Nigeria is the world's sixth largest producer of crude oil. This is in addition to her huge reserves of mineral and agricultural riches and human resources. Nigerians therefore should be enjoying some of the highest global living standards; unfortunately the reverse is the case. According to official records, the country now has some of the lowest living standards despite being one of Africa’s most endowed countries.
The country’s crude oil installed capacity is 2.5 million barrels of oil per day valued currently at $93 per barrel. From the 5th position in 2004, Nigeria is currently the 3rd largest crude oil exporter to the United States. This is on the heels of the government’s plans and intent to increase oil reserves to 50 billion barrels by 2010 and to raise its production capacity to five million barrels per day by 2010. Confirmed offshore oil deposits have increased from about 30 percent of the country's total reserves in 1997 to about 50 percent over the years. Nigeria has earned close to US$340 billion since production began over four decades ago from onshore sites. Over $50 billion of that sum 'disappeared overseas' having been stolen by corrupt western oil companies that extract oil worth an estimated $150 billion a year from the area in recent years. A rough estimate is that Nigeria earns some $160 billion every year from oil and gas alone.
Surveys conducted by Nigeria's Federal Office of Statistics show that from 1980-1996, poverty level in the country jumped alarmingly from 28 to 66 percent. The GDP per person over this period is recorded to be $860 (1982), $280 in 1996 while 67.1 million out of the 140 million people from 1996-2007 are living on less than US $1.40 a day.
The political and economic history of Nigeria cannot be complete without a holistic understanding of the Niger Delta region and its adjoining oil producing states. The reason is that this region produces the oil and gas that propels Nigeria’s economy; about 90% of the Nigeria’s foreign exchange earnings. The Delta is home to over 15 million impoverished people and the first oil was produced in Oloibiri in 1956. After 40 years of production, the entire delta is inundated with impassable roads, decrepit schools, very few and ill equipped health clinics, no portable and clean drinking water, polluted creeks and farmlands. There have been dozens of oil spills and continuous gas flaring discharging carbon dioxide 24 hours a day. In short, the Niger Delta is one of Nigeria's poorest regions, despite its oil wealth. Outside the capital cities there is no real development, no roads, no electricity, no running water and no security of lives and properties.
Since multinational oil companies began prospecting in and around the Delta region, exploitation of human resources as well as environmental degradation has been the norm. The exploration activity manifests in the wholesale pollution of the land, waterways and lack of infrastructural development in the affected region. The result of the multinational malfeasance coupled with government neglect is the surge in armed liberation struggles and hostage takings.
Hitherto, agitations were grounded on the philosophy of resource control, pollution control, infrastructural development and human resource development. However, these ideological movements having been sidelined has brought to the fore today’s ugly situation of wholesale insecurity in the region. The prevalence of insecurity has had untold hardship on the people coupled with economic draw backs for Nigeria’s GNP and GDP. The recent financial report released by the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) indicates the following;
“Aggregate output growth measured by the Gross Domestic Product (GDP) was estimated at 5.73 per cent during the second quarter of 2007, compared with 5.65 per cent in the preceding quarter. The growth was driven by the non-oil sector which was estimated at 9.2 per cent."
“Total federally-collected revenue during the second quarter of 2007 stood at N1, 094.25 billion, representing a decline of 11.2 and 10.6 per cent from the proportionate budget estimate and the level in the preceding quarter, respectively. Total federally-collected revenue fell by 14.9 per cent, compared with the corresponding period of 2006. “At N917.09 billion, oil receipts which constituted 83.8 per cent of the total ,declined by 3.6 and 10.0 per cent from the budget estimate and the level in the preceding quarter, respectively."
The fall in oil receipts relative to the budget estimate was blamed on restiveness in the Niger Delta region. Insecurity in the region has intensified as hostage takers have taken cue from the glorification of official corruption by opinion leaders in the region and nation at large and as oil money is being fraudulently converted for personal use by state governors, federal ministers and directors of government parastatals.
The National Association of Seadogs (NAS) is worried by the level and degree of corruption within the ruling class. Official corruption has become the cancer militating against our growth as a people. NAS has singled out corruption as the foundation of our underdevelopment and infrastructural decay. We identify corruption as the root of all evils in the nation’s geo-polity and stress that the need for a concerted drive to fight it has become paramount.
Blurred Lines between Militancy and Criminality
In fulfillment of promise made by President Musa Yar ‘Adua in his maiden address to the nation on May 29, to find a lasting solution to the Niger Delta crises, the Vice President, Goodluck Jonathan on Monday, July 2, inaugurated the Niger Delta Peace and Conflict Resolution Committee. The Rivers State government had inaugurated a similar committee earlier on, the Peace and Rehabilitation Committee. The body can be said to have made significant progress. Some of their notable progress includes dialogues, enlightenment programs and unveiling of rehabilitation programs that led to the voluntary renouncement of cultism and militant activities by over 25 former dreaded militants in Rivers state.
