Guardian

Continued from yesterday

THE theme of the Adaka Boro Day Colloquium was “Oil and Peace: Compatibility for Sustainable Development in Nigeria”. Being a familiar topic, let me begin with my familiar position on oil politics in Nigeria. Since 1859 when Captain Drake of America drilled the first successful oil well, the commodity has been a source of blessing to nations endowed with it. Thus oil wealth has transformed the economic fortunes of all Middle East countries, the United States of America, the United Kingdom, Norway, Venezuela, Algeria, Tunisia and Libya. Sparsely populated nations like Kuwait and the United Arab Emirates have world-class infrastructure today because of the providential wealth of oil and gas. In the United States, for example, private landlords have 100 per cent ownership of oil found in their lands. This is why states like Texas and Louisiana are the economic heartbeats of the Gulf of Mexico. Houston, the capital of Texas, hosts hundreds of refineries and petrochemical companies. The economic activities generated by these oil-related facilities account for about 25 per cent of global maritime business and shipping.

In sharp contrast to the above-named scenarios, oil and gas resources in Nigeria’s Niger Delta and coastal region have been sources of oppression, exploitation, poverty, violence, armed resistance, and reckless destruction of the environment and ecosystems. Nigeria is the only country in the world where the areas that are richest in oil and gas are also the poorest and most neglected by government. This gigantic irony is a direct consequence of the political economy of inequality and injustice in the petroleum industry. As I have explained in the introductory section, this was not the situation from 1956-1969 when Nigeria operated a fairly equitable federal system of government. From the years of the 1967-1970 Nigerian Civil War, the wealth derived from the oil and gas resources of the Niger Delta has been hijacked by the Federal Government and used to develop resource-famished but politically powerful sections of the country. The Section 44 (3) of the 1999 Nigerian Constitution cited earlier is the legal instrument for this criminal and cruel dispossession of the oil-rich regions. It is the slave mandate with which the ruling classes in the country plunder and pillage the Niger Delta. For four decades since 1969, all Nigerian governments, military and civilian alike, have sadistically applied this obnoxious legislation to under-develop the Niger Delta. Even with Jesse Jackson’s admonition, it has been difficult to “keep hope alive” in this truly provocative situation.

Yet there are other abominable laws employed by the Nigerian government to oppress and suppress the resource-rich states, namely the nine oil-producing states and Lagos whose two seaports and consumption tax contribute significant revenue to the Federation Account. For example, Section Two of the Minerals and Mining Act No. 34 of 1999 declares that all “lands in which minerals have been found…shall be acquired by the Government of the Federation in accordance with the provisions of the Land Use Act” of 1978. A clause in the same Act says that, “…all rivers, streams and water courses throughout Nigeria shall be vested in the Government of the Federation for and on behalf of the people of Nigeria.” The National Inland Waterways Authority Act No. 13 of 1997 provides that all inland waterways, rivers, and creeks in Nigeria are the exclusive property of the Federal Government. By the powers of these laws, the government of “independent” Nigeria

has practically colonised the lands and peoples of the resource-endowed areas. The victims of this home-grown colonialism have been engaged in legitimate struggles to free themselves from this bondage. Comrade Adaka Boro in whose honour and memory we gathered in Yenagoa that day inaugurated the armed resistance version of this anti-colonial liberation and self-determination in 1966.

One damaging consequence of the demolition of the federal principle is writ large in the system of distribution of revenue in the Federation Account. According to the prevailing arrangement, revenue earned from all designated sources is deposited in this Account and shared every month by the three tiers of government: the federal, state, and local. After making provision for 13 per cent for derivation to the nine oil-producing states, about 56 per cent of the money is retained by the federal or central government; 24 per cent goes to the 36 states and the Federal Capital Territory of Abuja, and 20 per cent is for all the 774 local government areas and areas councils. This distribution structure favours the omnipotent Federal Government as its huge chunk encourages deadly contests for the control of the central government. Encouraged by this unfair appropriation, the Federal Government has developed a labyrinth of ministries, departments, and agencies through which the enormous revenue is wastefully and recklessly expropriated. By the current count, there are about 540 federal establishments, many of them engaged in similar functions.

