principal officers, service commanders, party chieftains, and many other stakeholders. In a brief remark at the event, Governor Makinde said Lawal was chosen as a result of the successes he achieved in the capacity he had served under the current administration. He said to his administration, the reward for hard-work is more work, noting that the position of the Deputy Governor is that of trust; while announcing some responsibilities and ministries that would be under the watch of the new deputy governor.
Makinde said: “Against social media reports, out new deputy governor is not 76 years old as erroneously reported. Your new position is evidence that you excelled in your previous position. The reward for hard-work is more work and that is why we are giving you more task. The position of the Deputy Governor is a position of trust and our masters are the people of the state.
“Let me encourage you to put the interest of the good people of Oyo State first. You will continue to supervise the housing corporation even from your position as the Deputy Governor. Oyo State Road Maintenance Agency will also be under your direct supervision. The Ministry of Justice will also be under your directive, having served as the Attorney General and Commissioner for Justice of the state in time past.”
How it all began
Trouble started on Monday morning when the lawmakers, during its plenary, presented the report of the panel. It could not be confirmed when the report was submitted to the Assembly. The panel, which was set up on Thursday July 14 started and finished its work in five days out of the three month maximum lifespan given the members. Heavy security presence was observed at the House of Assembly complex with many security patrol vans stationed at the entrance and strategic locations around the complex.
Twenty-three lawmakers of the ruling People’s Democratic Party (PDP) attended the plenary. Eight lawmakers on the platform of the opposition All Progressives Congress (APC) boycotted the Monday plenary. It was gathered that the panel began its sitting immediately after it was inaugurated, Thursday July 14 and sat all through the weekend.
The Deputy Governor had alarmed on Friday July 15 that he received an invitation letter to appear before the panel about 15 minutes to the time of the sitting. A source hinted that the panel, against the announcement that it would sit in the House of Chiefs, held the sitting in a private facility within the House of Assembly complex. The lawmakers, after announcing the removal of Olaniyan, went on a short recess indicating however that the office cannot be left vacant. Reconvening about thirty minutes later, the House presented a nomination letter from Governor Makinde communicating the name of Lawal as a replacement for Olaniyan. The House reconvened at about 12:15PM.
The speaker, Ogundoyin, while reading the letter from the Governor, said it was in response to an earlier letter sent by the House to the Governor, dated July 18, informing him of the removal of Olaniyan from office. Defending the nomination, the Majority Leader of the House, Sanjo Adedoyin, said the nomination should be favourably considered, approved and adopted in view of Lawal’s antecedents in contributing to the progress of the state. Seconding the motion, Kazeem Olayanju, (Irepo/Olorunsogo State Constituency) urged the House to confirm Lawal as the new Deputy Governor of Oyo state.
In his remarks, Ogundoyin put the nomination to a voice vote, which went the way of the “ayes,” signifying that Lawal has been approved as the Deputy Governor of the state. The House later adjourned till Thursday 21st of July, 2022.
Highpoints of the report that nailed Olaniyan
A source who is in the know of things said the highlight of the report that nailed Olaniyan bordered on corruption allegations. “A witness (PW2), named AbdulJelil Adekunle Kareem, confirmed to have written a letter/petition, dated 31st January 2022, to the OYHA vide the Honorable Speaker and the petition was admitted and tendered as exhibit P3, which detailed his complaints against the (former) Deputy Governor. He confirmed that his company, AYOD Nigeria LTD, secured a contract with Oyo State Government but the respondent (Deputy Governor) has been on his neck on the contract sum not allowing him to execute the contract but forcing and coercing him to divert the contract sum to his private pocket.
“The witness confirmed payment of cash of N2,750,000,00 and N3,500,00,00 and another N4,000,000,00 to the Deputy Governor’s brother (one Mutaliu) on his instruction. He again informed the panel of the (former) Deputy Governor’s intimidation, blackmail and harassment consequent upon his refusal to further part and agree to the diversion of the contract sum awarded to his company AYOD Nig Ltd to the private pocket of the (former) Deputy Governor.
“The same PW2 further informed the panel that the contract for the construction of the Deputy Governor’s lodge could not be duly executed consequent upon his insistence to personally collect the sum of N40,000,000,00 meant for the purchase of furniture for his lodge into his private pocket. The witness said this caused the non-completion and execution of the contract. He also informed the panel of other harassment, threat to his life and instigation of his detention by the EFCC at the instance of the (former) Deputy Governor.
