Lagos — Three reports in the media in recent weeks portend grave implications that should bother the Nigerian political class. The first was the report that Angola, a brother African country, has overtaken Nigeria as the largest producer of crude oil in the continent. The second story is about the reported contemplation of some major oil prospecting companies to relocate their operations from Nigeria. The third, and perhaps the most disturbing, was the attack on the Bonga oil field, one of the biggest and latest oilfields in the country, by militants in the Niger Delta last week.

The two stories have their root in the state of the Niger Delta, a worsening situation that the western media are beginning to treat as low intensity warfare.

No visitor to Nigeria in the last one year will miss the centrality of the Niger Delta in our national life. Reports of kidnapping and violence have become the staple of the region.

This is no doubt a sad testimony to the reality of the Nigerian situation. The Niger Delta no doubt, occupies a very special place in the affairs of our country. As the source of more than 80 percent of the nation's foreign exchange, the Niger Delta should be a source of cheering, and not disturbing news.

Last year, I had the privilege to be a member of the Senate fact-finding mission to the Niger Delta. We visited the creeks and met many of the militants. We experienced, first hand, the living condition of the people of the area. It was an experience that I have repeated more than a hundred times at gatherings where discussions veered to the Niger Delta question. The truth is that no one who has never been to the Niger Delta can have a true picture of life in the area.

We were confronted by a people living in abject poverty in the midst of stupendous national wealth, environmental degradation caused by oil spillage, gas flaring and despoliation, general state of insecurity caused by the combination of sincere agitations for resource control and hooligans who latch on the opportunity to wreck havoc on society. The landscape was filled with thousands of young men and women who have been made jobless by the degradation of the environment, making farming or fishing impossible. Infrastructural development is almost absent. Poverty virtually walked the street. Children mostly scantily dressed and in clear need of better nutrition dot the landscape. It was an experience that called for soul searching. The conclusion of most of us was that the National Delta deserves urgent and concerted intervention of all for the sake of the people of the area in particular and Nigeria in general.

This realisation is definitely not lost on the nation's political leadership. I recall that in the 2007 presidential election, the three leading presidential candidates - President Umar Yar'Adua, Alhaji Muhammadu Buhari and former Vice President Atiku Abubakar all identified the Niger Delta as a national priority for urgent attention.

The crisis in the Niger Delta area predated Nigeria. The area had always been a resource base for different historical era and the dialectics of the times had consistently promoted a contestation between contending forces. It served as an outlet for the Slave Trade in the 16th century. The slave trade contained the dialectics of its history and generated resentment among the common men of the area against the overlords who superintended the trade.

Between the 16th century and the 18th century, the area became renowned for oil palm export to Europe. In that era, oil palm was as important to the emerging industrial countries of Europe as crude oil is important to the contemporary global economy. The trade in oil palm also produced its social formations especially with the conflicts arising out of the struggle for control of the oil palm fields. Since the advent of crude oil exploration in the region, the people of the area had also sustained agitations for a better deal. The challenge for Nigeria is to make a difference in justifying the existence of the Nigerian state in the lives of the people of the area, just as it has a duty to make a difference in the lives of every Nigerian.

Addressing the Niger Delta question deserves the attention and commitment of the Nigerian political class. The issue has far gone beyond the precinct of sectional consideration. The survival of the Niger Delta is a sine qua non to the survival of Nigeria as a nation. Nigeria as a nation should bring its legendary resilience to bear on addressing the problem of the Niger Delta. Our collective wisdom and celebrated resilience, if deployed to confront this crisis with sincerity, will break the ice in the resolution of the Niger Delta Crisis.

In this respect, I think there are three approaches to the resolution of the crisis. The first is to make man the index of development in the Niger Delta. For too long, we have sought to assess performance in the resolution of the crisis by the quantum of money going into the Niger Delta. In spite of such budgetary allocations, virtually all surveys on human development index in the country have returned a damning report on the Niger Delta. While the national average index in these surveys are unacceptable, the return for the Niger Delta is most appalling when contrasted to the resources the nation daily derives from the area. Education, health and youth development are crucial to a successful transformation of the population from one that holds the nation in suspect to one that collaborates with the state for security and rapid development. In this respect, emphasis should be on the percentage of children of school age who are in school; percentage of employable youths who are gainfully employed, percentage of improvement in infant mortality rate, reduction in the population of citizens living with HIV/AIDS;- rather than the millions or billions of naira going into the Niger Delta. This way, man will become the measure of development and the figures of budgetary allocations will not remain provocative abstract terms to the people of the Niger Delta.

The militants who elevated the Niger Delta question to the global level in the last decade were mostly the children of the 1970s and 1980s who were denied qualitative and productive education. The educational curricula of the Niger Delta, for instance, should prepare the youths for productive engagement in the different layers of the Oil and Gas Industry. The resentment which the militant youths express through the abduction of oil workers is, in part, fallout of their perceived marginalisation from employment in the Oil and Gas Industry. The empowerment programme should also target women who have been made to bear a disproportionate weight of the long years of neglect.

Infrastructural underdevelopment is one of the sign posts of the Niger Delta. Until the creation of Bayelsa State, it is said that there was no tarred road in the entire area that constitute the state today. The situation is not different in most parts of the Niger Delta. The general explanation has been that it costs a fortune to construct roads in the area because of the terrain. But the nation also takes a fortune from the area. With the requisite political will, the Niger Delta can truly be transformed with appropriate infrastructural development.

In this regard, there is need for synergy between the federal, state and local governments in the Niger Delta area. Governments at the state and local government levels in the state have provided fertile ground for those who argued that they have not done enough with the enormous resources that have accrued to the area in the last one decade. There is no doubt that government will make more appreciable impact if the federal, state and local governments synergise to work on the same priorities in the area. This will prevent the thinning out of resources over a wide spectrum of projects which leaves little impact on the lives of the people. If the three governments approach the development of the Niger Delta with man as the index of development, more progress would be made within a short period of time.

Finally, the federal government will need to review some of our laws to enhance communal autonomy and make the communities stakeholders in the exploitation of the resources in their localities. This is a law that will unleash the energies of communities nationwide to protect and work for the successful exploitation of resources in their domains. The nation should build a consensus on the contending positions between protagonists and antagonists of resource control. The National Assembly has a role to play in this and I am confident that we shall not disappoint Nigerians in this respect, especially as the nation eagerly awaits the outcome of the Constitution amendment programme.

The nation has a lot to benefit from the Niger Delta Summit which President Umar Yar'Adua has promised to hold before the end of this year. I hope that all parties in the Niger Delta will take advantage of the Summit to sincerely contribute to a workable and sustainable programme for the resolution of the crisis in the Niger Delta. Time is running out.

Senator Teslim Kola Folarin is Leader of the Nigerian Senate