Niger Delta Ministry and Related Matters

By Okey Ikechukwu

“The Niger Delta Ministry is gone”, courtesy of some rejigging in government by the President. I was quick to call for the scrapping of that needless ministry the moment it was created. Not because the people of the Niger Delta did not deserve a lot more than they were getting from a federation to which they were contributing so much, but because we must sit down and calmly ask ourselves what real development the various intervention agencies, from OMPADEC, through NDDC, to the now-defunct ministry of the Niger Delta have brought to the people of the area.

Our people say that you should watch out for something fishy where, and when, you find two people carrying out virtually the same task, in the same environment and at the same time. It is either that they are part of a conspiracy to fritter away resources under false pretences, or they are too dumb or too selfish to realize and admit what they are doing.

Welcome to the views expressed on this page four years ago, on 24th February, 2020, under the title “Scrap the NDDC, Others” which are made even more desperately relevant today by the redesignation of the Niger Delta Ministry. The article in question can bear near-total repletion here.

As was said then: “One of the questions that people of the Niger Delta, and Nigerians in general, must answer for themselves today is whether the Niger Delta Development Commission (Read Ministry of the Niger Delta) has brought real development, or is capable of bringing real development, to the oil producing states of Nigeria. The other question is whether development commissions generally, especially as they are now turning into a new industry for replicating the functions of existing Institutions of State in Nigeria, represent a step forward for any nation in the 21st Century”.

The piece continued: “In answering these questions, we must make a distinction between money being budgeted and sent to the NDDC and evidence of sustainable economic and other interventions by the commission over the last two decades. The Commission has the highest number of abandoned projects in the country. Besides the Federal Government, it is also the most indebted of all institutions of state today. Except in one or two isolated cases, when some people at the helm tried to make some real difference, the NDDC has remained a metaphor for sleaze, patronage and titanic elite battles for unscrutinised plunder.

It has remained the epicentre of great battles, the bulk of which has nothing to do with the long-term welfare of the people. The dream that led to its creation has remained a delusion and the struggle to retain it has remained the business of the political elite, who are benefitting from it. It waddles about, year after year, ostensibly ‘developing’ the oil producing states.

But to dare suggest that such a hapless cash cow that is being used by the elite to plunder the state in the name of the people be scrapped is to draw the ire of vested interests. That is why, despite the burgeoning scandals, scrapping it and having the monies go to the states instead is not one of the options on the cards. One can understand the objection that most of the states themselves are performing miserably on all fronts. But the advantage of scrapping the plethora of commissions will be the reduction of “thieving points” for the elite”.

The article under reference here continued: “The Federal Government will create more of such commissions. Sections of the elite that are not holding substantive positions in government can then also be settled by such appointments. Already there is the North East Development Commission. Others are in the offing, as the clamour to get at least a tooth into the Nigerian cherry, outside the strictures of official public administration, grows in crescendo. And it is working.

The South-east, North-west and other regional commissions are being rehearsed in the maternity section and labour rooms of the National Assembly. And when we now have all these commissions, then what? There will still be the federal government, federal ministries, state and local governments, wards and councils. There will still be federal and state budgets, worked out into details of what should be spent on various aspects of our national life. So, why balkanise the state and waste public funds so mercilessly”?

The above was penned four years ago. And it did not stop there.

“What we see, looking ahead”, the piece continued, “is that new commissions will expand the avenues for patronage. They will also ‘democratize’ opportunities for the questionable exercise of political discretion. All these will be happening below the radar of rigorous state scrutiny. So, we are likely to have more commissions, instead of less. And that is because we are saddled with a leadership class that mistakes the existence of institutions and the passing of laws and budgets for leadership and service delivery. If that were not the case, someone would have sat down to take a detailed inventory of the uselessness of the over 500 government agencies in the land.

Hardly is there any parliamentarian, governor, or head of a government agency who does not use a bullet-proof SUV. Check the cost of one such vehicle. Then multiply it by, say one thousand. Add a pilot vehicle, a security vehicle, a bus for the press crew, among others. Then consider that new ones are bought every three to four years. Now add the security personnel and other appurtenances. What do you have? What do most of these people, individually and collectively, deliver to the Nigerian citizen to warrant the runaway expenses?