“PW3 Samuel Adegboyega Badejo, the Director General Protocol to the Executive Governor of Oyo State who tendered Exhibits P4, P5, P6A, P6B, P6C, P6D, P6E, P6F, P6G, P6H, P7A, P7B, P7C, and P7D confirming messages forwarded to the Deputy Governor to attend events, occasions and state functions on the instructions of the State Governor but he refused and this amounted to insubordination. The PW1 was the Clerk of the Oyo State House of Assembly, Mrs Yetunde Oludara Awe, who came to testify to the petition signed by 23 members of the Assembly on allegations of financial recklessness and abuse of office, amongst others. There was no cross examination of the witnesses as the Deputy Governor did not attend the panel sitting nor send a counsel.”
From petition to removal
Twenty-three members of the House of Assembly, on June 15th, had levelled five allegations against Olaniyan. They wrote and signed the petition, which was read during the plenary. According to the petition, the lawmakers’ allegations against the former Deputy Governor include gross misconduct, abuse of office, financial recklessness, abandonment of office and official duty and insubordination and other offences.
Reacting after the petition was read by the Clerk of the House, Yetunde Awe, the Speaker of the House, Ogundoyin, said the petition meets the two-third requirements to initiate the process. He added that the House would give the former Deputy Governor a seven days’ grace period to respond to the allegations, adding that failure to do so can lead to the commencement of impeachment move. The seven days’ window of response took immediate effect and lapsed on Wednesday June 22. The petition was signed by the PDP lawmakers.
Shortly after the impeachment notice was served on him, Olaniyan was said to have responded three days later, four days before the deadline. He, however, went a step further as he, through his counsel, Chief Afolabi Fashanu (SAN), dragged the House of Assembly; Speaker Ogundoyin and the Clerk to court over the impeachment move against his client. But, an Oyo State High Court, sitting in Ibadan on Thursday July 14, dismissed the case, which bothers on the procedures adopted by the members of the State House of Assembly to remove Olaniyan from office.
Justice Ladiran Akintola, who presided over the court, ruled that the lawmakers and all the defendants have not erred on the procedures taken. While delivering judgment, Justice Akintola ruled that the process of removal of one from an office and originating summons filed by the claimant were purely legislative and not judicial, according to the 1999 Constitution. He said the role of the speaker was administrative in the Constitution; while the allegations were clear enough for the claimant to understand.
Akintola said he validated the process initiated by the House of Assembly, having carefully considered the originating summons, counter affidavits by the defendants, written addresses and others. He said “There is nowhere that the speaker is involved as an initiative but an administrative; the issue raised by the claimant against the defendant are resolved against the claimant. No proceedings of the House can be entertained in any court; therefore, the claimant’s case is accordingly dismissed,” he said.
Not satisfied with the judgement, the former Deputy Governor, in what could be described as a pre-emptive move, immediately filed an appeal at the Appeal Court – less than an hour after the judgement was delivered. Reacting to the judgement, counsel to the defendants, Otunba Kunle Kalejaiye said Court only restated the position of the law on the matter, adding that the issue of removal is a legislative affair and when the court can only step in is if the legislators step out of the constitutional provisions.
Kalejaiye said: “Like I said in the court, there are eight steps to be taken in the removal. There is nothing known as impeachment under our laws; it is only removals. So, there are eight steps to be taken and it is only the first step that has been taken. It is incorrect to refer to removal of a governor, a deputy as criminal proceedings; it is not. There are steps established under the Constitution for parties to be heard and we will ensure that nobody is denied his constitutional right.
“The court has spoken; the house of Assembly moves ahead. The House of Assembly has been approved to have done the right thing by the claimant. The court said there are circumstances where it will intervene. In this situation, the circumstances have not been fulfilled and that the notice of impeachment given substantially complies with the provision of the Constitution.”
While reacting to the judgement, Chief Fashanu expressed optimism that the Chief Judge would consider the notice of appeal and application for the stay of execution before the Court before going ahead with the setting up of a seven-man investigation panel as directed by the House of Assembly.
The seven-man investigative panel
The CJ inaugurated the panel same day. The lawmakers had on July 6th during plenary directed the Chief Judge to set up a seven-man panel to investigate the former Deputy Governor over allegations of gross misconduct. This directive was given despite an order of the court on the Assembly to maintain status quo on the impeachment proceedings. The court had adjourned till the same day to hear the originating summons and interlocutory injunctions brought by Olaniyan.
But, a week later, shortly after the court dismissed Olaniyan’s case and filed the appeal, the CJ inaugurated the panel, which was chaired by Chief Kayode Christopher. Other members of the panel include: Arc. Adebisi Soyombo, Chief Lawal Adekunle Dauda, Princess Olanike Olusegun, Rev Fr. Patrick Ademola, Chief Mrs Wuraola Adepoju (JP) and Alh. Tirimisiyu Akewusola Badmus.
