24 Jun 2005 |
|
| No one should be surprised if President Olusegun Obasanjo suddenly decides to suspend the now problematic National Political Reforms Conference, beat a retreat as it were, and throw the entire process into the dust-bin of history. This would be the easiest, cheapest way to avoid the dangerous stalemate, the keg of gunpowder situation that the Conference has now confronted the Obasanjo government with. The only problem though is that this would be a cowardly and treacherous option to take. Cowardly in the sense that it would amount to a postponement of the evil day. For over 40 years, the Nigerian state has refused to address the key question of nationhood, and transform itself properly into a nation-state with a shared consensus on its identity and future. An invidious kind of conspiracy has sustained Nigeria as a country of many nations, surrounded by the explosives of political, economic and social differences. I speak of treachery in the sense that the refusal once more, of the Obasanjo government to seize this opportunity to assuage the fears of the people of the South-South would amount to nothing but an invitation to disaster. In 1999 and 2003 President Obasanjo's political ambition was enthusiastically supported by the people of the Niger Delta, and indeed in 2003, so overwhelming was this support that in at least Rivers State, President Obasanjo got close to 100 per cent of the total votes cast. During his campaigns in that region, President Obasanjo was on record as having promised the people of the Niger Delta, the best of both Heaven and Earth, and a sympathetic resolution of the issues of justice, equity, and power-sharing that the people have continually thrown up for national consideration. The reality however, is that the Obasanjo government has not kept faith on this score with the people of the Niger Delta. It took a National Assembly veto for the NNDC Act to be passed into law. In the last six years, the Federal Government has stationed more soldiers in the Niger Delta than at any other time in recent history. And again, in 2001, rather than address the defects in the 1999 Constitution, inherited from the military, the Obasanjo government had tried to re-invent the Petroleum Decree of 1969, which the Babangida administration had abrogated, by re-introducing the onshore-offshore dichotomy in determining the allocation of oil and gas revenue. Before then, Governors of the South-South geo-political zone had fought bitterly to get the Federal Government to pay the 13 per cent derivation enshrined in Section 162 of the 1999 Constitution with effect from May 29, 1999. These Governors held several meetings in Asaba, and later Benin, where they insisted on resource control, an issue that was further dramatised in a Supreme Court case that was determined in April 2001. To all intents and purposes, President Obasanjo was not looking forward to a controversial National Conference. If he wanted a talk shop, considering in any case that the Conference was set up on principles borrowed from the Olubadan monarchical structure which ritualises gerontocracy, President Obasanjo did not bargain for what has now happened: the radicalisation of the Conference by the South-South. The first lesson to be extracted from this- the walk-out by South-South delegates, the refusal of Northern delegates to give the South-South free scope for its demands, and the adjournment of the Conference - is that there is no way Nigeria can run away from its own national questions. Even if the Conference is aborted, the issue would come up another day, for it is about POWER and RESOURCES and ultimately the survival of the Nigerian state. A detailed historical review of the beginnings of the crisis in the South-South may detain us unnecessarily in the present exercise but there are certain key points that need to be established. The first is that oil is the curse of Nigeria. If the politics of oil continues to be mismanaged; it would be the end of Nigeria. Before 1960, the minorities in the Nigerian Federation had complained loudly about their marginalisation in the colonial arrangement which recognised and promoted only the interests of the majority groups. In 1957, the Willink Commission had established this concern to be true and genuine but these were left unaddressed with the hope that under a Federal Constitution, the fears of the minorities would be taken care of. The tragedy of Nigerian history is that this has not happened, thus creating an endless rivalry with threats to national unity between majority and minority groups. The struggle for power and resources became worse with the discovery of oil, and the regression of the national economy into a mono-cultural trap. The present struggle is about the control of resources or derivation, with the oil-rich South-South states insisting on a minimum of 25 per cent derivation, to be increased eventually to 50 per cent derivation, or as the South-South Governors had declared in 2000-2001, 100 per cent control with only royalties and taxes to be paid to the Federal Government. It is curious that there is so much furore over derivation; for before 1969, this was not the case. Section 34 (I) of the 1960 Constitution as well as Section 140 (I) of the 1963 Republican Constitution provided 50 per cent derivation. The civil war changed this, and by 1969 with the Petroleum Decree of that year introduced by the Gowon government, the Federal Government discarded the revenue formula that had been agreed by the regions and the federal government in 1954. The Gowon government introduced this decree to establish full federal control over the oil resources; it was the prize that the Nigerian government awarded itself for winning the civil war. Successive governments found it convenient to hold on to this power over resources, and the unitary state that had emerged. As the sale of crude oil brought enormous