Issues
Participation In Petroleum Development …Towards Sustainable Community Development In The Niger Delta
Continued from Friday May 28, 2010.
The book “Participation in Petroleum Development, Towards Sustainable community Development in the Niger Delta” by Eseme-Alabo Dr. Edward Bristol-Alagbariya is essential for key oil industry experts, administrators, scholars and students who wants to gain further insight on how the Niger Delta can benefit from oil exploration and exploitation. The Tide, beginning from this edition, run excerpts of the book. Enjoy it.
This book does not contend that relationships among people should not be mutually advantageous; rather, it demonstrates how certain relationships (ie, social capital relationships) constitute internal contradictions in the Delta region, as these relationships undermine collective interpersonal and intra- and inter-group relations in the region.
In other words, the book discusses where social capital relationships have reared their heads and generated internal contradictions in the Niger Delta. Social capital relations determine how some governments (including traditional governments), social institutions and community-based organisations (CBOs) either function or are organised and administered in the region against overall public good in the Niger Delta. Such contradictions determine how relationships among citizens and groups thrive, especially the relationships among some influential citizens and citizen groups, relative to the advantages they are deriving from impact-benefit and other social investment initiatives of the MNOCs operating in the region.
These internal contradictions aggravate poverty and misery inflicted on the ordinary citizens of the region. As demonstrated in Chapter 4, in the Eastern Delta kingdom of Bonny, internal contradictions have the effect of worsening the crises in the Delta region. Besides, the state of affairs in Bonny kingdom reveals that even though the kingdom has been participating in IA and other environmental decision-making processes since the 1990s, the involvement of the citizens in these processes is being undermined under the house system of governance because of the system’s diluted and misdirected nature from the seventeenth century, after the era of King Halliday (Awusa). Hence, Chapter 8 reveals that the house system no longer represents the true will and/or vision of Bonny citizens, considering the views of the citizens on how their inputs were ignored in decision-making processes, when they commented in the EIA process of the upgrade of Shell Bonny Terminal Integrated Project (BTIP).
There is thus a need to improve the ongoing pattern of decision making so that the voice of traditional rulers of Bonny kingdom would truly represent the voice of the people of the kingdom. The apex traditional rulers of Bonny kingdom need to command such natural law attributes as virtue and commitment to the service of their people, as demonstrated by the founding fathers and premier kings who established the kingdom’s house system. Based on contemporary challenges, more rational, trustworthy and public-spirited decisions are required of the apex traditional rulers of the kingdom.
Thus, if properly managed by the JV partners with the aid of a visionary traditional leadership, public interest-spirited state and local governments and vibrant CBOs partnering towards collective public good, the BTIP, Nigeria LNG and Mobil Producing Nigeria Unlimited (MPN) Bonny River Terminal (BRT) projects ought to sustainably boost socio-economic development, rather than poverty, misery and crisis in the kingdom. Besides, these multi-billion USD worth projects and other FG’s JV petroleum development operations have greatly polarised the traditional Bonny society. Consequently, the FG has commissioned the military to protect these development operations.
Other instances of internal contradictions in the Delta region include those cited in Chapter 1, from the report of the Human Rights Watch entitled ‘Nigeria Chop Fine: The Human Rights Impact of Local Government Corruption and Mismanagement in Rivers State, Nigeria’, dated January 2007. This report charts the failures of local government administrations in Rivers state, whose government is wealthier than most Nigerian states. According to this report, the contradiction of the wealth of Rivers state, which is the heart of the Nigerian oil industry, is the material deprivation being experienced by the majority of its citizens. The report is complemented in Chapter 1 by the account of the deplorable nature of the plight of the entire less privileged, marginalised and impoverished citizens of Nigeria. Given that internal contractions are worsening the Niger Delta crises in ways which the outside world may not easily appreciate, the need arises for social capital relations to support the welfare of the citizens and productive activities towards environmentally-sound and socially-equitable SCD in the region. Such social capital relations are equally needed in other areas or regions of Nigeria.
Regarding international concerns about the Niger Delta crises, Chapter 2 points out how the USA, whose National Intelligence Council (NIC) in 2004 predicted the collapse of Nigeria, entered into a joint security compact to address the associated issues of security, peace and prosperity; while in 2008 the British government agreed to provide training and logistical support to the Nigerian military to combat anti-oil production militancy in the Delta region. The NIC November 2008 report indicates the need for foreign military intervention to end the Niger Delta crises so as to stabilise petroleum exports in Nigeria.
