It is confounding that it is only in a country like Nigeria that the region which produces its source of wealth would continue to be deprived of the necessary attention required for development. If the problems of the Niger Delta are not understood and put in their right context, it would be difficult to appreciate the need to support whatever developmental efforts available in the hope that development would be engendered. But what is the Niger Delta about?
For the Niger Delta, which is the third largest wetlands in the world after Mississippi and the Pantanal - deserves much more attention than it is getting by way of contribution to resources needed by the Niger Delta Development Commission, NDDC, which is this administration’s response to the squalor in the region.
It covers an area of about 70,000 square kilometres and is noted for its peculiar and difficult terrain. The whole area is traversed and criss-crossed by a large number of rivulets, streams, canals and creeks. The coastal line is buffeted throughout the year by the tides of the Atlantic Ocean while the mainland is subjected to regimes of flood by the various rivers, particularly River Niger.
The Niger Delta Region, which comprises nine states, namely, Abia, Akwa Ibom, Bayelsa, Cross River, Delta, Edo, Imo, Ondo and Rivers States; as well as185 local government areas and a population of about 20 million, interestingly, is blessed with the huge reserves of crude oil in Nigeria. It has 40 different ethnic groups, spending 250 dialects, spread across 5,000 communities. At the beginning, the Niger Delta was limited to the geographic area occupied mainly by minorities of southern Nigeria but today, the region has become synonymous with the oil producing states.
The region is rich in natural resources, including oil and gas, cash crops including oil palm, rubber, cocoa, coconut, a diversity of aquatic resources and fertile land which supports year round agriculture.
The Niger Delta accounts for more than 90% of earnings from oil and gas and about 60% of federally distributed revenue. It also accounts for oil reserves of about 30 billion barrels and gas reserves of about 160 trillion cubit feet.
But despite its rich resources, it has one of the most crushing poverty levels in the world.
The condition of life in the Niger Delta prior to the establishment of the Niger Delta Development Commission is best captured by Dr. Steve Azaiki, an environmental activist and Secretary to the Bayelsa State Government in his book, Inequities in Nigerian Politics:
“The Niger Delta people have continued to live with a range of environmental problems from health hazards to lack of safe water and arable land. In spite of the Delta’s resource endowment, its immense potential for economic growth and sustainable development, the region is in a parlous state.
It is under threat from rapidly deteriorating economic conditions and social tension. It has remained wholly underdeveloped and poor. Until recently, the Federal Government and the oil companies operating in the area failed to take appropriate action to check the rampant environmental abuse prevalent in the Niger Delta. The Ogoni crisis brought to the fore the complicated problems of the Niger Delta.”
A recent study of this region by the World Bank warned: “an urgent need exists to implement a mechanism to protect the life and health of the region’s inhabitants and its ecological systems from further deterioration”.
A similar opinion is presented by Hiner Woller, Project Director, Gesellschaft for Technische Zussammenarbeitm GTZ, a German firm, researching on Niger Delta:
“The greatest problem we have identified in the Niger Delta is poverty. Seventy per cent of the people in the area are on poverty line and the poverty level in the region is well above African standards.... Over two million youths are unemployed and they seem to have lost hope; faith and dignity in life, while 40 per cent of the people are illiterates.”
The Niger Delta is Nigeria’s least developed region. The World Bank puts the per capita income at below $280 despite its high population. Health indicators lag behind national average. Infrastructure including medicare, is also poor and the cost of food is high despite its fertile land.
Although the Olusegun Obasanjo administration established the NDDC the contributions expected to be made to the commission appear to be suffering a discount of sorts.
Even the federal government which set it up has not kept complete faith with its contributions. However, details have emerged of how oil producing companies have been short-changing the commission. The oil companies are believed to be owing it about N13 billion.
The federal government, much more for its expected allocation continues to suffer short falls. This situation needs to be redressed in the interest of the people of the region.
Earlier in the year, a presentation to the National Assembly (specifically the House of Representatives) by the oil producing companies, who are Joint Venture partners with the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation, NNPC, revealed that instead of the 3% statutory contribution of their annual budget into the coffers of NDDC, they pay far less than 3%.
Particularly notorious for this form of sharp practice are Shell Petroleum Development Company, SPDC, and Agip Oil Company, NAOC.
Figures reflecting contribution to the purse of NDDC in the three years (2001, 2002, and 2003) show that in their first year of contribution - 2001 all the seven Joint Venture partners of NNPC made up of Shell, MOBIL, CHEVRON, ELF, TEXACO and PANOCEAN, did not pay the 3% contribution at all.
Shell, for instance, in 2001, had an approved budget of $2,004,000,000, (at an exchange rate of N138 to a dollar stands at N276,552,000,000 - two hundred and seventy six billion, five hundred and fifty two million naira) three per cent of which should have been $60,120,000 (N8,296,560,000 - eight billion, two hundred and ninety six million, five hundred and sixty thousand naira). But Shell paid only $38,074,000 (N5,254,212,000 - five billion, two hundred and fifty four million, two hundred and twelve thousand naira). This payment represented just 1.90% of the expected 3% which ought to have been paid to the NDDC. Shell owed NDDC over N3 billion (N3,042,348,000) for the year 2001.
In fact, all the oil companies did not pay the 3% in 2001.