For Bayelsa State, which is the cradle of the oil industry, the sharing by the local governments illustrates the iniquity most tellingly. The number of local governments is used in the distribution. Kano State that contributes little or nothing to the Federation Account has 44 councils and gets the largest share at all times. But Bayelsa State that is a major oil-producer has only eight councils and receives the least among the states. Lagos State has about the same population as Kano State according to the national census, but Lagos has only 20 local government areas. Most of the local councils were created by military fiat in the 1990s and the exercise, like that of creation of states, was manipulated to favour the 19 states in the north of the country. Thus the local government system is another conduit through which Niger Delta wealth is siphoned to finance the administration of sections of the country that do not generate revenue for the country. How does one keep hope alive in this situation?

Both the Section 44 (3) of the Constitution and the distributive injustice in the Federation Account should not have been allowed to remain for 14 years   of an elected democratic dispensation. They are military mandates of plunder, which should have been abominated and expunged from the nation’s statutes in 1999 when elected governments replaced the military. President Olusegun Obasanjo who ruled from 1999-2007 was a former military general who supports the oligopolistic powers of the Federal Government. If Obasanjo had no inclination to decentralise power for a fairer federal system, certainly President Goodluck Jonathan from the grossly exploited Bayelsa State should have no such inhibition. This colloquium has no hesitation whatsoever in calling on President Jonathan to initiate an executive bill to the National Assembly to abolish Section 44 (3) of the Constitution with a view to restoring Nigeria’s federal system to what obtained in the 1960 and 1963 Constitutions. The federating units in the country, which are the states must be allowed to exercise the rights of ownership and management of their natural resources. They will pay tax to the central government to run essential services such as the armed forces, immigration, and foreign affairs. This is what is operated in successful federal countries such as the United States, Canada, India, and Australia. President Jonathan must embark on this course of constitutional redemption in order to be counted as a faithful compatriot of Adaka Boro.

Imperatives of sustainable development

The next segment of my comments concerns the imperative need for transforming the Niger Delta and Nigeria into a self-reliant, prosperous, and anti-imperialist Black African nation. This is a mighty challenge and I shall give only highlights of what must be done. It is instructive that the administration of President Jonathan has set itself the onerous task of building an economy that is vibrant enough to cater for the needs of the impoverished masses. This gigantic undertaking is anchored on the programme enunciated in Nigeria’s Vision 20-20-20 that was expected to have taken off several years ago. The shorthand goal of the vision statement is that Nigeria shall be in the league of the most developed 20 economies of the world by the year 2020, that is, about seven years away. Some of the countries in this premier league bloc are the United States, China, Japan, Germany, Canada, France, United Kingdom, South Korea, and Brazil. There is neither an African country nor an oil-exporting one such as Nigeria.

The transformation required to join this league must aim at attaining near 100 per cent literacy rate in human capital, agricultural mechanisation and food sufficiency, advanced science and technological capacity, efficient industrialisation with concomitant mass employment, adequate electricity/energy supply of at least ten times the current level, and a healthy population with elongated lifespan. Nigeria has not made significant progress in any of these strategic fields because of the country’s total dependence on income from export of crude rather than value-added oil and gas. I am aware that the Republic of Korea buys crude oil from Nigeria daily and makes 101 industrial products from each barrel of crude oil.

Because of Nigeria’s huge and fast-growing population, developments in the identified areas must focus on labour-intensive industrialisation and development. Agriculture is the priority line of intervention in this regard. The mechanisation of agriculture must be accompanied by heavy industries, and iron and steel production. Other fast-growing fields are cement, liquefied natural gas plants, refined fuel and petrochemical plants. Venezuela has proved the point about aggressive local content policy and indigenous involvement. Venezuela mines and refines most of her crude oil and gas and thus creates employment and industrial opportunities for her citizens. To implement a viable local content policy, there should be, on the average, one oil refinery in each state of Nigeria. These will be supported by modular, mini refinery/liquefied gas plants calculated on the basis of one per local government area throughout the country. During the civil war four decades ago, Biafran scientists and engineers established mini, mobile fuel refineries. That effort can be reinvented and multiplied.

• To be continued.

• Darah is a Professor of Oral Literature, Folklore, and African American Literature, Delta State University, Abraka, Nigeria.