The role of the advanced countries in the growth and development of Africa and African nations is also considered in Chapter 7, where proponents of corporate social responsibility (CSR) identified the significant role of business to Africa’s development over centuries. CSR proponents contend that the future of Africa and African countries may be enhanced with the assistance of the advanced countries and Africans in Diaspora.
The diverse nature of the key issues associated with the community crises in the Delta region is thus overarching, complex and complicated. These crises have generated several negative consequences, including the insecurity of lives, livelihoods and property in the region, as well as insecurity of supply of Nigeria’s petroleum resources to its consumer-countries, as indicated in the Preface and Chapter 1.
In the process, the lives of citizens of the region and those of foreign multinationals, and the joint venture (JV) investments of the FG with the MNOCs, are endangered. Considering these and other negative effects and challenges of petroleum development on the people of the region and their future generations, including the environment in the region, some citizens and citizen groups of the region started making efforts to improve the situation.
Among these efforts is the initiative to educate the outside world about the state of affairs in the region. On this note, Chapter 2 examines the presentation made by the Rivers Chiefs and Peoples Conference (RCPC) at the UN Earth Summit on Environment and Development (UNCED) which took place in Rio de Janeiro, in 1992. The high point of this presentation, centred on the historic and continuing multifaceted problems and challenges confronting the region, was a declaration by the RCPC that the environment in the region is endangered, and that the region is perhaps the most endangered delta region in the world, due especially to the adverse effects of petroleum development.
The crises in the Delta region require being fully and practically resolved in a way that will achieve environmentally-sound and socially-equitable SCD in the region. To do so by virtue of the internationalisation of petroleum resources-development operations, the need arises for the FG to implement internationally recognised norms, standards and practices designed to enhance the resources development to SD in the region. In this regard, improved CI is required to be practised in conformity with the globally identified need and the widely accepted principles of PP in environmental decision making, espoused in Principle 10 of the Rio Declaration on Environment and Development, 1992, and elaborated in the Aarhus Convention of 1998 on participation. Considering therefore Nigeria’s responsibilities in the context of the ongoing worldwide participation explosion, her National Assembly is required to enshrine provisions in her emerging petroleum law to improve environmental democracy in a way to enhance sustainable petroleum development and SCD.
The improvement of CI towards SD of petroleum resources and SCD in Nigeria’s oil-producing areas is an idea whose time has come. Consequently, the author advocates the emergence of a truly democratic and socially just and equitable FRN in which, regardless of elected, selected and/or appointed representatives, ordinary citizens are guaranteed the right to participate in decision making processes to enthrone transparency, accountability and responsibility in governance, towards achieving SD in their communities, local government areas, states and the entire federation. Regarding compensation and other payments or revenues being derived by individuals, families and community groups from the MNOCs and other extractive industries, there is urgent need for Nigeria to initiate pro-active and practicable measures, in order to ensure that such revenues are made with the knowledge of all interest groups in the affected resources-producing areas.
To be continued
This is an open letter to the Minister of the Federal Capital Territory, Chief Nyesom Wike.
Your Excellency,
Sir, ordinarily, I would not be writing an open letter to you, but like a wise man once said, “Silence would be Treason.” So I prefer to stay alive than face the consequences of silence in the face of crime. With each passing day, and as the socio-political tides continue to turn, it has become more pertinent that more people speak up in a concerted MANNER to prevent the death of our party, the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), as we appear to be, in the words of W. B. Yeats, “turning and turning in the widening gyre” heading for an end where the falcon will no longer hear the falconer
It is unfortunate that since losing control of the Federal Government, with the loss of President Goodluck Jonathan at the poll in 2015, our party, the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), has continued on a downward spiral. It is much more painful, that where it is expected that leaders within the party should rise to the challenge and put an end to this decline of our great party, some have instead taken up roles as its undertaker.
It will be hypocritical to claim aloofness to what I believe is your grouse with the PDP and I am not a hypocrite. It will be uncharitable on my part to discountenance the role you have played in strengthening the PDP from 2015 up until the last Presidential primaries of the party. It is my belief that your grouse against certain members of the party who you perceived worked against the party and abandoned it in 2015 and then came around much later to take control of the party, is justified. Also know that your decision to remain in the Party and stifle its progress on the other hand, as a sort of payback, stands condemned. For a man of your pedigree and stature, it is a dishonorable act, highly dishonorable and stands as testimony against all you claim to stand for.
