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

Continued from last Friday June 18, 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 three major stakeholders of the petroleum development business in Nigeria need to take advantage of the win-win environmental consensus and conflict resolution strategy recommended above as a way forward to resolve the crises in the Delta region, as this will persuade militant protagonists of the resource-control movement to reappraise their strategies. Time is therefore ripe for the major stakeholders led by governments to embark upon fruitful negotiations toward mutual cooperation and collaboration, to bring to an end or at least minimise the protracted crises in the region. This is indeed the time for the federal government and the state and local governments presiding over the affairs of the communities in the region to develop these communities and to rehabilitate the citizens, including the freedom fighters, of the region, in pragmatic terms of multi-stakeholder partnership (MSP). In the process, as identified in the context of Bonny kingdom in Chapter 4 and generally regarding the entire Delta region, citizens of the region must address the challenges of the resource-control movement by practising the principles of the movement in the region. That means practising, as a form of SRCs, the principles of social justice, equity and fair play in their interpersonal and intra- and inter-group relations, to enhance the efforts of the government and the MNOCs towards overall public good in the region. 

In Chapter 7 and in such other isolated cases in Chapter 8, the author discusses how activist civil society groups such as NGOs sensitised the world about the crises in the Delta region, especially during the judicial execution of the environmental and civil rights activist, Ken Saro-Wiwa, and his eight Ogoni kinsmen, in 1995. NGOs, therefore, need to continue to sensitise the world, and thereby persuade the MNOCs operating in Nigeria, as well as the federal government and the state and local governments in the Delta region, to generate environmentally-sound and socially-equitable SCD in the course of petroleum development in the region. SCD may be feasible in the oil-producing areas if the JV partners of the petroleum development business in Nigeria, and the state and local governments of these areas, fine-tune their SD strategies by sponsoring capacity-building and providing venture capital as CD trusts to encourage these areas to produce some of their basic needs and services so that they can achieve a measure of economic self-reliance. On this note, as public-spirited civil society groups, CBOs and leaders in the petroleum resources-producing areas are required to be alive to the plight of their people, by implementing laudable initiatives of the MNOCs, the government and other development partners at grass roots, so as to enhance the realisation of SCD in oil-producing communities.

By and large, the book confirms the proposal made in Chapter 1, on the strength of the enlarged/ancillary hypothesis, that there is a need for improved CSR in the Delta region and other oil-producing areas; and that there is a greater need for GSR embedded in GG so as to prevent the FRN from further decline or stagnation, in the interests of its entire component ethnic groups. Section 14(2)(c) of the 1999 Constitution of the FRN should be amended to empower citizens to make greater inputs in decision making as regards all aspects of nation-building, to improve upon their wellbeing. Such empowerment will generate greater accountability, transparency and responsibility in governance, while promoting the loyalty and sense of belonging of the citizens. Along with the provisions of Section 14(1) of the Constitution, the proposed amendment has the potential to boost such subsidiary laws as the EIA legislation, which has provisions on PP, and thereby bridge the gap between PP laws and the policy and regulatory frameworks associated with them. The proposed Freedom of Information (FoI – vis-à-vis citizens’ right-to-know) Act may be significant in this regard, by empowering all Nigerian citizens to have unfettered access to information. This would enhance unencumbered PI in decision making and unfettered access to justice in the federation. Also, following the prevailing state of affairs in the Republic of South Africa, for instance, it is on the basis of GSR, anchored on GG that the amendment of the 1999 Constitution of the FRN is recommended in Chapter 1, in order to make economic and socio-cultural (ESC) rights enforceable on government in the interests of the citizens. Interactive CI enhanced by integrative social and environmental justice, towards environmentally-sound and socially-equitable SCD in oil-producing areas, cannot be achieved in the absence of GSR generated by a socially just, accountable, and transparent system of governance in the federation. SCD is so far yet to be achieved in the Delta region, as is the case in other parts of Nigeria. SCD in the oil-rich Delta region and SD in the entire FRN could not have been achieved in the absence of basic public utilities and other means of livelihood, processes and steps which required for the achievement of the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) in the interest of humanity, especially poor citizens of the federation. If SD is achieved in Nigeria it will be self-evident on the wellbeing of the citizens, particularly the poor citizens of the country. 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.

To be continued.