Barely five days after it was inaugurated, the panel submitted its report to the Assembly. According to the report, Olaniyan was found guilty of all the allegations levelled against him, while also recommending his removal. The recommendations created the needed basis for the lawmakers to act and remove Olaniyan from office with effect from July 18, 2022.
Reactions and implications for the elections
In a swift reaction to the removal and subsequent swearing in of a new deputy governor, Olaniyan’s counsel accused the CJ of breaching his oath of office by ignoring the service of notice of appeal and application for injunction pending appeal when he proceeded to constitute an investigation committee.
Fashanu, who described the committee set up by the CJ as a charade that cannot stand the test of time, said the move is against established law and practice. He also accused the members of the panel of being appointed and paid to do what he described as “botched jobs,” adding that the effort is contrary to good conscience. The SAN had, last week Thursday July 14, filed a notice of appeal and an application for stay of execution of the judgement by the court presided over by Justice Akintola, which dismissed the case filed by Olaniyan. He filed the appeal barely one hour after the judgement was delivered.
In the same token, the governorship candidate of the All Progressives Congress, Senator Teslim Folarin, described the impeachment of Olaniyan as unlawful, saying that the move contradicted respect for rule of law. He called on the National Judicial Council (NJC) to sanction the CJ for “breaching oath of his office by ignoring service of notice of appeal and application for injunction pending appeal when he proceeded to constituted investigation committee” that investigated Olaniyan.
For about three years, there has been gap in the relationship between Makinde and Olaniyan even though none of the parties made any public statement to confirm a rift. It was gathered from sources that Olaniyan had been left out of the scheme of things by both the Governor and the party for years, which made him absent at many state functions. The situation got worse with Olaniyan resigning his membership of the ruling People’s Democratic Party, switching political allegiance to the APC.
The decampment followed obvious insinuations that Makinde may not run for a second term with Olaniyan as deputy. Olaniyan made the public declaration in his private office in Ibadan during a press conference on Sunday June 5. The decampment put to rest years of speculations surrounding the political disharmony between Governor Makinde and Olaniyan. Despite the rift, the duo both attended a live media chat at the state-owned Broadcasting Corporation of Oyo State (BCOS) after which they also sat side-by-side at the final burial ceremony of the late Alaafin of Oyo, Oba Lamidi Adeyemi in Oyo town on Saturday, June 14. It was the last public function the duo both attended.
However, Olaniyan while announcing his new party, said despite his dumping the umbrella party, he still remains the Deputy Governor as he did not resign the job that he was sworn in to do on May 29, 2019. He said the only thing that has changed is in political matters, adding that he is leaving the PDP with all his supporters from across the state. Olaniyan added that the news of the decampment is also in response to the yearnings and aspirations of his supporters who have been asking what the next line of action would be.
No doubt, the news jolted the ruling party who fired back at Olaniyan that he should do the honourable thing by leaving the mandate of the party even if he chooses to go to another party. The situation got worse when Makinde, through the Secretary to the State Government, Olubamiwo Adeosun, gave a directive ordering that Olaniyan’s office be moved to the Ministry of Environment. The development, according to political watchers, would no doubt shape the forthcoming general elections as Makinde and especially members of the state Assembly seeks re-election. While some think the development may divide Makinde’s support from Oke Ogun zone; others think the sack of Olaniyan would only have minimal or no effect on the forthcoming elections since the replacement, Lawal, is also from the zone. As it stands, the fate of the sacked Olaniyan lies with the Court when legal calendar resumes by September as the Oyo State judiciary is currently on annual vacation.
The Lagos State Government has unveiled a mobile floating clinic to boost access to medical care and provide quick medical emergency response on the waterways. CHINYERE OKOROAFOR reports that this gesture will both expand access to emergency healthcare for water travellers as well as residents in riverine communities
As part of efforts to increase access to prompt, qualitative and efficient healthcare services on the waterways and riverine communities, the Lagos State Ministry of Health and the Lagos State Waterways Authority (LASWA) have unveiled a mobile medical care facility called ‘Floating Clinic Boat.’ The clinic boat, a floating medical treatment facility, is essentially for inland waterways medical emergency and riverine communities’ medical outreach services.
It is described as a Mono Hull Boat with 200HP x 2 capacity, made of fiberglass and equipped with four medical observation beds, a medium sterilisation unit, o2 bottle, gauge, infusion stand, and foldable stretcher and a fully kitted first aid box. The floating clinic boat is compartmentalised into four sections: the wheelhouse (for captain and crew), observation room (for patients), doctor’s office and nurses’ station, and reception. It also has marine safety equipment, including life jackets, fire buckets, life buoy, life rat fire extinguisher and nautical lights, and navigational equipment like Garmin ecomap, compass, VHF radio accessories and siren.