At least, it can be argued that those who you hold this grudge against, abandoned the party completely and did not sit back while actively working to destroy it from within. But what then can be the argument on your own part, seeing that those you are currently working with against your party are the same people who set in motion, and executed surgically, the plans that not only ended our Party’s leadership at the centre, but ended up dislodging the first Niger Deltan to occupy Aso Rock as Commander in Chief of the Armed Forces. Is this not akin to “cutting off one’s nose to spite one’s face?” That will be worse than folly. Let us not throw away the baby with the bath water because we do not like the soap used in bathing the baby. It will be a grave mistake.
Honourable Minister, sir, it is rather unfortunate that of all people, you have also decided to play the role of an undertaker not only for our party, but for our dear Rivers State.
I will like to take you down memory lane a little. Let me remind you of your emergence as Guber candidate of the PDP in Rivers State, against all fairness and justice in 2014. You will remember that despite the reality being that you as an Ikwerre man was poised to replace a fellow Ikwerre man in Governor Chibuike Rotimi Amaechi in our multiethnic state, Rivers people overwhelmingly stood by you and pushed for your emergence as Executive Governor of Rivers State in 2015. I dare say that your popularity in the entire Niger Delta region was at an all-time high at this point.
I want you to understand why you were loved across board leading to your eventual emergence as Governor of Rivers State in 2015; it was because when it looked like all were against the second term ambitions of the first Niger Delta man to emerge as President of Nigeria, you became not just a pillar but a beacon of resistance by standing for Goodluck Jonathan. Rivers people, as grateful and rewarding as they can be, paid you back by ensuring your electoral victory against the incumbent All Progressives Congress (APC) led by your predecessor. On your emergence, where there were second term Governors in the region, you, a first term Governor, was seen by the people as not just the leader of the PDP, but the leader of the entire Niger Delta region. You earned it, and no one could dispute it.
In 2019, when your re-election bid was being challenged ferociously, Rivers people once again stood solidly behind you. Many were killed in the process of defending your votes. Do you remember Dr. Ferry Gberegbe that was shot and killed while trying to protect your votes in Khana Local Government Area? There are many more unnamed and unrecognised sons and daughters of Rivers State who sacrificed their lives so that you could emerge as a second term Governor of Rivers State.
In 2022/23, Honourable Minister, you oversaw a party primary across board that saw some candidates imprisoned and internal party democracy jettisoned for your wishes, leading to the emergence of flag bearers of our party all singlehandedly picked by you. You have on more than one occasion publicly stated that you paid for all their forms. Even those shortchanged in this process licked their wounds and continued to play their roles as party members to ensure the success of the party at all levels. In what will go down as one of the most keenly contested elections in recent Rivers history, with formidable candidates like Senator Magnus Abe of the Social Democratic Party (SDP), Mr Tonye Cole of the All Progressives Congress (APC), and the vibrant youth driven Labour Party (LP), PDP emerged victorious across board except for Phalga Constituency 1 that was lost to the Labour Party. (Not that you did not loose in some other LGA’s but let’s stick to the official figures declared by INEC).
It begs the question, why then do you want to burn down Rivers State, when everyone who now holds political office emerged through a process designed and endorsed by you? Is it that you do not care about Rivers people and you are all about yourself? If so, I am forced to believe that those around you are not telling you the truth. The truth being that in a state where your words were law; where houses and businesses could be demolished or closed down without any recourse to legalities, where Executive Orders could be deployed to stifle the opposition, that your popularity is now at an all-time low. Probably because they are afraid of you, or of losing the benefits they gain from you, they fail to tell you that what you might perceive as a battle against your successor, has slowly but gradually degenerating into a battle against Rivers State and Rivers people. You know, there is a popular saying that, a man can cook for the community and the community will finish the food, but when a community decides to cook for one man, the reverse is the case.
LEAVE FUBARA ALONE
You have gone on and on about being betrayed by Governor Siminalayi Fubara. You point fingers forgetting that some of those same fingers quick to spot betrayals point straight back at you. It is not Governor Fubara that has betrayed the PDP by working against it in the just concluded General Election, and working with the opposition at the State and Federal level to destabilise the party. It is you, Honourable Minister. It is not Governor Fubara that betrayed Rivers people by instigating a political crisis with propensity to escalate ethnic tensions in Rivers State. It is you Honourable Minister. It is not Governor Fubara that has declared himself God over all in Rivers State and has no qualms with burning the state to the ground to prove a point. It is you Honourable Minister. It is you Honourable Minister who told the world that the APC was a cancer and you can never support a cancerous party. It is you Honourable Minister who ended up facilitating the emergence of the same “cancerous” APC that has accelerated the economic decline of this country and further impoverished our people with no remorse. All so you can be a Minister of the Federal Capital Territory? The lack of self awareness is gobsmacking.