“It is time for us to sit down and ascertain whether we must remain locusts, or turn into farmers who are attentive to the global weather”, the article said in 2020. The readings out there are telling us that this is the season to shrink expenses, expand value-yielding engagements and generally be guided to adopt sustainable templates for our continued existence as a nation. But we are not looking in that direction at all. That is why the takings of our lawmakers are still what they are, at both federal and state levels.

That is why our governors, across all political parties, are still clinging to the public robbery called Security Votes. That is why the federal government is still unrelenting in its desperate acquisition of a rash of loans, the bulk of which will not go into any investment, or development project. It is all for consumption and nothing more”.

Then the write up brought in a historical precedent that left a telling impression thus: “Remember that the late Gen. Sani Abacha as Head of State said it would put the accruals from the increase in fuel price into very important national development projects. It set up the Petroleum (Special) Trust Fund (PTF). But the PTF was, first and foremost, a vote of no confidence on the existing institutions of state, since it was venturing into their statutory functions.

The other point is that all PTF budgeting and spending were in areas covered by existing ministries, departments and agencies. This created the problems of accountability, of cohesion in government policy and developmental efforts; as the PTF operated without recourse to measures already put in place, following the budgets and projects of the various ministries and agencies.

Thus came PTF roads, PTF drugs and what not; all at peculiar costs. Worse still, the consumption tax that provided the PTF resource was sourced mostly from the South, while over 75% of the projects executed with it were in the North. By the time the military was ready to hand over to the civilians in 1999, the Trust Fund had drawn much distrust. It had neither brought development, bridged the shortcomings of the agencies it tried to bail out, nor risen above board in many respects.

But those benefiting from it had become even more determined to ensure that the incoming civilian regime of Obasanjo retained it. Thus, the media was approached, including some of us on The Guardian Newspapers Editorial Board, to drive a ‘media consultancy’ that would push a strong campaign, to arm-twist the then President-elect into not scrapping the PTF after being sworn in.

But I refused to get involved; and gave my reasons. A media consultancy must be accompanied by an overriding sense of social responsibility. This means that the person who has the capacity to influence public opinion, or public policy, has a higher duty to his conscience and the greater public good. The PTF was all about procurements, supplies and constructions, and also given that it was set up in the expectation that the weak institutions of state should recover and take up their statutory functions, I argued then that the incoming civilian president should be given the chance to revive the Nigerian state”,

My point in 1999 was that Obasanjo should not be saddled with an extra institutional contraption that would create an unwieldy administrative structure and also undermine accountability by being almost a parallel government. And so, I rested my case. I recall that my comments drew some derisive laughter from one particular senior journalist at the time – not from The Guardian stable.

When I saw proof in the media that the ‘consultancy’ must have caught on, with several write ups giving very elaborate reasons why the incoming Obasanjo Presidency should retain the PTF, for “doing a damn good job,” I made my own intervention in The Guardian titled: “Obasanjo, Remember the PTF.” In it I argued that one of Obasanjo’s first duties as president should be to scrap the PTF and strengthen the statutory institutions of state, for effective service delivery”.

Now that we have several development commissions it would be a grand display of profligacy for the nation to have as many administrative structures to manage them. We need convergence, economies of scale, and a scaling down of administrative apparatus, which is precisely what the recent action of the Federal Executive Council has brought about. My personal preference would be for the government to tinker with the revenue allocation formular, as well as the job of the Revenue Mobilization and Fiscal Commission, and then give all monies to the states. Therefore, I take the good news about the scrapping of the Niger Delta Ministry as the first leg of a very important journey

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Now that we have several development commissions it would be a grand display of profligacy for the nation to have as many administrative structures to manage them. We need convergence, economies of scale, and a scaling down of administrative apparatus. That is precisely what the recent action of the Federal Executive Council has brought about. My personal preference would be for the government to tinker with the revenue allocation formular, as well as the job of the Revenue Mobilization and Fiscal Commission, and then give all monies to the states. Thus, I take the good news about the scrapping of the Niger delta ministry as the first leg of a very important journey.