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Urhobo Historical Society |
Road Map to Peace in
By Senator David O. Dafinone, OFR
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The
The Niger Delta region has a population of 27 million, covering an
area of 70,000 square kilometers, with 5000 communities, 50 ethnic
groups and 250 dialects.
The region is not only rich in oil and gas, but also well endowed
with other natural resources like water, timber and other forest
resources, wild life and sharp sand. It is the third largest wetland
in the world, following after the Amazon basin in
There are six states in the Niger Delta, namely;
Bayelsa, Delta and Rivers, constituting
the core and original states through which the River Niger drains into
the Atlantic Ocean, and three others which include,
Akwa-Ibom, Cross Rivers and Edo.
Politically, these six states constitute the South-South geopolitical
zone of Nigeria.
The significant feature of the Niger Delta is the general state of
underdevelopment, not only by world standards but also in relation to
many parts of
The poverty of this region, whilst being the source of the majority
of
The Niger Delta was recognized as a region for a special development
initiative and attention in the Independence Constitution of 1960. The
Pre-Independence Constitution also recognized a special right of the
region to oil and gas resources ownership. Thus, 50% of royalty
deriving from the Oil and Gas exploitation was paid to the Oil
Producing Regions or States.
Hazards of Oil Exploration and Production (1956 � 2007)
The hazards of Oil Exploration from
Oloibiri to date (1956- 2007) have changed
the structure of the region from stagnation to decay. Over the
years, the oil-rich Niger Delta region has been the backbone of
Yet, the scourge of poverty in the Niger Delta region is grim with
the people lacking basic human needs and their environment willfully
and constantly degraded by the foreign oil companies and the
The Oloibiri oil wells, for instance,
where oil was first found in 1956 in Nigeria, became extinct in 1979
after the completion of the full circle of exploitation by Shell
Petroleum Development Company (SPDC) and British Petroleum (BP), a
subsidiary of the Royal Dutch/Shell Group. At that time, Shell removed
pipelines, capped the wells and pulled out of the community as if oil
was never produced in the area. However, they did not redress
the damage to the environment as a direct result of their production.
Consequently, the heavily polluted environment of the
This is not the only incidence of oil companies failing to rectify
the environment during and after production. I was in the Senate
when the wellhead of Oben 1, one of
Shell�s oilfields in today�s
The fact-finding mission of the Senate Committee on the Oil Producing
Areas that visited the affected community discovered that the
explosion was caused by the company�s negligence. Shell was forced to
shut down Oben 1 and it vacated the oil
community following the order of the Committee.
In 1981, Chevron/Texaco�s offshore rig at
Finima was gutted by fire, again on
account of the company�s recklessness. Over two million barrels of
crude spilled into the surrounding waters.
In 1986, the inhabitants of the old
Finima community with their traditional
sacred sites were all evicted and dumped into a poorly artificially
sand filled area to allow the construction of the Bonny LNG. By 1988,
the newly created Finima was flooded,
turning the people into refuges in their ancestral home.
With the ageing of most on-shore oilfield, the antecedents of Shell
in the extinct Oloibiri field are already
being repeated. The oil-producing communities have at various times
suffered frequent oil spillages caused largely by lack of careful
maintenance of the flow lines, persistent flaring of the gas for over
five decades, and the dumping of untreated toxic waste generated from
oil exploration and production into the creeks, rivers and land. As
oil exploration and production moves offshore, the Niger Delta is
increasingly being polluted from both land and sea.
The Niger Delta region is constantly threatened by a huge loss of
biodiversity. There is also decline of brackish water (a finite
resource and the basis of sustainability of the wetland), massive
pollution of surface and underground waters with increasing presence
of lead and mercury.
This has worsened the attendant health hazards, resulted in a
dramatic increase of derived savannah in the world�s third largest
wetland, and created a rural land crisis, the
spectre of landlessness, food insecurity
and constant extinction of aquatic life.
This combined with other issues arising from poor governance and
policy have partly shaped the structure of
the underdevelopment of the Niger Delta region.
