It is a song these days. Call it a hit —like they do in the entertainment industry— and you are not likely to be faulted. Vice President Yemi Osinbajo, Amnesty Programme chief Brig-Gen. Paul Boroh and many others have given life to this hit titled ‘oil has no future’. Their reason for singing this dirge is not unconnected with the fact that the world is moving away from oil. Renewable energy is the way to go. With this realty, we will wake up one day and discover no one wants to buy our oil.
Speaking at the Second National Council on Niger Delta, NCND, meeting held in Akure, the Vice President said: “Many countries are getting alternatives to oil, the development which will make the resource unprofitable in a few years.”
Gen. Boroh’s sentiments were not exactly different when he said: “Since it has become clear that oil will not last forever, there is need to prepare the youths for the future.”
It will certainly take some time before oil finally fades away. I cannot place my hand on the exact time but one thing I am sure of is that the evil oil does will live after oil.
After oil, we will remember Oloibiri and how oil has left it impotent. We will remember Ogoni land and remember how oil killed its leading lights, such as the great Kenule Beeson Saro-Wiwa. We will remember oil and remember with dismay that Ogoni people had no choice but to drink benzene-contaminated water. We will remember oil and remember poverty, degradation, rejection and desperation. We will remember oil and we will remember imageries of luxury here and there, but in short supply.
Long after oil has stopped being our main source of revenue, we will remember wealth was something many heard about and saw when the rich chose to throw their weight about. We will certainly remember that despite all the wealth around the region, many students and pupils had to stay at home because school fees were gold and diamond their parents could not afford.
How can we ever forget that while oil reigned in some parts of the Niger Delta, they never saw night. Reason: The multinational firms in these areas have their flow stations so close to homes and send out gas flares throughout the day. So, the only way to differentiate between night and day is to check their wrist watches.
We will always remember that while oil was the lord, oil pipelines in many towns were not underground and often burst damaging soils and existence. Will it be possible to forget that the people shouted, protested and threatened violence over their fate, yet change refused to come.
The oil giants seem to have another licence: to send their hosts to early graves so that their leaders can have all the wealth for themselves, including the little they manage to spend on basic amenities. This environmental genocide is having serious effects on the people. And we will never forget.
Long after oil, we will not forget that strange diseases killed the people, pregnant women developed strange allergies while health centres were ill-equipped to take care of their health needs. We will never forget that several people developed aggravated asthma and respiratory symptoms, such as coughing and difficult or painful breathing, chronic bronchitis, increased and premature deaths were not uncommon.
We will always remember that while oil was the lord, oil majors were more interested in the oil than in the people. They can die for all they care. We will remember their mantra: Oil is more important than man.
How can we ever forget that while oil reigned we all forgot agriculture, which before independence from the colonial masters paid our bills? We will certainly remember the great Mrs. Diezani Alison-Madueke who loved her people so much that she wasted not the opportunity to grab as much oil cash as possible while she was oil minister and proved that what a man can steal, a woman can steal better.
Long after oil, we will remember the interventionist agencies set up to improve the lot of the people of the Niger Delta. We will remember how at a point the oil cash meant for the betterment of the people were given to an herbalist by the head of the board of an interventionist agency. We will remember that one of these agencies became a cesspool for corruption where contracts were hawked like bean cakes, where insiders encouraged outsiders to sue the agency so that judgment debts could be shared. We will not forget that while oil reigned, greedy men stuffed dollars — millions of it— in safes tucked away in poverty-stricken communities. We will remember the yachts, the private jets, the mansions, the diamond wristwatches and the world they bought with stolen oil cash.
We will remember that men and women thrust into positions of influence used them to acquire affluence. We will apparently not forget that in the oil era men lost their conscience and humanity to the extent that they bought guns for the youths to take out political adversaries.
I doubt if we will forget that oil’s curse began with the enactment of the Mineral Ordinance by Nigeria’s first Governor-General Sir Frederick Luggard in 1914. We will remember that in 1937, the British colonial government gave the exclusive rights of exploration and exploitation to Shell D’Arcy, which could not actualise this mandate because of the Second World War and a year later entered into collaboration with British Petroleum — formerly Anglo-Persian Oil Company— for oil prospection in Nigeria. Their early efforts yielded 450 barrels of crude oil in Akata I Well, in 1951. Further successes were made in Oloibiri in 1956 and Bomu Oil Field in 1958 when oil was struck in commercial quantity.
When we remember oil, we will have at the back of our minds the 12-Day Revolution in the Creeks in 1967, which was championed by the trio of Isaac Adaka Boro, Samuel Owonaru and Nothingham Dick in a failed bid to secede from Nigeria.
We will also remember protests and agitation by groups, such as the Movement for the Survival of Ogoni People (MOSOP), led by the late Ken Saro-Wiwa who was killed by the Gen. Sani Abacha Administration. The activities of groups, such as the Ogba Solidarity, the Urhobo Progressive Union, the Niger Delta Environmental Forum, the Chikoko Movement, the Environmental Rights Action/Friends of the Earth, the Ijaw National Congress, the Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta (MEND) and the Niger Delta People’s Volunteer Force led by Mujahid Asari Dokubo, will also come to mind. We will not be able to wish away men such as Government Ekpemupolo (aka Tompolo), Victor Ebikabowei Ben (aka General Boyloaf), Ateke Tom, John Togo, Fareh Dagogo and others. We will also remember that some of them got free cash, which they lavished on women and wine and frivolities.
My final take: When we remember the facts about oil, we will remember the pains, tears, sorrow and blood that followed. We will also not forget the good things that oil brought but we will continue to debate whether or not we would have been greater if agriculture had not been abandoned because of black gold.