At the unveiling and inspection of the boat clinic, Permanent Secretary, Lagos State Ministry of Health, Dr Olusegun Ogboye, said the idea behind the floating clinic was to help provide first aid, medical emergency care and basic healthcare services at accident scenes on the inland waterways and riverine communities. He said: “The floating clinic mainly deals with emergencies on the waterways and provides outreach services to riverine communities. It is part of the initiative by the Ministry of Health to ensure that we extend our medical and ambulance service to the waterways, remote riverine communities and areas that can only be accessed by water. It is also an example of a partnership between different government agencies; the boat belongs to LASWA but will be operated by the Ministry of Health.”
Measles, COVID-19 vaccination to benefit
On June 15, Governor Babajide Sanwo-Olu announced the commencement of the 2022 Integrated Measles Vaccination Campaign for children aged 9 to 59 months. He said about five million children were targeted during the 16-day campaign. Referencing this, Ogboye said the facility would be deployed for the ongoing integrated measles and COVID-19 vaccination campaign in riverine communities and waterways across the state, He added that it is part of a plan initiated by the Sanwo-Olu administration to ensure that emergency services in Lagos are ramped up to reduce response time.
His words: “This is a strong partnership between LASWA and the Ministry of Health. LASWA has provided the boat, the crew and the gas to run the boat; and the Ministry of Health will provide the human resources and medical consumables for health care provision. It is part of a plan that Mr. Governor has initiated to ensure that emergency services in Lagos are ramped up and that we can respond quickly to emergencies.
“This is the beginning of the initiative. There is an intention to expand, scale up and integrate our ambulance services; our ambulance boats, mobile intensive care units and transport ambulances. It is something that we have planned. That is why we are starting with one boat, and we are going to expand. It is a sustainable idea; we already run ambulance services, we are only expanding to include the waterways, and we have the human resources to run it.”
Personnel, modus operandi
The Permanent Secretary noted that there would be a minimum of two medical personnel on board the floating clinic who will run shifts at any time. He added that citizens in riverine communities could access the floating clinic by dialling the Lagos State Emergency numbers. “Once you contact the emergency numbers, the clinic will be deployed. LASWA can also deploy the clinic during an emergency response on the waterways. He said that if there is a call about an emergency on the waterways, remote and riverine areas, the emergency process will be activated.”
Speaking in the same vein, the General Manager, LASWA, Mr. Damilola Emmanuel, noted that the initiative would further add to the integrated emergency and rescue system being put in place by LASWA to ensure the safety of commuters and the well-being of citizens of riverine communities.
“As you know, for us at LASWA, we have been gradually building emergency and rescue efforts and slowly seeing how the safety on the waterways keeps improving year after year. This is just another initiative to further add to the integrated emergency and rescue system because we will have our core emergency and response boat in our jetties along with the soon-to-be-launched control room.
“If you noticed, I used the word integrated because apart from the floating clinic, which will be attending to emergencies, we are going to have the core emergency team, which will be made up of divers, boat captain and medics on the core rescue boat which LASWA will provide,” he said.
Also, the Senior Special Assistant to the Governor on Health, Dr Oreoluwa Finnih, stated that one of the core tasks of the floating clinic boat is medical outreach services to riverine communities to provide primary health care services. These include immunization, disease prevention and health promotion services to citizens. “Most people have the impression that Lagos is a completely urban city, but for us, we realise that Lagos has a lot of communities along the waterways which are not necessarily connected to the city. Mr. Governor, recognising this, has directed that medical services be taken to these areas as part of the mandate to achieve universal health coverage. When this initiative was brought to his attention, this was one of the factors that led to the quick acquisition of the boat to bridge the identified gap in health access,” she explained.
History of hospital ships and floating hospitals in other countries
Hospital ships possibly existed in ancient times. The Athenian Navy had a ship named Therapia, and the Roman Navy had a ship named Aesculapius, their names indicating that they may have been hospital ships. The earliest British hospital ship may have been the vessel named Goodwill, which accompanied a Royal Navy squadron in the Mediterranean in 1608 and was used to house the sick sent abroad from other ships. The Royal Navy institutionalised the use of hospital ships during the first half of the nineteenth century. Hospital ships were generally superior in their standard of service and sanitation to the medical provision available at the time for convalescent soldiers.
The first ships equipped with genuine medical facilities were steamships HMS Melbourne and HMS Mauritius, staffed by the Medical Staff Corps and providing services to the British expedition to China in 1860. In Africa, checks showed that there is no floating clinic in any African country except by a non-governmental organisation, Mercy Ships, which sails from one African country to another after months of docking with its floating hospital called Africa Mercy.
