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

Continued from last Friday May 21, 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.

The crises in the Delta region indicate what happens when participation, based on mutually beneficial partnership among directly affected stakeholders, is either insufficient or non-existent. Consequently, this book argues that it is the absence or weakness of PI in environmental decision-making in poor, rural and neglected major natural resources-rich communities of developing countries, as identified by authorities on PP in environmental decision making, that gives rise to community crises and failures of major natural resources development projects in these countries. Regarding the need for improved or active PI in environmental decision making regarding petroleum resources development in the Nigerian Delta region, this book proffers a solution to community crises by stating that improved environmental democracy in the resources development projects will enable citizens of the region to benefit fairly from such development projects taking place in their communities. It argues that citizens are unlikely to disrupt the resources development operations from which they will benefit in a socially justifiable form and manner. Hence, improved environmental democracy is discussed as an enduring solution to community crises propelled by the resource-control movement in the Delta region. The book considers the roles of corporate responsibility and impact assessment (IA) towards sound and equitable SD, based on the need to integrate socio-political processes associated with the region into the biophysical aspects of Environmental Assessment (EA), to effectively address the adverse effects of petroleum development in the region. The scope of the book is wide, as it attempts to pin the weakness of environmental democracy regarding petroleum development in the Delta region to the lack of participation of the majority of Nigerian citizens in decision-making processes of nation-building. The book thus advocates the need for improved citizens’ participation in governance, towards greater transparency and accountability at all levels of decision-making in the country.    

Key findings and conclusions of the book include the need for improvement in the environmental and social performances of the MNOCs. Although the MNOCs and governments are making efforts to enhance SD in the course of petroleum development, these are mainly in the realm of lip service, and centred more on the conceptual framework of SD than its actual realisation. Whereas the FG and other levels of government and government functionaries often emphasise the need for SD, they do so to promote their political image and the image of their administrations, while the MNOCs profess SD to promote their public relations profile in relation to their operational activities in the resources-producing communities. The concept or principle of SD is therefore diluted in the course of its implementation in Nigeria. As such, the MNOCs are yet unable or reluctant to adequately comply with the provisions of Article 27 of the Johannesburg Declaration on SD, 2002, and the government remains unable to evolve or develop a stable and transparent system for regulating petroleum development in the Federation in compliance with the provisions of Article 29 of the Johannesburg Declaration on SD. The author also found that PI or PP is a significant pillar of EA or Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA), as well as a fundamental instrument for collective, sound and equitable decision making towards SD. The EA process of petroleum resources development projects is therefore a medium by which SD can be achieved in the Delta region and other oil-producing areas of the FRN. However, because of the weakness of this process, it is directed more towards the provision of such impact-benefits as social amenities or public utilities which are lacking in the resources-producing communities. Since it is the traditional responsibility of government to provide social amenities or public utilities, the MNOCs operating in the Federation are unwilling to entirely assume the responsibility to provide these amenities or utilities for the oil-producing communities. It was also found that lack of government social responsibility (GSR) or the failure of governance arising from improper or lack of accountability and transparency is why public utilities are not being adequately provided in Nigeria. It is demonstrated that lack of implementation of the existing EIA process by government regulatory agencies, especially in terms of ensuring compliance of the MNOCs, and the implementation of robust, beautifully and expensively-published corporate social responsibility (CSR) measures by these companies are twin problems challenging SD of petroleum resources in the Delta region and other oil-producing areas of Nigeria. The conclusion is that, although there is need for improvement in CSR, there is a greater need for GSR embedded in good governance (GG). Hence the call for GSR, to empower Nigerian citizens to interactively engage in the decision-making processes of nation-building, in order to foster transparency, accountability and responsibility in governance. Interactive PI is thus central to Nigeria’s true nationhood, prosperity and SD. SCD in the Delta region and other oil-producing areas therefore presupposes an improved degree of citizens’ involvement in decision making generated by GG. The need to resolve community crises associated with petroleum development in the Delta region thus poses a challenge to improve CSR backed by GSR, because CSR, no matter how well designed or how properly implemented, is not, and never can be, an alternative to good governance (GG). GG is required to generate, motivate and improve both CSR and the social responsibilities of the communities (SRCs) in order to generate strategic partnerships among the three major stakeholders of the petroleum resources development business in Nigeria towards environmentally-sound and socially-equitable SCD. Strategic partnerships, based on mutual trust, cooperation and commitment among the major stakeholders (ie, the FG, MNOCs and the resources-producing communities), are capable of generating prosperity in the overall interests of Nigeria, the MNOCs and consumer-nations of the resources, including the citizens of these nations who rely on the uninterrupted development and security of supply of these resources. The cover design of the book demonstrates such strategic partnerships capable of giving birth to a green environment in the FRN as well as an era of green governance in the Federation.

The author identifies the FG, the MNOCs and the petroleum resources-producing communities as the three major stakeholders of the resources development business in Nigeria. As paramount chief of a principal founding chieftaincy house community of the Delta region’s ancient kingdom of Bonny, hosting such giant multi-billion USD MNOCs as Shell Nigeria, Exxon-Mobil, and Nigeria LNG Limited, and as a specialist on PP and IA of major natural resources development projects, the author establishes himself as a stakeholder of the petroleum development business in Nigeria. To date, no author has addressed the protracted community crises associated with petroleum development in the Delta region based on the weakness of environmental democracy as demonstrated in this book. The author is therefore resolute in asserting that there is no alternative to interactive involvement of citizens in the decision-making processes of nation-building affecting their lives, wellbeing and future generations, as this is the best way to achieve consensus among citizens, accountability in governance, and peace derived through collaborative partnership and mutual trust towards SD in Nigeria. Consequently, Nigeria (the most populous black African nation) cannot afford to be regarded as a failed state in contemporary global history, nor would it want to be reckoned with as being unable to achieve the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) by 2015.  

Edward T. Bristol-Alagbariya; Centre for Energy, Petroleum & Mineral Law & Policy (CEPMLP), University of Dundee, June, 2009.

To be Continued.