Participation In Petroleum Development Towards Sustainable Community Development In The Niger Delta

Continued from last Wednesday May 26, 2010.

The book “Participation in Petroleum Development, Towards Sustainable community Development in the Niger Delta” by Eseme-Alabo Dr. Edward Bristol-Alagbariya is essential for key oil industry experts, administrators, scholars and students who wants to gain further insight on how the Niger Delta can benefit from oil exploration and exploitation. The Tide, beginning from this edition, run excerpts of the book. Enjoy it.

Thus, despite the military

            intervention posture of the Federal Government (FG) in the crisis-riven region, incumbent President Umaru Musa Yar’Adua created the Ministry of Niger Delta in September, 2008. This Ministry is to coordinate government environmental, infrastructural development and youth policy initiatives, to enhance the development of the Delta region.  It is the second Ministry to concentrate on a particular area of the federation, following the Ministry of the Federal Capital Territory (FCT) created to address the developmental needs of the federal capital. Before the creation of the Ministry of the Niger Delta, the predecessor of Yar’Adua, President Olusegun Obasanjo, pronounced in April 2006 that successive FGs of Nigeria had failed the Delta region. As expressed in Chapter 2, President Obasanjo lamented the age-long neglect of the region, while admitting that previous efforts of the FG towards resolving the region’s development problems and challenges is yet to make any appreciable impact on the lives of citizens of the region. President Obasanjo, who considered the crises in the region as a national challenge, established the Council for the Socio-economic Development of the Coastal States of the Niger Delta (SEDCOSND).  The opinion of the author is that President Obasanjo had to set up this Council, having realised that the NDDC, established in the interest of the entire oil-producing states (some of which do not belong to the true Delta region), is a misrepresentation. The setting up of the SEDCOSND justifies the focus of this book on the ethnic minority composition of the Delta region. As expressed in Chapter 2 and especially under the sub-heading of Chapter 1 entitled ‘The Niger Delta Region’, this book indicates that two out of the nine NDDC states (ie, Abia and Imo states) do not truly belong to the Delta region. There is thus a need for Nigeria to distinguish its other oil-producing areas from its true and main oil-producing Delta region, to properly address the problems and challenges confronting the region, its citizens and communities.  

It is considered in this book that the FG’s establishment of one intervention institution after another (ie, from the setting-up of the Niger Delta Development Board, NDDB, in 1961, the Oil Mineral Producing Areas Development Commission, OMPADEC, in 1992, the NDDC in 2000, and the SEDCOSND in 2006) has not solved the problems of the Delta region. These intervention institutions have not fully fulfilled the recommendations expressed in the Sir Henry Willink Commission report of 1958. As demonstrated in Chapter 3, the Willink Commission was set up by British colonial government at the end of the 1957 NICCs held at Lancaster House, London, to enquire into the fears of the ethnic minorities of Nigeria and the means to allay these fears towards the grant of political independence in the country. The Commission found that the Delta region was ‘poor, backward and neglected’. This state of the Delta region has become more deplorable in the course of more than five decades of petroleum development, as the region is poorer, more neglected, underdeveloped, and crises riven. The seriousness of the ongoing crises in the region reveals that its state and the plight of its people are now worse than those that obtained during the period of the Willink Commission, due to the same historical problem. That is, the marginalisation of the interests of the region and its people by the major tribes whose elites control political power and authority, and in effect decision-making processes in the federation. The new Ministry of Niger Delta therefore has a Herculean task if it is to make a difference from previous FG’s intervention measures and not merely to thrive as a bureaucratic structure.

Due to the concerns of many in Nigeria, the efforts of the FG along with those of the state and local governments exercising jurisdiction over the Delta region are being assessed by the civil society, especially non-governmental organisations (NGOs). As expressed in Chapter 8, 92 per cent of Nigerians who expressed their opinion in a poll conducted by NOI Polls (a Nigerian-based not-for-profit organisation partnering with Gallup Poll of the USA), stated that various levels of government exercising jurisdiction over the Delta region are not doing enough for the region and its citizens. As expressed in Chapter 1 and reinforced in Chapter 2, the problems of the region are mainly lack of political will and sustained commitment of successive FGs. These are, for instance, evidenced by the divide and rule strategies and marginalisation of the region and other minority areas by the ethnic majority political rulers presiding over the affairs of the federation at the federal level of governance. Thus, considering how the Niger Delta crises are associated with governance, natural resources development and conflicts in Nigeria and other major natural resources-rich developing countries characterised by the resource curse, Chapter 2 echoes the view of Karen Ballentine that ‘for developing countries, natural resources are [often] the ‘only game in town’.’ In resources-rich developing countries suffering from the resource curse, intrigues regarding the control of revenues accruing from the development of major natural resources are indeed the main games generating crisis and conflicts in town.

Community crises in the Delta region are further complicated by the inability or unwillingness of state and local governments in the region to properly address the region’s deplorable state and the plight of its poor citizens. Besides the role of state and local governments and that of MNOCs operating in the region, some citizens and citizen groups have a certain measure of blame to bear. While agitating that the FG should enforce the principles of social justice, equity and fair play in favour of the region and its citizens, such citizens and citizen groups are unwilling to enforce these principles, which constitute the basis of the resource-control movement in their respective interpersonal and inter-group relations in the region. The author’s critical assessment on how several of these groups are addressing the principles of the resource-control movement reveals that these principles are being greatly undermined in various interpersonal, as well as intra- and inter-communal relations in the region. Such groups are engaged in resource-control in an incomplete manner or from a limited perspective (ie, based on the relationship of Niger Deltans with the FG, the major tribes and the MNOCs operating in the region). These groups disregard the way in which the principles of the resource-control movement relate to them, especially in social capital relations among them. Such social capital relations, which undermines public good in the region, frustrate environmentally-sound and socially-equitable CI in petroleum development in the Delta region.

To overcome the negative effects of social capital relations and other challenges hindering the success of CI, the win-win environmental consensus and conflict resolution strategy may be applied by development proponents while interactively involving citizens of each directly-affected community in environmental decision-making processes, so as to translate the community’s collective vision into these processes of petroleum development proposals. This strategy promotes consensus-building based on common grounds, which satisfies the powerful and vociferous citizens and citizen groups as well as supports and encourages the weak, voiceless or less powerful ones – who would otherwise have been neglected or excluded from participation.  Government regulatory agencies and project proponents thus have a role to be diligent so as to ensure fair play between and among directly-affected citizens and citizen groups, in the course of CIs. In turn, powerful and vociferous community groups have a responsibility to restrain themselves from frustrating the process of due diligence designed by government regulatory agencies and project proponents to ensure the success of CIs regarding petroleum development projects in the Delta region.

To be Continued