resources, and easy money, with our excess crude earnings now about N1.15 trillion, the country became indolent. Government officials looted the oil money, and awarded oil blocks and other facilities to themselves, their agents and friends. States and regions which were established as centres of economic activity prior to 1969 became rent-collection units. The Federal Government collected oil revenue, and states went to Abuja to collect their share. The bitter, second lesson, is that this easy money did not translate into development, rather it encouraged greed, and a desperation for the control of the Federal Government, and its increasing powers. In practical terms, every other economic resource in the country was abandoned: the Western region which had been sustained by cocoa, and other resources and 50 per cent derivation suddenly stopped being creative; the North abandoned its groundnut pyramids, its hides and skin, the Middle Belt closed down its tin mines, ignored its reserves of uranium, and in the East, the coal mines, home of about the finest grade of coal in the world, were left to grow into bushes. Farmers across the country deserted the villages, everyone wanted to be in the city to share out of oil money. Oil had become gold, and it was proudly referred to as the national cake. If the oil resources had been distributed on a just and equitable basis, perhaps there would have been no problem. But while the rest of the country lived in open affluence, spending the proceeds of oil exploration, the people of the Niger Delta whose soil and waters produce the oil wealth which accounts for 95 per cent of Nigeria's contemporary resource base, wallowed in abject poverty. The Niger Delta is not just an endangered region, since the days of the Royal Niger Company, its people have grown from poverty to poverty; and throughout this history, they have resisted this marginalisation, this injustice: it is the refusal to listen to them that has now radicalised the entire region fully and irretrievably. The people have turned their anger on oil companies, and the Nigerian state, and they have produced heroes of their own struggle in the process. Every Nigerian government tries to resolve the issue through legalism or the introduction of development projects that are in the real sense anti-development in orientation and execution, or at best no more than mere tokenisms. But the solution is political. It is so to the extent that it is about federalism; and the creation of a Nigerian state in which every Nigerian can be a shareholder, and a contributor, not a parasite, or rent-collector. The only solution is for Nigeria to return to its pre-1969 position on revenue allocation, whereby every state shall be entitled to 50 per cent derivation. The victorious argument cannot be that of the lazy parasite, or the venal rent-collector such as is being articulated by the political North, or as previously disingenuously argued in Bala Usman's pamphlet, The Misrepresentation of Nigeria in which he argues that the North should be entitled to 60 per cent of oil revenue because the oil and gas resources in the Niger Delta were formed by deposits that flowed from the North. Nothing can be more simple-minded, and it is clear that the people of the South-South would never be persuaded by this brand of unscientific politics, which sadly has many adherents in the North. The principle of resource control is not for the South-South alone; it is in fact meant to benefit the whole of Nigeria. Which is why it needs not become a South-South vs North affair, although the truth is that it is the present status quo that has sustained Northern feudalism. If states control their resources, then the Federal Government would become weaker, Abuja would become less attractive and there would be a greater emphasis on productivity and development as each state would have to start thinking more creatively about how to manage its own resources. The impasse is also not about oil alone: other related issues that would need to be re-examined and resolved include the nature and future of the Nigerian state, the collection and management of the Value Added Tax, the Land Use Act and Constitutional Review. Whatever happens, we can only either address these problems once and for all, in keeping with the democratic spirit, or risk the infernal danger of eternal repetitiveness or postpone the evil day. Resource control is both the way to the past, and the way forward for Nigeria: we can only ignore it, over-politicise it, or force the wrong issues, at our own peril. The radical youths of the Niger Delta, those "children of Ken Saro-Wiwa" in the creeks and the oil producing communities are the ones who hold the key to that evil day not the politicians and their dubious rhetoric. In November 2001, this newspaper, The Guardian had conducted an opinion poll of 450 people from the oil-producing states who were asked whether they favoured an increase or a decrease in the 13 per cent derivation fund. About 70 per cent of the respondents favoured an increment noting that Section 162 of the 1999 Constitution does not prescribe a ceiling on derivation, as it speaks of a minimum of "not less than 13 per cent". If a similar poll were to be conducted across Nigeria today, it is almost certain that the exercise will produce telling data about the character and nature of the Nigerian state in relation to the people's expectations. The South-South must be congratulated for successfully hijacking Obasanjo's National Conference, and for granting it the gravitas and relevance that it originally lacked. Ultimately, it is President Obasanjo who is being taught a simple lesson about power-politics.
|
||||||||||||
# 
Your Comments
Please make The Square an enjoyable experience for everyone by refraining from gratuitous ad-hominem contributions, defamatory comments and off-topic posting. Such posts will be removed.