Africa Mercy is the world’s largest charitable floating hospital run by an international charity named Mercy Ships. It has five state-of-the-art operating rooms and advanced equipment to help make fast and accurate diagnoses. With eight decks, the floating hospital had five operating theatres with modern medical care, free of cost to patients who are often crippled, disfigured or blind. During the emergence of Covid-19, a UK cruise firm named Saga offered two ships as floating hospitals.
The owners of the two giant cruise ships offered them as floating hospitals to help deal with the coronavirus crisis. The luxury ships could provide space for more than 2,600 patients in separate cabins and have on-board medical facilities. They are the 37,000-tonne Saga Sapphire and the brand-new 58,000-tonne Spirit of Discovery, which docked in the Thames at Tilbury, Essex, this week.
Rivers and Delta are two of the nine oil-producing states in the Niger Delta. Like in many instances, oil exploration and the situation of refinery have unleashed environmental catastrophe on oil bearing communities. This investigation by Special Correspondent Gabriel Ogunjobi, digs into year of unresolved injustice of oil spills in the oil producing areas and what many observers see as the health impacts and economic sabotage resulting from oil exploitation.
THE AFFLICTED PEOPLE OF OGONI CLEAN-UP
Friday Kpeloi, seated with his arms folded, was quiet in the midst of his two colleagues as they narrated how their land, water and atmosphere were contaminated by oil pollution. The other two top activists of the Movement for the Survival of the Ogoni People (MOSOP) were Lazarus Tamana and Pastor Christian Lekova Kpandei. The movement’s pioneer, Kenule Beeson Saro-Wiwa was hanged by General Sani Abacha with eight other activists in 1995 despite international outcry. They had sought justice for their people who suffered the consequences of crude oil mining in Nigeria.
Described as the world’s second worst environmental catastrophe after the Gulf of Mexico oil spill, the Ogoni communities split across Eleme, Gokana, Kana and Tia Local Government Areas of Rivers State were over flooded in 1970 by oil following the corrosion of the Trans-Niger pipelines owned by the Shell Petroleum Development Corporation (SPDC).
Although the clean-up of the 2010 Deepwater Horizon disaster caused by the same international oil giant is a done deal Ogoniland remains saturated in sticky residue of oil;the aquatic habitat still polluted, vegetation dried up and human lives strangled by the effects of this unending depletion.
Successive spills between 2008 and 2009 from defective Shell pipelines led to another massive contamination in Bodo. The Ogoni people accused Shell of late responses to the developments, leaving oil to pump into the creeks for over two months.
While the legal battle instituted by the law firm Leigh Day, against Shell in a London court was still going on, the oil giant agreed to a compensation package of £55m for 15,600 Nigerian fishermen and Bodo community. It was the first time compensation would be paid over an oil spill in Nigeria.
PHOTO CAPTION: Jetty at the Bodo community, Rivers state. Aquatic life impossible here because the freshwater has become contaminated by oil spill PHOTO CAPTION: Sunset in Bodo
Kpeloi followed developments at home from the United States where he lived at the time; reading articles, including some written by Saro Wiwa himself, and phoning his kinsmen settled home. The news was not always pleasant. One particular triggering instance was when Saro Wiwa led the Ogoni people in a non-violent protest to demand clean-up of their indigenous land. They banished Shell activities across Ogoniland. In 1995 however, nine of these activists were charged with incitement and murder.They were subsequently sentenced to death by hanging.
The murder of the Ogoni Nine,as Saro-Wiwa and his comrades were called,sparked an undying resolve to tackle the government and oil giants both home and abroad.The United Nations soon took notice of the situation and joined in the crusade for the clean-up of Ogoni.
Ogoni in the diasporas felt the urge to return home. Tamana, for example, returned from the UK and Kpeloi from the US, to become frontline fighters.
“But I am not back home to finally settle” Kpeloi told me, insisting that he would return to the US once the struggle was over.
His hometown, Kegbara Dere, near Bodo, bears no sign of development, apart from the tarred road that leads to the oil manifold station. The locals are disconnected from the power grid because the transformer is non-functional.
But this is the least of their problems. After the manifold station was blown up during the 1967 civil war, floods brought the still-flowing oil beyond the manifold spill area to farms, acres of mangroves, and the creeks that sustained most of the riverine area of Kegbara Dere.
Also, when oil was spilled from Bodo pipelines – transporting crude through the sea into the edge of Bonny Island for offshore refining – their shared waterfront was contaminated. The creek water still clots with oil in some places even till now.
The two communities are like Siamese twins; same breath, same death. For more than six decades, the people of these two communities have been firsthand victims of the impacts of oil contamination.
