Consultant Tasks N’Delta Govs On Dev

State governments in the Niger Delta region have not lived up to their responsibilities to the communities, Mr Moses Kragha, a Mining and Petroleum Consultant, has said.

Kragha said this in Abuja on Friday,  in a paper entitled: “Indigenous and Host Communities Participation in Nigeria’s Upstream Oil and Gas Operations’’.

Kragha delivered the paper at the ongoing Host Communities of Nigeria Producing Oil and Gas (HOSTCOM) Conference in Abuja.

The consultant said: “They have failed to apply the derivation funds to the development of the oil producing communities”.

“The recent initiative of giving 50 per cent of the derivation fund is being presented as a benevolent gift from the state governments. Is this the correct perspective?”

“Besides, setting up the State OMPADEC has not arrested the misapplication of the fund, just as NDDC has failed to effectively develop the region”.

“This is primarily so because of the basic structural defects of the governance and management of these development agencies,’’ Kragha added.

He said the governments had done little to sensitise their citizens to the national content development activities, talk less of facilitating and attracting these activities to their states to provide employment and generate revenues.

According to him, environmental devastation, gross community under-development and inadequate national content activities are contributing to the insecurity in the area.

Kragha said the education standard had continued to drop, infrastructure and health care services still in a sorry state, while unemployment was higher than the national average, just as the standard of living.

“These are in spite of the huge additional funds accruing to Niger Delta States through derivation, VAT and other special allocations,’’ he said.

Kragha said there were also interventions by development agencies including NDDC, Presidential Committee for the Development of Niger Delta Coastal States, IOCs Community activities, foreign agencies and NGOs.

He said the wrong approach to the Niger Delta development initiative should partly be blamed and pushed for a participatory direct approach, with minimal involvement of external briefcase carrying contractors.

Kragha said there was a need to involve the communities to discuss, decide, design and construct, develop and operate their beneficial projects.

He said that Niger Delta funds should be administered through a growing fund (bank or development fund) from where monies could be drawn to execute infrastructure and other programmes for the benefit of the people.

It would be  recalled that Acting President Goodluck Jonathan on Thursday, signed into law the “Local Content in Oil and Gas Bill’’ earlier passed by the National Assembly.