Osinbajo in the Niger Delta

Vice President Yemi Osinbajo reportedly told his hosts in a visit to Delta State two days ago that his presence was an indication that the “Niger Delta is being carried along.” According to Osinbajo, “no Nigerian can be proud with the state of development in the Niger Delta; we are all beneficiaries from resources from the region. However, we cannot have instability and be able to carry out speedy development of the region.”

Now, that is the least that is expected from any government with a modicum of sense of justice. In any case, as they say, you cannot shave a man’s head in his absence. There is no way of tackling the problem of a region defined by gross injustice, underdevelopment and distorted federalism without engaging the people in honest conversation.

So if the visit was meant to reset the button of the federal government’s policy on the region, it might be worthwhile to bring into focus again the central questions that many stakeholders have eloquently posed over the years in the region. It is time for a rethink on how to answer the Niger Delta Question.

President Muhammadu Buhari himself was probably giving a foretaste of this rethink of approach to the issues in the Niger Delta in his inaugural speech on May 29, 2015 when he said inter alia: “The amnesty programme in the Niger Delta is due to end in December, but the government intends to invest heavily in the projects and programmes currently in place.

“I call on the leadership and people in these areas to cooperate with the state and federal government in the rehabilitation programmes which will be streamlined and made more effective. As ever, I am ready to listen to grievances of my fellow Nigerians. I extend my hand of fellowship to them so that we can bring peace and build prosperity for our people.”

Again, from the President’s statement it is clear that the Buhari administration should go beyond episodic visits and declarations to articulate its plan of action to confront the issues on ground in the Niger Delta. To start with, Abuja should stop the reductionist approach of viewing the Niger Delta as merely a place where insecurity and sabotage impede the free flow of oil and by implication the derivation of petro dollars to fund the Federation Account. Insecurity, violence, kidnapping, vandalisation of oil facilities are all consequences of years of underdevelopment and injustice in the region. The Nigerian state is culpable of the abysmal neglect of the region. If Abuja is truly in the process of a rethink, then this backward policy mindset should change forthwith. The mindset is backward people it does not seem to put the people at the centre of defining the problem and fashioning the solution.

The primary issue in the Niger Delta is the poverty of the people and the hopelessness of the youths. Even if there were no drop of oil in the Niger Delta, the government would still be expected, as a matter of duty, to confront these underlying problems before it can expect sustainable peace as in any other region of Nigeria. Morally, it is wrong when the official rhetoric suggests that government only responds to the convulsion in the region because of oil. The approach should go beyond pacification; it should extend now to a vigorous war against poverty and underdevelopment in the region. For clarity, the responsibility here should be a shared one among the local, state and federal governments as constitutionally defined. The three tiers of government superintend over the resources belonging to the people. As expected of the whole of the Nigerian elite, the Niger Delta elite should be actively developmental elite.

Fortunately, any government that is honest and serious about solving the problem does not need to dig too much to have ideas. Those who have the duty of drawing up the government’s action plan for the Niger Delta have rich resources of materials gathering dusts on the shelf. From the report of the Willinks Commission in the last days of colonial rule to recent reports and even current academic studies, the government would have a surfeit of ideas on which to draw an action plan. As Osinbajo reportedly said, this is the time to act.

Take just two examples of the numerous reports on the Niger Delta. The first is the master plan for the development of the region put together by the Niger Delta Development Commission (NDDC) while Timi Alaibe was the Managing Director. The thematic areas include the human capital development (especially the youth), destruction of the environment, infrastructure, and security.

The plan was produced during the administration of President Olusegun Obasanjo. In a sense, President Umaru Yar’Adua Amnesty Programme was to give effect to an aspect of this plan. The most remarkable thing about the plan is its philosophical underpinning that the problem of the region is primarily that of underdevelopment and injustice.

The second report is that of the Ledum Mitee Committee which was prepared nine years ago. Among the landmark recommendations of the committee were the increase of the derivation fund to 25% and the completion of the East-West Road, which traverses all the states in the region.
Embarrassingly, the East-West road is yet to be completed. The committee also recommended the establishment of a number of developments funds and commissions as well as the reviews of laws to enhance fiscal federalism to the benefit of the region.

In defining its response to problem of the Niger Delta, the Buhari administration should learn from the errors of its predecessors. Previous admirations equated the interests of a faction of the Niger Delta elite with the interests of the majority of the poor in the region. Members of this elite include leaders of militant groups, contractors, oil and gas businessmen, political office holders, political jobbers, and traditional rulers, ethnic and regional champions. By deploying the limited resources to “empower” these few members of the elite (along with other rent seekers outside the region); previous administrations pretended that they were solving the problems. Having taken that path for years, the evidence on ground is that that the approach has not solved the problem of underdevelopment.

That approach has failed woefully to reverse the trend of underdevelopment. By way of extrapolation, it is the same approach that previous governments applied to other parts of Nigeria where oil is not extracted. Governance has been reduced to awards of mega contracts for white elephant projects from which the elite could make easy money without any meaningful benefits to the people. In rethinking the approach to the issues, the Buhari admiration should not revel in any drama. It should come up soberly with a coherent plan of action to be honestly implemented for the interests of the poor people of the Niger Delta.