•Friday Kpeloi
When some natives of Bodo were compensated, Kegbara Dere was exempted and Kpeloi vows he will fight the injustice.
Ironically,Kpeloi himself has become a victim of the story.
In late 2021, began to experience difficulty in breathing. “When the cough was getting severe, I decided to visit the hospital for a check-up in November last year,” says the activist, with a quaint English accent. He brought out a paper from his chest pocket, reading the doctor’s diagnosis: “Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease.”
As if to prove that he was struck with the illness in Nigeria, he tried to look for another piece of paper. The paper, as he would later find, was a sheet from the 263-page report by the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) over Ogoniland pollution in 2011.
The report revealed that benzene, a known carcinogen, was detected in all air samples at concentrations ranging from 0.155 to 48.2 μg/m3. Approximately 10 per cent of detected benzene concentrations in Ogoniland were higher than the concentrations WHO and the United States Environmental Protection Agency (USEPA) report as corresponding to a 1 in 10,000 cancer risk. Many of the benzene concentrations detected in Ogoniland were higher than those measured in more economically developed regions around the world.
PHOTO CAPTION: According to the UNEP report, Ogoni people should be placed on health monitoring but this is not happening yet, says Kpeloi.
Kegbara Dere, for instance, experienced a series of spills between 1990 and 2009 at the Bomu manifold area owned by Shell. In April 2009, there was a fire following an oil spill on the Trans-Niger Pipeline, which transports over 120,000 barrels per day through Ogoniland. Although Shell claimed to have completed two remediation projects in the Bomu manifold area in the past, most of the manifold area was still covered in oily residues, soot and ash.
UNEP’s findings confirmed that some 9,000 square metres of the manifold area are heavily polluted, the concentration of oil on the surface being above saturation, resulting in an oily sheen on pools of standing water and a strong oily smell.
The highest soil contaminations, at 63,600 mg/kg TPH, were found in the top 0.60 metres of a borehole in the most heavily contaminated area directly bordering the southernmost part of the manifold. This is extremely high and is far above the Environmental Guidelines and Standards for the Petroleum Industry in Nigeria (EGASPIN) intervention value of 5,000 mg/kg.
The 70-year-old Kpeloi is not only nursing a terminal illness, he is bereaved.His younger brother died at the age of 68 of an undisclosed illness early this year. Yet, Kpeloi is optimistic of pulling through to fight for justice.
“There are cases that went on for seven, eight years before justice,” Kpeloi.
Besides compensation in some quarters across Ogoniland, the agreement with the Shell companies included clean-up of all polluted areas. “But as far as I am concerned, clean-up has not started. What they are doing is crude and ridiculous,” Tamana declared.
In 2015, President Muhammadu Buhari announced a $1bn restoration fund for the pilot clean-up project.
Pastor Christian Lekova Kpandei, a decoder with Amnesty International, is at the frontline of monitoring oil spills. He holds the oil corporations accountable towards clean-up. In 2016, he had an experience that shook his conviction.
“Whilst I was tracking the patterns of the spills in the creeks, the Army arrested and detained me for two weeks,” he recalled.
“Since then, I told myself there is no point dying for nothing while some people are in the cities enjoying the wealth. The striking questions are these: How do these people know where to burst? How do they transport the contents when the entire Ogoniland is militarised? They are aided by the military.”
Christian benefited from the paltry N600,000 compensation but the remaining part of the bargain, which is restoring their farmlands remains untouched. The creek at Bodo is polluted by oil directly flowing into it, killing the mangroves where fishes used to lay eggs.
In January 2015, Shell admitted responsibility for the Bodo spills, pledging to compensate the people and clean up Bodo Creek. Whilst Bodo residents have since received the compensation, clean-up is haphazardly done, this investigation can confirm. Apart from residents’ allegation that the contractors were using simple tools such as shovels to sand-fill spill sites, satellite imagery views from 2006 till 2020 showed no signs of Bodo environmental restoration.
The Geographic Information System (GIS) analyses showed that the coastal fringes of Bodo were still occupied by mangrove vegetation and appeared healthy, resembling a community of short water plants on the river surfaces as of 2006.
But the continued oil spill in the community disrupted this ecosystem. After the 2009 oil spill disaster in the area, the contaminants progressively weakened the integrity of the swamp vegetation. Bodo swamp in 2013 became less vegetative, losing its appearance of dense shrub-like assemblage. The combination of oil spill and the mangrove vegetation forms a black, brown and green texture on the surfaces thereby compromising the health of the swap ecosystem.
