Opinions vary over the federal government's creation of Niger Delta ministry
By Tosin Omoniyi and Emma Alozie
For the beleaguered residents of Alakiri, in the southern fringes of oil-saturated Rivers State, Sunday, the 14th of September will remain an unforgettable day in their lives. In the wee-hours of that day, masked, blood-thirsty and battle-ready Niger Delta militants transformed the usually serene enclave into an arena of violence and blood letting.
According to credible sources, armed men, who arrived the Royal Dutch Shell's Alakiri flow station in the early hours of the morning engaged the equally battle-scarred men of the Joint Task Force, JTF, who had stepped up security in the wake of similar onslaughts by the militants. By the time, the smoke and battle dust cleared, after a concerted exchange of gunfire by both sides, a security man was allegedly slaughtered, while not less than four people sustained mortal injuries.
The Alakiri conflict came on the heels of a similar unprovoked attack on Chevron's Robert Kiri facility in Rivers State, a raid, Chevron officials have played down. In June this year, the group attacked Bonga, Royal Dutch Shell's flagship deep water enclave. Bonga, situated about 120 kilometres (75milles) from the coastal area of Nigeria, hitherto believed to be inaccessible to the debilitating fangs of militancy.
Scenarios like this are common in the creeks of Niger Delta, especially since 1999, when democracy made its famous return to Nigeria. Ordinarily, people had expected the people of Niger Delta to be very grateful and jubilant with the recent creation of the Niger Delta ministry by the Yar'Adua administration, but on the contrary, many people from the beleaguered region have received the creation of the ministry with what Davies Sokonte, a member of House of Representatives representing Degema/Bonny federal constituency of Rivers State termed as “cautious optimism.”
This can be attributed to the fact that on so many previous occasions, such seemingly goodwill gestures have not turned into anything tangible for the people. From 1957 when the Henry Willinks' Commission recommended that a special treatment be meted out to the people of the area to the recommendation of the Obasanjo's Constitutional Reform Conference for an 18-per cent derivation formula; it has been fertile promises and barren fulfilment all the way.
In all the previous agencies and commissions, set up to tackle developmental issues in the region, the problem has been that of funding. For instance, since the creation of the Niger Delta Development Commission, NDDC, a total of N3.15 trillion has been appropriated to the commission by the National Assembly in the national budgets, but only N350 billion of this amount has so far been released to it. This could have accounted for why the federal government's proposed Niger Delta summit was tumultuously shouted down by stakeholders in the region, who argue that the federal authorities are well aware that the problem of the region does not lie in any other summit, conference or symposium but on a political will to galvanise development plan.
Beating a hasty retreat from the summit, Abuja set up a 40-man technical committee headed by Ledum Mitee, president of the Movement for the Survival of Ogoni People, MOSOP, considered by many as a major stakeholder in environmental crisis that is one of the causes of the Niger Delta problem.
The mandate of the Mitee committee is to review and harmonise all the previous reports on the Niger Delta with a view to coming up with workable recommendations that if implemented by the government would bring an end to the intractable problems of the region. But, no sooner had this committee settled down to work than the federal government came up with the creation of the ministry of the Niger Delta, which according to the government “is to articulate the twin problem of development and youth restiveness in the Niger Delta. This particular ministry will help in the daily responsibility to monitor and advise the government on the way forward.”
Since this pronouncement was made public, condemnation has been as loud as the ensuing ovation. Davies Sokonte, argues that the creation of the ministry was calculated at taking off the shine off the Mitee committee, whose membership composition has been applauded by the people of the region. He called on the people of the region to receive the gesture with cautious optimism because according to him “it was not time for jubilation because many other efforts of government in the past have been efforts in futility.”
