In the words of His Highness Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum, Vice-President and Prime Minister of the UAE and Ruler of Dubai, a true vision should target specific interests and answer important questions, such as: is the vision based upon specific plans or it is going to be implemented randomly, without any link between its different phases? Is it realistic or feasible or is it a wild vision that no amount of financial and human resources is capable of realizing?
These questions come to mind when one considers the Niger Delta region of Nigeria. What one observes is that most of the Federal Government’s plans and programmes for the region are neither realistic nor feasible but a wild vision that no amount of financial and human resources is capable of realizing. This assertion is supported by the politicization of the region’s development by successive administrations at the federal level that has left the people with monuments of nothingness.
More specifically, while there are multiple instances in the past, of such abridgment of development by the Federal Government in the region, the most recent and of course most alarming manifestation of such lack of discipline needed to drive developmental vision in the region was demonstrated by the immediate past administration of Muhammadu Buhari. The administration’s efforts in the region were more of words without actions, characterized by excuses and signposted by ‘promise and fail syndrome’.
To illustrate this, in 2021, at a function in Lagos, the then Vice President Yemi Osinbajo told the gathering that the administration was determined to see through to completion all the critical projects embarked upon in the region, promising that the Federal Government under the administration’s watch would invest significantly in the Niger Delta as the region that holds the energy resources that have powered the country’s progress for six decades as well as the keys to an emergent gas economy.
Osinbajo, who was represented by Senior Special Assistant to the President on Niger Delta Affairs, Office of the Vice President, Mr Edobor Iyamu, said, “In 2017, following my tour of the Niger Delta, which involved extensive consultations with key stakeholders in the region, the New Vision for the Niger Delta was birthed in response to the various challenges which had been plaguing our people.
“The objective of this New Vision is to ensure that the people of the region benefit maximally from their wealth, through promoting infrastructural developments, environmental remediation and local content development.
“We also have the Solar Power Naija Programme under the administration’s Economic Sustainability Plan (ESP) which will complement the Federal Government’s effort towards providing affordable electricity access to 5 million households, serving about 25 million Nigerians in rural areas and under-served urban communities nationwide.”
He announced that the New Vision for the Niger Delta had begun to yield some tangible achievements. As part of the quest to expand economic opportunities in the region, he added that the Federal Government would promote investments in modular refineries.
“The objective of this initiative is to address our present energy demands and empower the Niger Delta people through promoting local content,” he said.
He spoke about the remediation exercise in Ogoni land under the recommendations of UNEP, saying, “A total of about 57 sites have so far been handed over to contractors by the Hydrocarbon Pollution Remediation Project (HYPREP) under the Federal Ministry of Environment.”
He said the government was committed to expanding infrastructure in the region, including the construction work on the 34-kilometre Bonny-Bodo Road/Bridge, a project that was abandoned for decades.
“When completed, the Bonny-Bodo Road/Bridge, which was flagged off in October 2017, would connect several major communities and boost socio-economic development in the region,” Osinbajo said.
He mentioned other projects, like the Bonny, Warri and Ibom Deep Sea Ports, among other development projects such as the establishment of Export Processing Zones to boost economic activities.
Good sound vibes. However, it remains a very sad commentary that as at the time President Buhari’s administration ended, none of the above promises had been fulfilled. They only existed in the frames and so amply qualify as promises that produced a monument of nothingness. The region, contrary to expectation, remains backward and degraded, occasioned by crude oil exploration, exploitation and production.
As it is, the Warri and Ibom Deep Sea Ports remain not only desolate but abandoned with no element of modernity. The much-celebrated Maritime University in Okerenkoko, Delta State is without accreditation and visibly starved of funds. The remediation exercise happening in Ogoni land, which commenced in 2019, lacks visible signs of progress.
The questions that arise are: who will save the region from being a location where the communal right to a clean environment and access to clean water supplies is daily violated? Will the Tinubu-led Federal Government bring a paradigm shift? Will Tinubu employ participatory/broad-based consultative approach to development that will give the people of the Niger Delta a sense of ownership over their own issues? Will he see the problem of the Niger Delta as a national one and not restricted to the region?
Separate from the awareness that successive Federal Governments in the country have paid lip service to the region’s development, compounding the region’s challenge is the fact that Nigeria’s Petroleum Industry Act (PIA) 2021, arguably the most audacious attempt to overhaul the country’s petroleum sector and turn Niger Delta, particularly host communities, to a zone of peace in their relationship with crude oil prospecting and exploration companies, has failed in this mandate.
Instead of providing the legal, governance, regulatory and fiscal framework for the Nigerian petroleum industry and the host communities, the Petroleum Industry Act (Act) seems to have become a first line of conflict between crude oil prospecting, exploration companies and their host communities. Like other Acts that guided crude oil production in the past, PIA has become a toothless bulldog that neither bites nor barks. In fact, analysts and industry watchers have come to a sudden realization that nothing has changed.
Even as this challenge rages in the region, the Tinubu-led Federal Government must find a solution, and fast too, to the challenges bedeviling the region. He must do this not for political reasons but for the survival of our democracy and the people of the region.
Utomi is the Programme Coordinator (Media and Public Policy), Social and Economic Justice Advocacy (SEJA), Lagos.