Governance in the
Niger
The
As a creation of the Nigerian state, the NDDC serves as an avenue
where the politics of the state mode of surplus extraction is played
out in concrete terms through the award of contracts and plum
appointments to the political elite and their cronies. For a
commission that has never been well funded from the onset, an
allocation of a paltry N69.9billion further underscores the
perceived unwillingness of the state to enable the body function
efficiently in dealing with the crisis of development in the region.
By the provision of the Land Use Decree of 1978, the inhabitants of
the oil producing communities have been turned into squatters in their
own ancestral homes, as land where oil is
explored, produced, transported and stored
still belongs to the state long after political independence in 1960.
However, the oil companies are expected to pay compensation for crops
destroyed and fishponds polluted in the process of finding and
producing oil, but only at rates exclusively determined by the
Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC) and the oil companies.
Even payments made to aggrieved persons were done under sharp
practices.
Furthermore, the foreign oil companies have been fermenting inter and
intra community conflicts in the oil producing communities by playing
a divide and rule game. This, they have done to essentially undermine
the traditional authorities opposed to their recklessness. The oil
companies have acquired the notoriety of not only funneling largesse
inclusive of huge cash amounts to the tribal leaders, who, in turn,
fail to share the benefits with their communities, but also inciting
some of the youths to rebel against such leaders in an effort to save
their facilities from attack. The majority of the foreign oil
companies have become sources of funding for some prominent local
leaders scheming for political/traditional leadership positions in the
communities.
Buoyed with the financial gratifications from the oil
companies, the local elite recruit and equip youth leaders with money
and weapons to engage in violence in order to control the villages and
further their narrow political and social interest. These groups have
grown more powerful and resentful towards village chiefs. In some
areas, youth groups that did not benefit from the largesse have
rebelled against local chiefs on ground of collaborating with both oil
companies and the government to oppress and exploit them. While
conflict entrepreneurship is flourishing, insecurity in the region is
deepening.
The emergence of armed groups across the region is partly a function
of the zero-sum politics in
Desirous of winning an election, majority of the politicians hire the
daring youths and have them equipped with dangerous weapons to crush
all forms of opposition. Socialized into violence, the armed youths
can hardly withdraw from acts of lawlessness long after elections are
over. As a result, with the slightest power tussle between and among
the local politicians and conflict entrepreneurs, the youths are
mobilized by the local powerful elites for action, causing mayhem.
Coupled with the deepening poverty, underdevelopment,
widespread youth unemployment and alienation of the people, the
insecurity in the area has been accentuated.
The proliferation of small and light weapons across the Niger Delta
stems from the desire of arms dealers - local and foreign - to create
a market for their products in the country. Evidence has shown that
the AK47 rifles and self-propelled grenade launchers amongst others
used in the wars in
The existence and application of the Mineral Act of 1914; part of
which has been extracted to form the Petroleum Act of 1969, the Land
Use Act of 1978 and the Land (Title Vesting) Decree of 1993 have
directly or indirectly contributed to the present state of neglect,
under-development and the insecurity of the region.
In all appearances, the root cause of the crisis in the Niger Delta
remains the denial of the peoples� right to land and its content,
which the above pieces of legislations have concentrated on the state.
Originally, the current crisis in the Niger Delta was a governance
crisis and right-based, with economic agenda only factored into it
following the prolonged period of underdevelopment.
Naturally, the recipe for peace in the enclave is fundamentally the
return of the rights of the people to land and its contents as it was
under the pre-colonial period. The Repeal of the Land Use Act 1978,
the Petroleum Act 1969 and the Lands (Title Vesting) Act 1993 are
therefore imperative.
The protracted intransigence in the Niger Delta is an indication that
the military action is not a viable option for reversing the
underdevelopment of the region and restoring peace there. This
explains in part why the allocation of N444.6 billion in the
2008 national budget for security in the Niger Delta is placing undue
emphasis on issues that will not further peace in the restive region.
Dedicating such huge amount to policing the Niger Delta will, as
usual, be counter productive because the resentment of the Nigerian
state and the oil companies by the people will continue to deepen.
State sponsors of terrorism cannot sustain oil exploration and
production in the Niger Delta. There can be no peace and guarantee for
human security in the Delta region without social, infrastructural and
overall development of the area. Government must move away from the
current piecemeal approach to the crisis and drop its misplaced belief
that a military solution can be found to the festering violence in the
region.
