Daily Independent (Lagos)
Dan Amor
25 May 2009
opinion
For those readers who have no knowledge of the existing predicament in the Niger Delta before the military occupation of the area as sponsored by the all-powerful and sadistic Nigerian state, the first two paragraphs of this column would shed some light.
The area occupies a span of over 70,000 square kilometers and four ecological zones. Rated as one of the world's largest expanse of wetland with the ninth vastest drainage area in the world and the third largest mangrove forest in the universe, the Niger Delta is an ethnographic melting pot with 48 distinct lingual groups and a population of well over twenty million. Three - quarters of this population live in squalid slums and in blighted rural settlements. In natural resource endowment, the Niger Delta is evidently the richest region in Nigeria, accounting for over 80 per cent of the country's hydro-carbon resources particularly crude oil and natural gas.
Aside from crude oil and gas, the Niger Delta is also blessed with fertile agricultural land, excellent fisheries, extensive forests, an enviable wildlife as well as a large stock of cash crops such as palm produce, rubber, rice, yam and cassava. Yet, unfortunately, due to the discovery of oil and gas in commercial quantity in the area in 1956, and exploration began in 1957, the Niger Delta region has had a lot of harsh and uncomfortable environmental hazards to contend with. Besides the high pressure pipe lines which crisis-cross the land mass, there is a preponderance of acid rain which results from 24 hours of gas flaring, oil spillage and blow-outs. Consequently, the atmosphere is saturated and vapourised by poisonous gases like carbon dioxide, ammonia, carbon monoxide, and so on. While the laying of oil pipe lines has virtually taken over cultivable land that would have been used for subsistence farming by the local people, the toxic nature of chemicals used by oil companies has destroyed marine life and denied them of their fishing activities.
In an attempt to check such dehumanizing conditions imposed on them by oil exploratory activities, the people of oil producing communities, on the one hand, and multinational oil companies and the Nigerian State on the other, have found themselves in constant quarrels and altercations. What is amazing is that more than fifty years of the exploitation of oil in the Niger Delta during which over $400 billion has been realized by the Nigerian State and the multinational oil companies, it is difficult to point to any remarkable developmental stride the exploiters have recorded in the region. It is this lack of commitment on the part of the authorities that pushed some aggrieved youths in the region to needless militancy. Even when concerned Nigerians who foresaw the escalation of the crisis advised government to double its effort toward the development of the region to forestall a degeneration of the crisis, government continued to pay lip service to it until the agitation was hijacked by criminal gangs.
By playing hide-and-seek with the crisis, the immediate past administration of Chief Olusegun Obasanjo deliberately allowed the boil to develop into a cancer. It is disturbing that what started as genuine agitation by citizens of the oil-rich region for a fair deal in the management and control of the resource, which has caused the devastation of their land and entire eco-system, has been allowed to escalate into a shooting war with its attendant consequences. Of course, it is true that in the past couple of years several meetings of stakeholders with government representatives had been held purportedly to identify issues of critical importance and to proffer solutions that could enthrone enduring peace in the region. At first, the people saw this as a remarkable effort which helped to dispel doubts and misgivings about the determination of government to initiate appropriate measures towards amelioration of the distressful condition of the massively devastated delta basin. As it were, multinational oil companies and host communities knew peace was inevitable while oil exploration and production proceeded unhampered for as long as the promised intervention of government was being awaited.
Things, however, began to fall apart after Obasanjo submitted the Niger Delta Development Commission, NDDC, Bill to the National Assembly proposing to fund the agency through a formula that the lawmakers found inadequate. The National Assembly eventually passed that Bill into law after it overrode the former President's veto since Obasanjo rejected the amended version. Subsequent engagements between government and stakeholders usually after civil flare-ups, were followed with assurances that were never kept by the ever recalcitrant central authorities. But if Obasanjo's application of military praxis in the Niger Delta question led to a stalemate, why must President Umaru Yar'Adua, a supposed democrat, continue with obdurate obsession and authoritarian impulses? Yar'Adua, who promised Nigerians during his presidential campaign in 2007 that he would resolve the Niger Delta crisis during his first 100 days in office, has ironically performed worse than Obasanjo in the resolution of the conflict. He set up a committee headed by Ledum Mitee to brainstorm on possible solution to the crisis the report of which he has refused to implement. He created a phantom Ministry of Niger Delta Affair and allocated to it a paltry N51 billion whereas he approved N89 billion for the dualization of the Abuja/Lokoja Road. Even as he authorized military onslaught on Ijaw communities in Delta State, Yar'Adua is yet to release the over N300 billion NDDC money still being held by the Presidency.
Much as this column has constantly deplored the senseless criminality going on in the Niger Delta by monsters known as cult gangs that were created by politicians, the option of deploying the military to carry out armed campaign against communities in the Niger Delta remains the most barbaric, base and crude, more so in a democratic dispensation. While we share the concern from informed circles that hostage-taking, illegal oil bunkering and all other forms of criminality currently flourishing in the Niger Delta can only worsen the collective image of the country, scare away foreign investors, we hold that our governing elite must note one thing: the current deployment of force can only compound the crisis and create more complex situations that may further postpone the peace we all yearn for. A far more creative approach is what is required to carry the people along and remove the enduring factors that tend to lend the militants sympathy among the mass of the Niger Delta people. The war must be halted immediately.
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The people of the area should submit to Millitary order and focus on our One Nigeria, But they are not to blame because this is their own Biafran war, but Government should take it easy on civilans there, because all is not millitant (Rebels)
The people of the area should understand that we all have accepted to be one Nigeria weather you like it or not, because their people are there when our one Nigeria was sign, let known body violet it
ONE NIGERIA WILL TAKE ITS STANDS IF THE FEDERAL GOVT. ADMITS HER RESPONSIBILITIES ON THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE RURAL AREAS IN NIGER DELTA REGION. AS A MATTER OF FACT, JTF MUST STOP THEIR ONSLAUGHT AGAINST NIGER DELTA REGION OR !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Perhaps the corrupt Nigerian govt will stop digging itself into a much deeper hole when the national income accruing to the federal coffers reaches zero for which the Patriots have nothing to lose. That is when Emperor Yar's administration and his foreign MNE masters, for which he is killing innocent Nigerians to please, will soon realize their errors that this is a war of attrition; let us see who will blink, first. Malam Yar has opened the Pandora's Box - let’s see how he puts the genie back into the bottle, unless it blows up in his face.
The so called criminality, militancy and restiveness of the Niger Delta youths is the outcome or better still 'refined product' of the 'crude' and insensitive exploitation and marginalisation that has taken place for over 50 years. The petro-dollars that were suppose to have made a difference in the region, have been largely stolen. The chickens have come home to roost. The major act of criminal neglect of the communities by the Federal Government is the root cause of the problem. The force of arms is not the solution.
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