Some days back I came across a video where you talked about death and how you do not cry when you hear about the death of some people because you have no idea what might have caused it considering many a politician swear “over dead bodies” and still go back on their words. Those words made me think, and I could see the reason behind them. You see, in chosing to be God in the affairs of Rivers people, you have closed your eyes and ears to reason; you see nothing and hear nothing that can cause you to rethink on the path you have chosen. In your quest to “show Fubara” you have unwittingly united a vast majority of Rivers people behind him, so much that even those who despised him because of you, now like or love him, because of you too. In your scheming, I will advise you not to forget that “the voice of the people is the voice of God”.
Note that the war which you have or are waging against Governor Fubara, has gone beyond being merely political as you might see in your minds eye. It is now one that, fortunately for some and unfortunately for others, has evolved into a war against Rivers people. It is good to point out that no one has taken a stand against Rivers people and won. No one has gone against God and won. In your defiant characteristic manner, it will be unfortunate if you believe your own hubris and that of those around you on the possibility of you being the first to successfully go against Rivers people. It will be a needless gamble; one where if you win you create more enemies for yourself than you can withstand on your political journey, and if you lose, your legacy becomes an inglorious and irredeemable one in Rivers State, the Niger Delta, and Nigeria at large. For your sake as regards posterity, it is my greatest wish that you have a moment of sobriety and a deep reflection and introspection on this path you have chosen.
Honourable Minister, sir, what is left of your legacy is on the brink of being completely desecrated and relegated to the dustbin of our political history, and it will be a sad end to what I will say has been a wonderful political career that many can only dream of. The ball is in your court, and may God Almighty have mercy on us all and forgive us for our shortcomings.
Gabriel Baritulem Pidomson
Dr Pidomson is former Chief of Staff, Government House, Port Harcourt and former member, Rivers State House of Assembly.
In 2015, I made a conscious decision to invest my financial resources, my time, and energy into supporting Nyesom Wike’s gubernatorial campaign. I poured my heart and soul into ensuring Nyesom Wike emerged victorious even at the risk of my personal safety.
Again in 2019, I doubled down on my commitment. I invested a significant amount of money to procure campaign outfits for all twenty-three Local Governments Areas of Rivers State. I spared no expense in supplementing Wike’s election efforts in my own local government, and once again putting myself at great risk to safeguard the fairness and transparency of the electoral process.
However, despite my unwavering loyalty and sacrifices, I found myself abandoned and forgotten by Wike. Throughout his eight-year tenure, he failed to acknowledge my contributions or fulfill his promises and agreements. Even as a former Deputy Governor, Wike denied me my severance benefit.
My investment in Wike’s governorship was not just financial – it was a commitment of passion, dedication, and belief in a better future for Rivers State. Yet, his leadership style of dishonesty, greed, drunkenness and rash abuse of senior citizens brought me nothing but disappointment, misery and losses.
By the grace of God, today I speak not as a victim, but as a hero. I have accepted my losses, and I have moved on. And as I reflect on my experience, I cannot help but urge Wike to do the same and allow peace and development to reign in Rivers State.
Nyesom Wike, when you speak of investing in Governor Sim Fubara’s election, remember those like me who also invested in you. Remember the sacrifices I made, the risks I took, and the promises and agreements you left unfulfilled.
It is time for you, Wike, to let go of the past and allow Governor Sim Fubara the breathing space he needs to lead Rivers State forward. Allow him to focus on the challenges of good governance and the aspirations of the people. Spare him these unwarranted and ill-conceived political manoeuvrings founded on personal agenda and not for general good of Rivers State and her people.
I may have lost my investment on Wike, but I have not lost hope in the future of Rivers State. And together, we will continue to strive for a brighter tomorrow.
Long Live the Governor to Rivers State, Sir Siminialayi Fubara!
Long Live the Good People of Rivers State!!
Long Live the Federal Republic of Nigeria!!!
Engr Ikuru is former Deputy Governor of Rivers State.
Tele Ikuru