I do not only share this huge burden of pain, but I also feel
challenged to cause a restoration of the people�s rights to ownership
of land and its content as it was under the pre-colonial period.
Again, the Federal Government must ensure environmental security and
allocation of more financial resources to the Niger Delta region.
There is urgent need to reorder the political, social and economic
development of the Niger Delta area, as a necessary step to redress
the numerous unresolved issues under the national question.
As part of the effort to find enduring and practicable solutions to
the protracted crisis in the oil-rich Niger Delta, the first Niger
Delta Peace Conference was held in
ROAD MAP TO PEACE IN
NIGER
Taking cognisance of the prolonged
underdevelopment and unrest of the Niger Delta region, and concerned
about the need to promote growth and development of the region, the
road map to achieving these objectives are as follows:
(i.) The
practice whereby entrepreneurs represented by international oil
companies fail to rehabilitate and ameliorate the hazards from oil and
mining exploration during and after their cessation of activities
constitutes health and environmental hazards which the nation cannot
sustain. International oil companies should therefore rehabilitate and
ameliorate the hazards arising from oil exploration and production in
accordance with generally accepted international standards both in the
period of production and after their activities have ended. As part of
that strategy, foreign oil companies operating in the region are
required to return the farmland, creeks and wetland, surface and
underground waters and the entire polluted environment back to
normalcy. The international community, the home countries and
government of the foreign oil companies should help to enforce the
principles of environmental sustainability and laws by prosecuting
erring oil companies operating in the Niger Delta region.
(ii.) Hostage
taking and abduction of oil workers must stop, as the crisis has not
been mitigated. Rather, there should be broad based consultations and
dialoguing between the people, the oil companies and the state and
other stakeholders.
(iii.) The proposed
construction of pipelines from
(iv.) There is the
need to establish a mechanism to protect the oil pipelines. Part of
such a strategy is the establishment of Pipeline Marshals Commission
(PMC), to be supervised by the Niger Delta Bank for Reconstruction and
Development. The Commission should also create jobs for
disenfranchised youths, both in and those who are already out of the
creeks, in order to protect the pipelines against further
vandalisation.
(v.) There is an
urgent need for the Federal Government, the foreign oil companies, the
European Union and other countries whose citizens engage in bunkering
to put a mechanism in place for the control and prohibition of illegal
bunkering that has turned the Niger Delta into a morass of violence
and insecurity. This will help stem the rising tide of insecurity in
the region.
(vi.) It is
imperative to restore the peoples� rights to their natural resources
namely; oil, gas, land, forestry and water-in order to mitigate the
struggle for resources in the Niger Delta region.
(vii.) The creation of a
Bank for Reconstruction and Development for the Niger Delta will also
become meaningful and functional after the democratization of the
governance of resource rights of the people. The proposed Bank, into
which all royalties from the oil companies will be paid, will be the
custodian of the funds, as well as
preventing misuse of funds now and in future. The Bank will lessen the
effect of corruption in the disbursement of such funds, by drawing
useful lessons from the experiences of
(viii.) There is the need for the
international community, particularly the World Bank, European Union
as well as the governments of the home countries of the oil companies
to contribute by way of grants and subventions to the development of
the Niger Delta region. This is because the Federal Government cannot
embark on this project alone as the issue of the Niger Delta is
assuming a crisis point militating against the world supply of oil.
Conclusion
It is midnight in Niger Delta and the current methodology being
adopted by treating the matter as an ethnic problem of the
Ijaws, while omitting other nationalities
such as the Ogonis, Urhobos,
Ibibios,
Effiks,
Itsekiris and
Edos respectively is not in the interest
of the Federal Republic of Nigeria.
I cannot subscribe to the theme that the use of force as a policy can
bring about lasting peace to the region.
It is imperative that Nigerians from regions other than the Niger
Delta, who may feel that the problems of oil producing communities are
not in their backyard and who may feel a safe distance from the oil
communities, should be reminded that the Federal Republic of Nigeria
is an entity within the environment; A decay in part will ultimately
affect the whole nation.
(Life and works of Sir Ahmadu Bello �
The Sardauna of
Sokoto).