OGONI AND AN ORGY OF DERELICTION
In 1956, in the sleepy town of Oloibiri, Bayelsa State,Nigeria happened upon what would turn out to be its greatest blessings, and ironically also its gravest curse: oil. With a country of staggering diversity on the verge of independence, and all its regions doing well for themselves economically and politically, the discovery of oil was supposed to be the icing on the cake, nature’s free flowing bounty that was supposed to give a country of prodigious promise a touch of gold. Alas, the black gold has turned out to be anything but golden.
Nigeria’s economy and politics have come to be built around oil, and stained by it in equal measure. With revenue streaming in from the export of oil, a government by theft has taken hold of Nigeria’s political structure effectively turning a resource state into a rentier state. What has followed has been a devastating mix of devilish poverty and deft kleptocracy.
Other sources of revenue that predated the discovery of oil have since closed shop, singed out of business by oil. Like dogs, every region of Nigeria has abandoned what once made it a formidable force and has become so used to lapping up oil that it is embarrassing.
While the story of the deterioration of Nigeria can be told in ugly, oily strokes, the story of Nigeria’s oil producing region, the golden goose that has been laying the golden eggs all along, is one calligraphed in blood and bile. It is one slippery story of pollution.
Water sources and soil have been contaminated, rendering life in the region a nightmare. Movements have been born to reverse the ugly trend. These movements themselves turned ugly before becoming uglier in their signature enrichment of some so-called environmental activists in the Niger-Delta region at the expense of many others.
In 2017, the administration of former president Muhammadu Buhari commissioned the cleanup of Ogoni. The inauguration which attracted widespread attention was well publicized. However, more than five years down the line, it appears it was only a PR exercise to score cheap political points.
According to leaked UN documents cited by the Associated Press, the project has largely failed to get off the ground.
In the years since the clean-up was commissioned to much fanfare, oil has continued to run into water in Ogoni with laughably little done to clean up the almighty mess. Now, the cause may have finally been revealed with corruption — that chillingly familiar monster, and nauseating incompetence — fingered for the failings of the exercise.
There is very little doubt about it: just like the terrorism chewing up and spitting out the North of Nigeria, the environmental crisis in the Niger Delta region has become a proper cash cow for many of Nigeria’s pain profiteers.
The question is: if the one billion dollars sunk into cleaning up Ogoni have not been properly utilized or utilized at all to alleviate the pains of the long-suffering people of the Niger Delta and restore their land, what was the money used for and what, must now be the lot of the benefactors at the hands of the Nigerian state?
What has the Hydrocarbons Pollution and Remediation Project (HYPREP), the agency set up to facilitate the clean-up done since it was set up?
It is beyond unfortunate that Nigeria’s tale of nature’s generosity in the Niger Delta has been ferociously matched by a tide of mismanagement. Mismanagement of oil resources leading to devastatingly harmful spillage and gas flaring; mismanagement of oil revenues resulting in monumental corruption, and mismanagement of the oil narrative leading to a calamitous loss of face for the Nigerian state and oil industry.
Isn’t the joke on Nigeria that multinational oil companies have turned the country into expansive laboratories, as exposed by a series of litigation and judicial pronouncements?
For years, Nigeria has catastrophically failed to manage its oil resources well. The consequences are ripe for generations to munch.
To save what is, to protect what is left Nigeria must commit to doing more. It is the least it can do in the face of nature’s beneficence.
Kene Obiezu,
