He broke my heart but I did not cry. Why should I cry? I am a Nigerian. We are hardly shocked. Here, our elites deprive the people of the opportunity to enjoy the fruits of their labour. Here, contracts are awarded on paper, money approved and taken but nothing to show for it. Here, money that could build a whole country or countries, from scratch, is stolen by one person who obviously suffers from psychiatric disorder. In my language, we call such people were alaso.
Here, we sell nonsense as sense. Here, our leaders treat us as if we do not matter. Here, projects are completed on paper, yet the reality is walls apart. Here, projects that have not started at all have been paid for and will never be done. Here, we accept the absurd as our ways of doing things. After all, this is Naija, we are quick to tell ourselves.
These shocking facts were expounded by Acting President Yemi Osinbajo and he broke my heart. Not because he spoke the truth, but because the truth will still not set free the people of Niger Delta on whose soil he spoke on Monday in Benin City, the Edo State capital.
Osinbajo said we must find a way out. When he said this, what came to my mind was President Muhammadu Buhari’s statement that “we must kill corruption if we don’t want corruption to kill us”. For a region rich in resources, but with some of the poorest people this side of the globe, the Niger Delta situation is pathetic.
As he tours the Niger Delta, he has expounded these truths. From Rivers to Bayelsa to Akwa Ibom and Edo, Osinbajo has not failed to bare it all. Still, the people are helpless. No thanks to poverty, they still pander to the whims of their oppressors who even give them guns to kill one another during elections.
The mess the Niger Delta has found itself started in Oloibiri in 1956. The people were happy– thinking their town would soon become London. Any voice of dissent, any voice of reasoning was shut down. And years down the line, they felt they had listened.
The Oloibiri story resonates all over the Niger Delta, which extends to over 70,000 square kilometres and constitutes about 7.5 per cent of Nigeria’s land mass. The densely populated area comprises Bayelsa, Cross River, Delta, Edo; Akwa Ibom and Rivers states. It extends to parts of Ondo, Imo and Abia states.
This troubled region is home to over 31 million people and is the oil and gas-producing belt. Since the discovery of oil in commercial quantity in Oloibiri, the region has been embroiled in controversies, agitation and protests over the attendant oil spills, devastating pollution of fishing zones and sources of potable water and ecological degradation.
Over the years, the people have lived in conditions that are intolerable. From time to time, gross neglect and under-development snowballs into pockets of protests and agitation for resource control because successive administrations at the centre and in some states glossed over sustainable development of the region.
While other regions were being developed in infrastructure and human capital, the reverse was the case in the Niger Delta. No wonder there has been a debate on whether oil exploration is a curse or a blessing to the region.
Bottled resentment as a result of the status quo has been blamed for vandalism of oil and gas pipelines and kidnappings for ransom. As can be seen in the film Oloibiri, the youths thought violence could help and before they knew it, they became killers, spilling blood here and there.
The enactment of the Mineral Ordinance by Nigeria’s first Governor-General Sir Frederick Luggard in 1914 signalled the exploration and exploitation of the country’s mineral resources, especially oil and gas.
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. In 1938, Shell 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.
Many major players in the global oil sector were later granted prospecting licences. Such players include Socony Vacuum (now Mobil) in 1955, Tennessee (later Tennenco) in 1960, Gulf Oil (now Chevron) in 1961, American Overseas (later Amoseas) in 1961, Agip Oil in 1962, Safrap (now ELF Phillips) in 1965 and Esso in 1965.
Shell, Mobil, Chevron, ELF, Agip and Texaco were major players in the oil sector. Others, such as Ashland, Deminex, Pan Ocean, British Gas, Sun Oil, Conoco, Statoil, BP and Chemical Oil Company (now Conoil), played minimal roles.
In collaboration with Shell, the Federal Government set up the Nigerian Liquefied Natural Gas Limited (NLNG) with a plant at Finima, Bonny Island to enable it maximise its revenue from oil prospecting and reduce gas flaring. The country has earned several millions of dollars in revenue from the NLNG.
In spite of these efforts to increase the extraction of both oil and gas from wells and fields located in the region and consequently shore up gross revenue earnings, the peoples of the Niger Delta have tales of deprivation and neglect to tell.
A large proportion of the country’s poor lives in the Niger Delta where the exploration and exploitation of oil and gas has created sorry sites and sights of oil spills and distorted bio-diversity.
The situation has often given rise to non-violent and violent protestations. These include the initial 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.
There were other protests and agitations 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 and 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.
As a result of the recommendations of the Henry Willink Commission of Inquiry set up by the British colonial government on September 26, 1957 that the Niger Delta people were “poor, backward and neglected” and should be on the concurrent list as a “special area” needing special attention, the government established the Niger Delta Development Board (NDDB).
The board was assigned the responsibility of managing the challenges and the socio-economic development of the new special areas of Yenagoa Province, Degema Province, Ogoni Division of Port Harcourt Province and the Western Ijaw Division of Delta Province.
It existed for seven years between 1960 and 1967 until it was replaced by a Presidential Task Force Committee that was set up by the then President Shehu Shagari in 1980.
Another major attempt to address the issues challenging the development of the Niger Delta was the constitution of the Oil Mineral-Producing Areas Development Commission (OMPADEC) in 1992 by the Gen. Ibrahim Babangida Administration.
Other interventions came in forms of panels, until December 21, 2000 when the Niger Delta Development Commission (NDDC) was set up by ex-President Olusegun Obasanjo to “offer a lasting solution to the socio-economic difficulties of the Niger Delta” and further facilitate the “rapid, even and sustainable development of the Niger Delta that is economically prosperous, socially stable, economically regenerative and politically peaceful.”
So far, the interventionist agency has made some strides in the areas of infrastructure development and human capital development. But, at many points, its affairs have been dogged by internal feuds and opposing blocs of influence over control of its operation. Many of those who are statutorily meant to give it money to lessen the region’s burden are failing in their responsibility.
My final take: Going by the Bible, the truth should set people free once known. The people of the Niger Delta know the truth but unfortunately it has not set them free. Poverty has ensured they worship their tormentors; poverty has ensured they beg for crumbs from those stealing their commonwealth; poverty has turned them to beggars; and like true beggars, they seem to have no choice.
