Lagos — GOVERNMENT should be doing everything possible to gain peace in the troubled oil and gas producing region of the country, but its recent appointments to key positions in the petroleum sector suggest that it is insensitive to the feelings of the people of the area.

And it is such insensitivity that has continued to fuel the militancy that is costing the nation fortunes in lost revenues due to sabotage of oil facilities, exodus of expatriate oil sector workers, ransome money for kidnapped expatriates and indigenes as well as the huge funds being expended on maintaining the Joint Task Force (JTF) and the other security outfits of the oil and gas companies operating in the region.

True to their mandate of articulating the positions of the people of the area, the leaders of the region have used several fora to voice their strong opposition to the lopsided appointments, apparently to alert government of the anomaly and get it to redress the situation whereby of about 11 major organisations in the oil and gas sector, most are headed by northerners.

The South South Leaders and Elders Forum that met in Warri, Delta State, recently rose condemning the recycling of Dr. Rilwanu Lukman back to the position of Minister of Petroleum Resources that he held 23 years ago, as well as the appointments of the Group Managing Director of the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC), the Executive Directors of the Corporation and the heads of the subsidiaries of the NNPC.

To reinforce the position of the region's Leaders and Elders Forum, the governors of the six states of the South South geo-political zone and other political leaders of the area met in Port Harcourt, the Rivers State capital, and outright rejected the lopsided appointments.

Denouncing the appointments as not reflecting federal character, the governors, at the inaugural meeting of the South South Economic Development Forum (SSEDEF), pointedly asked the Federal Government to revisit the appointments.

Justice and fair play demands that a key sector such as oil and gas should have representatives at its highest leadership positions spread out evenly across the country. If any section of the country should have more people in these positions, it should be the people from whose lands and waters the oil and gas are being extracted, to compensate them for the years of neglect and the devastation of their environment.

We are not saying that the best materials wherever they come from should not be appointed to these positions, but nothing convinces us that those already appointed are the best hands for the jobs.

Indeed, many critics have alleged that there is ethnic cleansing in the top positions in the petroleum sector, which should not and must not be so. Every part of the country should bring their best for whichever job they are suited for in the sector. The petroleum industry is a highly technical area and must be run by professionals. We do not, really, see how a political scientist can be the best material for the post of Group Managing Director (GMD) of NNPC. It can only be that such a person has been recommended by other factors.

The disdain for merit and professionalism in such sensitive appointments would also explain why the sector has been in a mess for as long as can be imagined.

Otherwise, why should Nigeria, the eighth highest producer of crude oil, remain an importer of petroleum products while its refineries remain crippled?

These lopsided appointments only go to accentuate the pain of the Niger Delta people who produce the bulk of the nation's resources and are still highly underdeveloped, as a result of government neglect of the area and are heavily devastated by the effects of oil exploitation on their environment.

Their agitation for control of their resources or for a fairer share of the oil revenue is being vigorously resisted especially by people from the northern parts of the country.

To deny them a major share of the resources from their lands and waters and also marginalise them in appointments to the top positions in the sector is akin to rubbing salt into injury.

This situation must be immediately redressed because it is the impunity which such actions represent that drive some of the youths of the area into militancy, which has, in some cases, graduated into criminality. The impression being given is that what is good for the goose is not good for the source, that the choice positions that others covet should not be held by others, especially by those who produce the resources over which others preside.

This is, clearly, even against natural justice and must be rejected, not only by the people of the South South but by all people of goodwill. Peace, national integration and development cannot be achieved on the platform of such inequity. President Umaru Yar'Adua, who has trumpeted adherence to the rule of law as a cardinal principle of his administration, should admit that these appointments are against the spirit of the federal character principle and should immediately order their review.

It is by such action that Nigerians would, more than before, begin to see him as a statesman and nation-builder and as a fair minded and just leader, whose interest is not to promote hegemony or an ethnic agenda but to move the nation forward on a platform of peace, equity and justice for all.