By 2020, sparse plants and trees rising from dark coastal soil suggest that Bodo is still not completely rid of oil contaminants
Apart from Bodo and Kegbara Dere, this reporter confirmed that many other communities outside Nigeria’s Ogoniland are still battling the ripples of oil contamination. For example, all the pipe borne water plants in Bori, Khana LGA were shut down because of suspected contamination.
Not only that, the wide stretch of riverine area near an old oilfield in Goi is soaked in oil, with earth crust sinking in the blackish abyss. The oil residue renders the entire land useless.
STILLBIRTH, SOOT IN RIVERS
Despite the controversy dogging the Ogoniland clean-up, the environmental pollution in Rivers State is worsened by illegal oil bunkering in the state. The consequence of this is illegal artisanal refining of stolen oil, which in turn leads to the release of carbon black or ‘soot’ into the ecosystem. From one creek to the other, flares envelop many parts of the state which is about 60 per cent landmass and turns a bright morning day into evening. The cloud is misty as if rain is imminent. When it does rain, the water is not potable and often comes as acid rain.
In Port Harcourt especially, homes are rarely painted white these days because their walls are stained with the soot. The windows in urban settlements of Rumuodara and Rumuokoro in the capital city are coated by deposits of soot and the nostrils of the dwellers release black fluids whenever they sneeze.
Pius Dukor, a socio-political commentator based in the state’s capital, recalled how he lost his voice for more than seven days after inhaling the thick soot. The choking smoke, he said, seized his breath but luckily spared his life at the end.
Regina is one of the victims of the soot problem. The mid-40-years–old woman, who hailed from Bodo, a 30-minute drive from Port Harcourt, recounted her stillbirth experience in 2013. She sells periwinkles for a living in the oil-rich state but because Bodo shores have become toxic for aquatic creatures, Regina would paddle a canoe far to Bonny to pick periwinkles where the water is relatively fresh.
Pregnant women like Regina were advised to keep off from the shores to reduce the health risk on their babies. “But I was always going to the shores to pick periwinkles so I lost my baby,” she says. “I was feeling a sharp stomach pain that evening in 2013 and at the same time bleeding until I was rushed to the clinic.”
UN experts have opined that the environmental restoration of Ogoniland may take at least 25 years, adding that all sources of ongoing contamination, including the artisanal refining must be stopped before the clean-up of the creeks, sediments and mangroves can begin.
Lately, Rivers State Governor Nyesom Wike made efforts to stop oil bunkering. He demanded a comprehensive list of illegal refineries and their operators across the 23 LGAs and also promised the disbursement of N20 million to each of the 23 local council chairmen ready to clampdown on the illegal refineries in their creeks.
OIL REFINING OR RENEWABLE ENERGY?
At various quarters, there are conversations that artisanal refining, though illegal, is bridging the gap for the demands of petroleum products. Government, on the other hand, is pushing for the establishment of modular refineries to halt illegal refineries, an alternative to keep the oil market afloat. But that is half of the story. From inception, refining oil in Nigeria has come at great cost with government losing billions of naira to rehabilitate ailing refineries. Also, oil production has far-reaching public health risks for the communities hosting the government-owned refineries or the pipelines.
For the first time in 43 years of operation, the NNPC published an audited financial report in 2020. In 2018 alone, the report revealed that the refineries incurred a total loss of N154 billion, with the Port Harcourt refineries alone losing N45.59 billion. But this huge loss was not even for rehabilitation but administrative maintenance including paying workers’ salaries.
In 2021 alone, the NNPC spent N100 billion on the rehabilitation of the nation’s four refineries in 2021, with nothing to show for it.. The PHRC is made up of two refineries, located at Alesa Eleme near Port Harcourt with a jetty (for product import and export). The jetty is located 7.5km away from the refinery complex.
For the communities on the fence lines of these Port Harcourt refineries, their consquences are the spilled oil cloaking farmlands and killing their farm yields. The wastewaters from the PHRC are often not properly disposed of, ultimately contaminating residents’ source of drinking water. For instance, at Ekerikana community where the Port Harcourt Refinery discharges effluents into their river, the people complain that the underground water emits oil odour and becomes harmful when used domestically. It is not exactly different from the spill from the NNPC product pipeline that runs through Nisisioken Ogale in Eleme around 2005. The groundwater was found contaminated with benzene, a known carcinogen, and the presence of methyl tertiary butyl ether (MTBE). The benzene concentration was at levels over 900 times above the World Health Organization (WHO) standards. MTBE is not a part of crude oil but an additive added to refined products at the refinery. Its presence proved that the spill was not from the crude oil but that of a refined product, which the NNPC was directly responsible for.
DELTA, NIGERIA: A LOST HERITAGE
•NNPC oil pipelines inside Warri refinery
The Warri refinery is hosted in the sprawling neighbourhood of Ifiekporo and Ubeji communities. From the tank farm, international and local oil companies ferry the vessels on the Atlantic front in Delta offshore for refined oil.
