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

Continued from Monday June 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 want 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.

Accordingly, if SCD is eventually achieved in the Delta region, it will not require the exaggerated publicity being made by governments and MNOCs, as it will be obvious from the wellbeing of the citizens of the region in their various villages, towns and cities. Sustainability indicators, which include government transparent and stable regulation of  petroleum and other major natural resources development, need, therefore, to be designed and implemented to properly streamline Nigeria’s effort towards SD. Considering that the world is in the era of peak oil and climate change, and that SD is an illusion or incompatible with petroleum and other extractive industrial development operations in developing countries suffering from the resource curse, there is limited time within which to accomplish so much to achieve environmentally-sound and socially-equitable SCD in the oil-producing areas. Considering that 2015 is fast approaching, there is equally limited time to achieve the MDGs in Nigeria.

The author’s perspective demonstrates that the more citizens of the oil-producing communities can benefit from petroleum development through interactive public involvement (PI) and other SD strategies, the more they would, as genuinely-recognised stakeholders and partners in progress, take part in ensuring the success of the development operations in their communities. The same applies to all Nigerian citizens, especially the poor masses, in terms of benefiting from the enormous revenues being derived from petroleum and other major natural resources development in the country. SCD in the Niger Delta and other parts of Nigeria therefore presupposes greater or improved citizens’ involvement in all aspects of Nigeria’s nation-building, in compliance with the dictates of the ongoing world-wide participation explosion associated with transparency and accountability in governance. This would involve empowering all Nigerian citizens, including the country’s intelligentsia, such as experts in various fields of endeavour, and thereby make their voices to be truly heard and duly integrated into decision-making processes affecting their lives and well-being. To achieve this state of affairs require a visionary FG to exhibit the desired political will backed by commitment and a pro-active approach, and thereby motivate the state and local governments in the federation, to resolve the Nigerian leadership question in the interest of all. In the process, the FG and the relevant state and local governments will take more appropriate steps to resolve the crises in the Delta region. Governance, both civil and traditional, would thus be required to operate at a strategic level where the consequences of proposed policies, plans and programmes/projects would be considered and evaluated at the earliest possible stage of decision-making. With such improvements, PP/interactive PI will surely become a proper way of governance and an accepted way of life, and thus steer Nigeria into true nationhood and prosperity, and to achieve SD vis-à-vis the MDGs by 2015.

10.5 Agenda for Future Studies

Following the key issues, findings and recommendations expressed above, there is a need for specific studies associated with some aspects of this book. As indicated in the introductory part, such studies may include the designing of CI models such as toolkits and guidelines based on identified good practices in community participation, CD and SCD, in the course of major natural resources development. Such models need, however, to be adapted to suit the circumstances of communities endowed with major natural resources in developing countries suffering from the resource curse. Thus, as recommended in Chapter 1, there is a need to develop PI guidelines   and other such models regarding the development of petroleum and other major natural resources such as solid minerals, in order to promote industrial peace and harmony through partnership of the major stakeholders of these resources development businesses in Nigeria. Future study is needed on the development of policy and the enactment legislation on CSR, so as to enhance the development of Nigerian company law and practice. Such a study might address how the increasing emphasis on CSR in relation to MNOCs is a challenge to the Nigerian and other national oil companies (NOCs), in the ongoing efforts to achieve SD in the country. There should be future study on the Delta region’s resource-control movement in relation to enthroning the principles of equity, social justice and fair play in the region. This study could among other things consider the unsustainable nature of militancy (ie, violence) in the region and address it through reorientation, capacity-building and other laudable initiatives designed to engage militant youngsters and to employ them gainfully and sustainably in their own best and the overall interests of society. Future studies should also be carried out on other ways of evolving sustainable communities, cities and towns, based on the peculiar circumstances of and situations in Nigeria.  Finally, there should be more studies, backed by citizens’ activisms based on due process, on how to achieve GG, including true federalism, in Nigeria.

Concluded.