While Sokonte may be optimistic that the new ministry would find solution to the Niger Delta problem, Kazim Afegbua, acting chairman of the National Democratic Party, NDP, dismissed the creation of the ministry as plunging the issue of Niger Delta into the darkness of avoidable bureaucracy. According to him, “the NDDC as an already existing platform should have been empowered, reenergised and restructured to carry on the job it is doing, instead of reducing it to a mere parastatal under a ministry's bureaucracy.” Afegbua's argument is that the problem of the region does not call for creation of a ministry because even without being an oil-bearing region, the government would still have been required to pay special attention to the place. “Creation of a ministry for a particular region in the country would engender another call by any other part of the country that is having problems for such a creation,” he said.
For Emmanuel Deigha, representing Khana/Gokana federal constituency in the House of Representatives, the creation a ministry for the Niger Delta is another policy somersault and inconsistency by the federal government. The solution to the problem of the region from his view is not the creation of any ministry rather, what is at the root of it all is resource control and derivation.
The Movement for the Emancipation of Niger Delta, MEND, was the first to kick against the creation which they described as diversionary. “Creating a ministry is not the coming of the much-awaited messiah. Nigeria has in existence, ministries over 40 years old, which have not impacted positively on the people. It will be yet another avenue for corruption and political favouritism. Some examples of moribund ministries include energy, with its epileptic power supply, Health, with hospitals that have turned to dispensing clinics such that even the president prefers to be treated in Saudi Arabia and Germany.”
U.O Uket, CEO, Royal Initiatives and Accountability Organisation sees things differently. According to him, the establishment of a Niger Delta ministry is a luxury the nation cannot afford at present. He told Newsworld: “The technical committee is 100 per cent okay. The Niger Delta ministry however is not advisable. It is a needless duplication of the functions of the NDDC. It may not help matters in the long run. It would degenerate into many things that will eventually bring problems to the FG.”
On the panacea to the brewing crisis in the region, Uket supports the convening of an all-inclusive Niger Delta summit charged with proffering workable solutions to the stand-off between militants and the government. He also believes the formation of a mediatory committee and the financial empowerment of the NNDC will go a long way in putting a stop to the needless carnage going on sporadically in the oil-rich region.
However, it has not been all knocks without kudos for the new ministry. Former petroleum minister Tam David-West gave his thumbs up saying, “it is an excellent move in the right direction, but a crucial test is the content of the portfolio of the ministry. I give kudos to President Yar'Adua. Without taking out anything from all of his tremendous achievements, what he has done is highly commendable.”
On his own part, Edwin Clark, a chieftain of the South-south region hailed the creation of the new ministry describing it as a welcome development. “It is a welcome development. It shows the commitment of President Yar'Adua to his seven-point agenda. In Britain and other countries of the world, governments create special ministries to tackle development problems in certain areas; that is what the new Niger-Delta Ministry is going to achieve and I am happy about it.”
For those who have expressed reservations about the creation of the new ministry, their misgivings towards the government's gesture may not be out of place. Already, agitations have started from solid minerals producing places for the government to set up an agency or commission in the mould of NDDC. People from Jos, Plateau state are arguing that the environmental problems they are experiencing today is a consequence of the mining of tin in the state by the Nigerian state and therefore they are calling for the creation of a Solid Minerals Producing Areas Development Commission, SOMPADEC to help assuage the injustice of devastation.
Following the argument of the Plateau people are the Niger people, who are equally agitating for the creation of Hydro Power Area Development Commission, HYPADEC for hosting three dams; Shiroro, Kainji and Jebba dams.
Teslim Folarin, leader in the Nigerian Senate shares Uket's views. According to the lawmaker, the federal government has a historic role to play in the mitigation of the conflict in the crisis-ridden region. According to him, “there are three approaches to solving the problem. 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.”
He further notes: “Also, there is need for synergy between the federal, state and local governments in the area. Governments at the state and local government levels in the state have provided a 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.”
The legislator concluded by saying that the federal government needs to review some of its laws in order to enhance communal autonomy and make the communities stakeholders in the exploitation of the resources in their localities.
With the numerous cacophonous dissenting voices of those against and for the creation of the infant ministry and the unrelenting conflagration of conflict between MEND and the Joint Military Task Force in the creeks of Niger-Delta; it is now clearer to all that it is not yet uhuru in that oil-rich region.
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