Living on the fence line of a refinery in Nigeria is characterized by one thing in Delta: an untamed rage gravitating towards militancy. Apart from the greenery along the same paths with pipelines, what oil-rich Warri represents needs no telling. There is crude everywhere; the nose perceives its smells seeping from the nooks and crannies, as if the whole place would be in flames if there was any spark. There are traces of oil in the Ifiekporo creeks but it is difficult to trace the source on foot.
Where is the smell oozing from? Certainly, not from the tank farm. Whether or not the land was of tranquillity or militancy will manifest in a bit.
Flashback to the days of yore. Warri was the nerve of the state’s economy, dubbed as the oil city. Its prominence in Nigeria’s south is only surpassed by Ogoni’s Rivers state, bearing the same natural resource but in larger quantities. The thing about Nigeria’s crude oil is that the moment it came, it overrode the nation’s existing priority. The country’s economy and the citizens are yet to recover from the effect; Nigeria tarnished agriculture, especially cocoa and palm oil farming, which was the economic mainstay for the new bride (crude oil).
Warri had attracted the fortune of oil multinationals, Shell Petroleum Development Company of Nigeria (SPDC), and the Warri Refinery and Petrochemical Company (WRPC), the youths flourished and the city got boisterous. Alas, a dangerous trend hit the oil city many years later.
Before noon on March 30, I arrived at the tank farm, still looking for the source of the oil smell. A friendly soldier ushered me to the sight of the berthed ships waiting for the vessels to be loaded. There was a tailback of tankers clogging the vicinity.The soldier tells me “the traffic is still subtle this time”.
PHOTO CAPTION: Tank farm at Ifiekporo
As I moved a few miles out of the tank farm, I caught the sight of some teenagers and young adults breezing in and out of the creeks that led to the waters. Their bodies were dripping black oil. Behind the shelters where they came from on canoes with blue plastic barrels on canoes were swamps. Away from the waterside, they loaded the heavy barrels onto the truck beds.
Such bunkerers litter the creeks around the oil refinery and the tank farms. Some other times, they tap directly into pipelines away from oil company facilities, and connect from the pipes to barges that are hidden in small creeks with mangrove forest cover. They pollute the water bodies while transporting stolen crude oil to the illegal refining sites where they ‘cook’ the oil and flare soots into the atmosphere in the process.
PHOTO CAPTION: Erhoike flow station of Kokori/Orogun oil bloc formerly under Shell’s OML 30
Soot is a threat to public health but no one in the community was willing to talk to me about the impacts of this oil theft.
Oil theft in Delta is an organized crime of sea pirates whose history hacks back to the Warri crisis of 1997 and 2003.. By 2003, the gun-toting non-state actors and the Nigerian navy clashed over illegal oil bunkering. They use the waterways to transport arms into the country, intimidating oil workers on the sea and also hijacking their vessels.
This was how Delta deteriorated over the years by prolonged violence. Because of oil.
Substandard clean-up at Kokori palm oil plantation after oil spill
Oil multinationals such as Shell, Chevron, Nigeria National Petroleum Corporation, and its subsidiaries, and other ancillaries and servicing companies, now lay supine. And in the mid-2000s, they fled the city in droves. Shell initially downsized in the mid-2000s through SoFu (Securing our Future) initiatives, and later shut down its operation in Warri, a development that threw the state into turmoil. Oil production was severed because flow stations were attacked by non-state gunmen.
Chevron also closed its onshore facilities, and then its main export terminal at Escravos. Both Shell and Chevron declared force majeure-an inability to fulfil their obligations due to events beyond their control on Nigerian exports.
Human Rights Watch concluded that the Warri crisis was a classic example of a “resource war”, connected to the oil bunkering around the Escravos River and other oil fields.
PHOTO CAPTION: Kokori Community, Delta State
For Delta, the joy of oil was short lived. Oil activities shrank but the business of oil criminality grew rapidly and pollution exacerbated, owing to both unscrupulous activities of oil companies and oil theft such as I witnessed in Ifiekporo.
This report was funded under Health of Mother Earth Foundation’s fossil politics programmea
The Permanent Secretary noted that there would be a minimum of two medical personnel on board the floating clinic who will run shifts at any time. He added that citizens in riverine communities could access the floating clinic by dialling the Lagos State Emergency numbers. “Once you contact the emergency numbers, the clinic will be deployed. LASWA can also deploy the clinic during an emergency response on the waterways. He said that if there is a call about an emergency on the waterways, remote and riverine areas, the emergency process will be activated.”
