It was a Friday. I cannot remember whether it was in the morning or early afternoon. I woke up to meet missed calls and messages on my phone. One of the callers was our Southsouth big boy, Shola O’Neil. An ex-governor from an oil-rich state wanted to speak with you, he told me.
A perusal of the missed calls showed a strange but special number, which, I rightly guessed, was the big man’s. I called him back and his first line after pleasantries was: “Do you know who you are speaking with?”
I mentioned his name.
“True caller exposed me,” he joked.
He added: “You are afraid I want to fight you because of your piece…”
He was quick to point out what he agreed with in the piece, which was on projects he started but did not complete and thus contributed to making his state a shithole.
My conversations with the ex-governor came to me in the wake of President Donald Trump’s alleged description of African countries as shitholes. His explanations show that the blame for underdevelopment is not all at the door-step of political leaders.
One of the things he told me was how he had to abandon some projects because the people they were to benefit wanted bribe. Another was abandoned because the people did not want a particular god residing in a rock disturbed by blasting the abode.
I remember visiting some sites in the Niger Delta and expatriates narrated tales of regular harassment from youths who wanted to be ‘settled’. There were even instances of kidnapping for ransom.
When we stall development by our little actions, we are contributing to making the oil-rich region a shithole.
Until he met his Waterloo, a crazy fellow in Rivers who called himself Don Waney turned Omoku into a hellhole. His men killed about twenty people on crossover night. Men like him bring imageries of shithole and hellhole to mind. Not a few have relocated from the town to avoid being victim of the blood-letting going on there. It was in this vicinity that Alkali Mohammed, a Deputy Superintendent of Police (DSP), and his orderly were beheaded. Some days later, their uniforms and riffles were recovered in this violent town.
Mohammed and his orderly met the waterloo at Ujju community near Omoku in Ogba/Egbema/Ndoni Local Government Area of Rivers. The agents of death waylaid the DSP and his junior colleagues from the Mobile Police Unit 48. After the hoodlums took off the duo’s heads, they snatched their patrol vehicle and weapons.
Another set of people who bring about imageries of shithole and hellhole are so-called youths and ex-militants in the Niger Delta, who have seen the Niger Delta Development Commission (NDDC) as a place to get free funds. Last December, key officials of the NDDC had to close for the year earlier than the norm. Reason: They were always harassed at such periods by youths who wanted money for no work done. So, the officials had to run away from their offices so that they would meet empty chairs on arrival.
The inadequacies of intervention agencies also invoke the imageries of hellhole and shithole. If only the Willink Commission report had been implemented, if only the Oil Mineral Producing Area Development Commission (OMPADEC) and other intervention efforts had been implemented sincerely, the imageries would have been that of heaven on earth. I dare say the NDDC has not done much. This is not fully its fault because it has also not got all it is entitled to from government and other stakeholders. But the token it has got has also been wasted. Largely.
We all remember the millions an ex-chairman of the board wasted on a juju priest. How can we forget the insider abuses in which contractors were encouraged by people within to sue the commission just for the purpose of extorting money through out-of-court settlement? At a point, the commission had over 400 court cases pending. Or have we forgotten instances where money was spent on projects with no direct bearing on the lives of the people? What on earth was NDDC doing renovating Port Harcourt Club and commissioning a study on the generation of electric power from gully erosion sites? How can we forget that the quality of some of the infrastructure projects fall below acceptable standards?
In the commission, contracts, at a point, were awarded with no design and no specific location but with the sole purpose of collecting advance payments.
Things were so bad in the commission at some point that an insider said if it were a private sector firm, it would be regarded as insolvent.
The inadequacies of government and agencies in the Niger Delta have no doubt left us with imageries of shithole and hellhole. I see poverty, see degradation, see rejection and see desperation in this oil-rich enclave.
In this rich enclave, there are houses, made of wood, covered with palm front, which the owners must change from time to time as they wither away. There are imageries of luxury here and there, but in short supply. It is something many hear about and see when the rich choose to throw their weight about. So many children cannot go to school. But, do they really have any reason to be poor? I don’t think so. They were born into wealth. What I mean by being born into wealth centres around the fact that the oil of Nigeria’s prosperity is drilled in their domain.
A constant reminder of what this wealth can do is evident in the Residential Area or RA, as we are wont to call it, of the multinational the government gave the licence to drill oil on its behalf. The homes of multitude when compared with the RA cannot be described better than saying “heaven and hell, side by side”. The majority lives in hellhole and shithole; the minority in heaven. It is like the people have sinned and come short of the glory of God to be consigned to that sort of existence. Or is it that they have sinned against their leaders, the men they elect to lead them? Or, better still, the men who forced themselves on them as our leaders.
In some parts of the Niger Delta, they never see night. The multinational operating 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.
Oil pipelines in many a community are not underground. They are in the open. And often they burst or are burst and our soils and existence are damaged in the process. What does this bring to mind is shithole and hellhole.
Protests and violence have been used by the people, yet change has refused to come. It is as if the multinational also has another licence: to send them all to their 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, as some have called it, is having serious effects on the people. Strange diseases are killing the people. Pregnant women are developing strange allergies. Yet, health centres are ill-equipped to take care of their health needs. They have several people with aggravated asthma; there are increases in respiratory symptoms, such as coughing and difficult or painful breathing, chronic bronchitis and decreased lung function. Premature death is not uncommon.
The oil majors, truth be told, are more interested in the oil than in the people’s well-being. They can die for all they care. For them, oil is more important than man. The government is an accomplice in helping these guys makes a shithole of a region that should be paradise on earth.
My final take: The fault for this shithole is not in the stars but in us all — militants who demand money for no just cause, governments that fail to spend money judiciously, multinationals that value oil more than the people, criminals who kill and maim for silly reasons and youths who demand bribe before developmental projects can be sited in their communities. We just all must change for change to come.
