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Nigeria: Do Not Militarise Niger Delta
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Daily Champion (Lagos)
EDITORIAL
17 July 2008
Posted to the web 17 July 2008
Lagos
The recent offers by France and Britain to help the Federal Government to contain the activities of the militants in the Niger Delta have the potential of further militarizing the oil and gas-rich region of the country and this cannot, ultimately, be good for any of the parties to the conflict.
Already, the Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta (MEND) has threatened to return "fire-for-fire" by attacking British citizens and interests in the region if Britain makes good its promise to help Nigeria.
What this means is that rather than addressing the pressing issues of the physical, environmental and human development of the region that accounts for about 90 percent of the revenue of the country as aggressively as they should be addressed especially through massive injection of funds, a lot more money than is currently being dedicated to security would be thrown into the already raging fire.
The irony of the situation is that a lot more money would thus go into trying to secure the region when such huge funds could have been dedicated to developing the region, and by so doing endangering the peace that is still elusive even after so much has been committed to trying to achieve it by force.
Senator James Manager, the Senate committee chairman for the Niger Delta Development Commission (NDDC), pointed out this anomaly recently during the committee's consideration of the Commission's 2008 budget proposal of N79 billion presented by President Umaru Musa Yar'Adua.
He said: "We have nine states as defined by the (NDDC) Act. Unfortunately, the amount of money that is being proposed here (N79 billion) as far as we are concerned is an embarrassment because we have about N400 billion earmarked for the security of the Niger Delta as provided for in the overall budget of the Federal Republic of Nigeria which we approved."
He said further that : "These are the contradictions and I want to hope and pray that this is what the summit as proposed by the Presidency is likely to resolve."
Senator Manager has not yet denied the report which clearly points out the incongruity in devoting N400 billion to the security of an area where the same government was then voting a mere N79 billion to develop, especially when what the people have been crying about is that the goose (their lands and waters) that lays the golden eggs (oil and gas) should be developed to a reasonable standard.
Presently, the place is, literally speaking, an expanse of lands and waters polluted by oil spillage and acid rain from gas flaring; as well as an assemblage of rustic communities without the basic necessities of life like potable water, electricity, roads and bridges, modern jetties, schools and standard medicare.
These communities are populated by a frustrated, dejected and devastated population of people, among them, some defiant youths, who are ready to die in order to get government and the oil and gas companies to plough back a percentage of the proceeds from the region to bring their standard of living at least at par with what obtains in parts of the country without oil and gas that have been developed by money from the Niger Delta.
Although the Senate eventually increased the 2008 budget of the NDDC by N10 billion to bring it to N89 billion, it is still a far cry from what the intervention agency needs to implement the Niger Delta Regional Development Master Plan (NDRDMP) that has been approved by the Federal Government.
The same Senator Manager, when he led other members of his committee on a visit to the NDDC headquarters earlier, had pointed out that with an allocation like the then proposed N79 billion, it would take the NDDC between 200 and 300 years to actualize the master plan, insisting that "I am sure that is not the dream of the Niger Deltans."
What is needed is an urgent and massive injection of funds into the region to cause its dramatic turn around from a wasteland to a wonder land. We are sure that if the militants see a commitment on the part of government to do this, they will lay down their arms since that is the purpose of the armed struggle.
So far, much of what they have seen have been broken promises, failure of the Federal Government to remit to them the monies that the constitution has specified as their due amounting to almost N250 billion, failure of the oil and gas companies to faithfully remit three percent of their annual budgets to the NDDC as dictated by the constitution and further militarization of the region, through the Joint Task Force (JTF), the oil and gas companies' security networks and now, possibly France and Britain.
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We insist that it will be less costly to develop the Niger Delta than to continue to militarise it. Efforts should, therefore, be channeled towards the speedy development of the region, through immediate release of the NDDC's withheld funds and the review of the constitution to increase the Commission's funding level as well as an increase in the percentage of derivation from the present 13 percent to at least 25 percent in the first instance.
No country in this world has the right to interfere in the sovereign rights of another sovereign country. What does France and Britain think Nigeria is ? IRAQ. They have the impunity to say they want to send troops to Nigeria, Let them try it and see what happens to them both in military form and traditional form.Nigeria at present is made up of highly educated intelectuals all over the world, people who are both smarter than the frencn or the brits, so let them get the idea of military interference in Nigeria especially out of their minds.This is where... [Read Full Text]
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