Mobil paid 2.55% which was $26,189,000 (N3,614,082,000) instead of the statutorily expected 3% which should have been $30.873,000 (N4,260,474,000). What Mobil owed the Commission in 2001 stood at about N646,392,000.
For Chevron, it paid 2.69%, which was $29,631,000 (N4,089,078,000). Chevron was supposed to have $33,008 (N4,555,104,000).
Agip, Elf and Texaco paid the following in that order: N1,541,874,000; N1,120,560,000; N286,212,000. These payments represented 2.41%, 2.44% and 1.19% respectively.
But each of these companies was supposed to have paid much higher sums.
It was as a result of such defaults that Senator John Kojo Brambaifa (Bayelsa West), Chairman, Senate Committee on Niger Delta, disclosed that even non-oil companies may be made to contribute to the NDDC should the National Assembly amend the Act establishing the commission.
According to him, the commission need to be adequately funded, hence various avenues will be explored to increase the funding of the intervention organ of the Federal Government in the Niger Delta area. He said: “We are going to amend the NDDC Act to increase funding. The NDDC law is faulty and it requires amendment. When the amendment is done, for instance, oil companies will not be limited to what they are currently contributing.
“In fact, all companies operating in the Niger Delta would be made to contribute to the development of the area. For the NDDC to work properly, some percentage of the derivation should also be deducted at source before it gets to the states for the funding of the commission.”
Brambaifa said plans were afoot to set the process amending the Act in motion, saying the process would commence as soon as the Senate resumes from its recess. He said the Senate would ensure that all stakeholders were offered the opportunity to contribute to the process, as public hearings would be held for that purpose.
He reviewed the various intervention organs by the federal government, namely the Niger Delta Development Board and Oil Mineral Producing Areas Development Commission (OMPADEC) and concluded that the NDDC’s intervention was on the right course, as it had been conceived to correct the failures of the previous organs.
“NDDC is on the right course. NDDC has a plan to develop the Niger Delta area, but I think they have a problem, which has to do with adequate funding. The peculiar nature of the Niger Delta area has made construction of roads money guzzling. To construct one road in the area could cost N5 billion and here you are with N40 billion budget. We need fund to develop the area,” he stated.
He clarified that the budget for the NDDC for the fiscal year 2004 is N47 billion, with N39 billion projected expenditure profile. On the agitations in the Niger Delta, particularly by the youths, he said the actions were justifiable in the light of the over 60 years of deprivation that the area had suffered, despite being the producer of the nation’s oil wealth.
Brambaifa described the youths as freedom fighters for drawing attention of all concerned to the under-development in the area.
Although the board of the NDDC, resolved at foundation, after critical appraisal of the challenges and necessary consultations with stakeholders, to: Undertake the formulation of a Regional Development Master Plan - as directed by Mr. President’s at the inauguration of the Board - which will serve as a pathway and harmonization framework for different intervening agencies and tiers of government.
Pursue an Interim Action Plan pending the competition of the Master Plan. This comprises; completion and commissioning of uncompleted OMPADEC projects so as not to ‘throw away the baby with the bath water’; other critical infrastructural provisions to mitigate the severe deprivations of the past and douse the crises across the region, especially such as would readily dovetail into Master Plan on completion; and other human development programmes to alleviate the widespread poverty across the region; with some projects on ground to justify the commission’s efforts thus far, there are those who still insist that the commission could still do better.
But doing better would be a function of the availability of funds.
Established by the NDDC Act of 2000 among other things, conceive, plan and implement programmes for the sustainable development of the Niger Delta region, the commission insists that its response to the challenge of development was to initiate a Regional Development Master Plan to serve as a guide to the development of the region. “So far, we have undertaken more than 800 infrastructural projects and various human development programmes in our effort to bring development nearer to the people and usher peace and stability into the region that provides Nigeria’s much needed foreign exchange.
“There have been many attempts and many plans made in the past to improve the lives of the people of the Niger Delta Region of Nigeria. Sadly, each ended with very little to show for the time and resources agent. Therefore, it is understandable that the people of Niger Delta are quite disillusioned with ‘plans’ at this time.
The disenchantment of the people not withstanding, it must be stated that the Niger Delta Master Plan is different in its goals, focus and approach, and will not suffer the fate of the others before it. The Master Plan basically, conceived as a tool that the millions of people of the Niger Delta Region can use to actualise their common vision and build their future to the standard they desire.
The Master Plan is designed to offer stakeholders at all levels (individual, group and community) the opportunity to participate fully in the planning and decision-making process. It requires the ideas and opinion of stakeholders as basis for defining focus areas for development and for producing a vivid picture of what the people want the Niger Delta Region to look like up to the year 2015. This implies that the input of stakeholders today is what will determine the state of affairs (both for individuals and communities) in the region tomorrow.”
According to the NDDC, the Master Plan is needed to ensure that limited resources are committed to solving the most pressing problems of the people of the Niger Delta, and in their own order of priority. Thus, the plan will effectively bridge the gap between limited resources and peculiar problem of the people. Without such a plan, resources will be allocated arbitrarily and with less than optimal impacts on the lives of people and communities.
The commission’s Chairman, Onyema Ugochukwu, and the Managing Director, Hon. Emmanuel Aguariavwodo, as well as some of its directors, last month presented the story of the NDDC to the Federal Executive Council, FEC, where its efforts were lauded.