However, hostage taking as a means to combat multinational exploitation has since transmuted to a means of violent extortion. In other words, the Niger Delta’s bigger picture called ‘resource control’ has been subverted by criminals and turned into money ventures. Though the sermon remains ‘the emancipation of the region,’ money realized from these ransom demands end up in the pockets of the perpetrators instead of the peoples of the Delta.
NAS believes that an illustration of the blurred lines between criminal militancy and armed social advocacy can be illustrated by the senseless abduction in recent times of toddlers as young as 4 years old and the elderly as old as 84. NAS believes that the accepted fight for social justice and the moral ground of being the victim are lost by the militants when they allow common criminals to hijack their struggle.
Sustained Leadership and responsibility
We of NAS are disturbed by the apparent lack of leadership on the part of the Government as well as the impact of involvement by foreign elements in the fray.
Recent media reports credit Vice-President Jonathan Goodluck with appealing to the United Nations, through its Development Programme (UNDP) Resident Representative in Nigeria, Mr. Alberic Kakou, for among other things, assistance in job creation for the Niger Delta, curbing the flow of arms into the region and increased capacity building.
The National Association of Seadogs (NAS) view this appeal as a display of Executive dereliction of core basic functions and duties of government. The creation of jobs and other areas mentioned are duties which are clearly in the Government’s purview to execute for the betterment of the Niger Delta peoples and not a function of the UN. A nation so naturally endowed and blessed should not go cap in hand begging for alms from the UN for job creation and capacity building. One may ask where the huge windfall Nigeria is collecting from our oil and gas exportation is going.
The National Association of Seadogs view this appeal by his Excellency Vice President Goodluck Jonathan as an ill-advised posture of a government who by implication has presented Nigeria as a country which cannot manage the crisis within its borders and also one that lacks the ability to provide lasting solutions. While NAS commends the relevant security services for their alertness and adroitness as witnessed in the recent arrests of some foreign nationals alleged to have been found in the region seeking ways to escalate the crisis for external profit, we hereby sound the alarm that this is an indication that there are unholy interests who will benefit immensely if the crisis should elevate to the level of civil strife as has happened in other African regions in the past like Liberia, Sierra Leone, Rwanda and Darfur, Sudan, to mention a few.
We wish to emphatically encourage efforts to ensure that a final and lasting solution which will be equitable, fair and non detrimental to the Delta Region should continue to be pursued. Anything short of this will spell disaster for the continued corporate existence of Nigeria and thus unacceptable.
Having identified problem areas we seek to proffer the under listed solutions:
- Oil companies should release a list of opinion leaders who have in the past received cheques on behalf of their communities. NAS believes that the list shall set the pace and prepare grounds for investigation of the whereabouts of such funds and possible prosecution of those who have embezzled communal funds;
- A Niger Delta Trust Fund should be established by the Federal government. This fund should be similar to the ALASKA PETROLEUM FUND (North America) and the STATE PETROLEUM FUND (Norway). Nigeria should understudy resource control policies in Norway, USA and Canada and consider the Alaska and Norway paradigms as models for the much touted NIGER DELTA MASTER PLAN. The fund shall service infrastructural development in all oil producing states;
- A special police unit should be established in the region to protect oil and gas installations, turbines and distribution lines to guard against frequent interruptions in the oil and gas industry. Perhaps indigenes of the Niger Delta can be put to work to guard such installations. We can thus monitor their performance as productive citizens.
- An education Fund should be established to guarantee student loans for undergraduate and graduate students for the peoples of the Delta;
- Establishing a Human Resources Centre to cater for the needs of the unemployed vis-à-vis welfare package;
- Establishing a Health policy that caters for free consultation and free treatment of some ailments as well as free drug prescriptions for students, the unemployed and our senior citizens;
- Establishing rural electrification program (solar, wind, hydro) to power towns, cities, schools and hospitals in the Niger Delta regions. Such act will be a model for Nigeria’s fully integrated development;
- The criminalization of militancy and hostage taking cannot be overemphasized since these acts are at variance with the vision and aspiration of genuine struggles for de-pollution, resource control and an acceptable revenue allocation formula;
- The federal government should immediately put machinery in motion to demilitarize the region and stem the high and ugly tide of militancy;
- NAS wishes to conclude that the same parameters employed at resolving the imbalance in oil revenue control be extended to other mineral producing communities across the length and breath of Nigeria based on EQUALITY, JUSTICE & FAIRNESS to all; and
- At no time should Government of Nigeria cede its constitutional responsibilities to the UN or other foreign organization or nations. Doing so will spell trouble for the actual control of the nation and our resources.
Professor Olatunde Makanju
NAS Capone
National Association of Seadogs (NAS)
November 15, 2007
