I have noticed a desperate attempt by some unpatriotic elements in the country to reduce the Niger Delta question to a North-South conflict in which the North is portrayed as a scavenger that has come to plunder the wealth of the South using the state machinery, against the wishes of the later, and in the process dehumanised the people of the Niger Delta to the benefit of the people of the North. Reading from a particular column on the back page of, The Daily Sun of Sunday 27th July, 2008, the writer posited without any concrete evidence that every other ethnic group in Nigeria is enjoying the wealth derived from the Niger Delta with the exception of the people of the Niger Delta themselves. I disagree.

Contrary to this careless and untruthful statement, under-development pervades the entire landscape of the country and the worst hit sections are in the North. Over 90% of manufacturing Industries that drive the production sector are in the South, particularly the Southwest axis, while 100% of the oil producing companies have their operational bases in the Niger Delta, i.e the South-South axis. These industries, built with oil wealth, tend to absorbs labour from the areas where they are located, cushioning the effect of unemployment, and also creating multiplier effect in the economy of those areas; and the immediate beneficiaries are the indigenes of these areas.

If all the oil companies pull out of the Niger Delta the economy of the region will not survive for a year before total collapse suggesting that despite the apparent negative impact of oil exploration on the region, the region still remains the primary beneficiary of Nigeria’s oil wealth. To suggest that the North is the primary beneficiary of oil wealth instead is therefore fallacious and deliberately misleading.

Secondly, the money generated from oil by the federal government goes back to the 36 states of the federation based on an agreed formula, which gives the lion share to the oil producing states. Thereafter the Federal government whether headed by an OBJ or a Yar’Adua does not dictate how these monies are spent by the states. When the State Governors in the Delta region chose to join the rest of their counterparts in the North to squander and loot the wealth appropriated to their people, nobody should have the justification to put the blame on the North as a geographical region.

The agitation for a higher percentage of derivation to the region is quite justifiable but the question is what have the region done with the 13% they are receiving at the moment? If the 13% derivation being currently paid to the oil producing states is not judiciously utilised to the benefit of the people, there is no guarantee or even a faint possibility that if 100% is given to them, their lot will improve. The Bible says that it is he who is faithful with little that can be trusted with more.

It is on records that almost all the core oil-producing states have their previous State Governors in the bad books of the EFCC for dipping their sleazy fingers in the public till. And the amounts involved are mind-boggling. These are monies that could have significantly improved the well being of the Niger Delta people if judiciously utilized. When a man does not care for his own house, he lays the foundation for strangers to desecrate it. It is against this background that one could see the apparent neglect of the region by the federal tier of government as a direct consequence of the actions or inactions of the Niger Delta leaders themselves. How could we expect the Federal Government to do more when the Niger Delta leaders themselves are not desirous of real development in their domains?

Now the youth have taken up arms (most likely supplied to them by their local politicians); they kidnap oil workers and demand for ransom; they rob people in the streets, they vandalise pipelines, bunker crude oil and blow up oil installations. These anti-social vices cannot bring the much needed development to the region rather it will worsen the deplorable state of infrastructure in the region and the immediate victims will be the indigenes. Take the case of Julius Berger’s reported pull out of the region on account of a recent mortal attack on their staff by supposed militants, for example; the flyover under construction at Eleme Junction on Port Harcourt-Aba Expressway has consequently been abandoned. That project was designed to halt the traumatic experience of endless traffic jams encountered by motorists on this strategic route, which is unarguably the most travelled road in the axis.

In the midst of all these, some people have found a diversionary gimmick to mislead the poor people of the Niger Delta into believing that their problems come from the North. One mischievous speaker who is not even from the region and whose interest is quite questionable, while protesting during Yar’Adua’s, recent visit to Britain, against the rumoured plans to seek Britain’s military assistance in the Niger Delta, insinuated that the soldiers posted by the federal government to the region to maintain the peace are composed of officers and men of Northern origin only and with a specific mandate to rape and maim the indigenes. These false allegations are not just wicked but evil. And to think that he made these jejune statements in faraway Britain to an international audience, who are bound to believe same to be true, makes these remarks more despicable. If this ware the case, then the region should at least have experienced a reprieve during the eight years that a southerner held sway. But ask the Odi people and they will tell you that no Head of State of Northern extraction ever ordered mass killing and destruction of a whole village in the Niger Delta in our 48 years of existence as a nation. But a southerner did!

And to buttress the point that this wicked propaganda is bearing evil fruits, one needs to read the recent interview granted the press by one of the leaders of the militant groups-Asari Dakubo. The young man diverted his venom to the North calling them parasites and all sorts of unprintable names. He went ahead to declare war on the North, promising to start lunching attacks at Northern targets. But surprisingly, in the same interview, he turned round and accused Obasanjo of sponsoring the rival militant groups in the region to discredit the struggle. But is Obasanjo also from the North? If not then the Niger-Delta question should not be ‘Northernised’ or reduced to a North-South war.

In that interview Asari made some remarks about the civil war, which are far from a background of knowledge. He said the north did not fight the war and that it was they (the militants?) who fought to keep this nation one. Strange! This sharply contradicts known documented history of the war, but it exposes the real danger to our nation, namely that we have put arms in the hands of a young generation that never experienced the horror of a civil war. These young men probably think a war is a tea -party and could be tempted to experiment with it again. I wish they could go on an excursion to Iraq and Dafur or watch documentaries on the war in Bosnia and Herzegovina and then decide if they are really ready for war or embrace dialogue.

A war, the militants need to be told, is far more serious business than lunching surprise attacks on unarmed oil men and taking them hostage, or bombing oil facilities or vandalising oil pipelines and bunkering oil. Those unpatriotic people urging them to declare war on the Federal Government under an illusion that they are fighting the North are the real enemies of the Niger Delta. I am nursing the belief that some politicians who suddenly found themselves out of power are spreading this false anti-north propaganda in a desperate attempt to discredit the Yar’adua government, generate instability and halt the regime from out-shinning their discredited regime and the militants are falling cheaply into this trap. This is regrettable.

The collective neglect of the Niger Delta region did not start during the Yar’Adua regime and it takes some high level of unreasonableness to expect that he could address this mammoth decay in one year. This is why I find it strange that the genuine efforts of this regime to hold a summit on the Niger Delta that could identify sustainable strategies for solving the Niger Delta question was viewed with suspicion and discredited by giving it a Northern (read bad) name to kill it.

Robot  # 1 | 01.08.2008 12:17

I have noticed a desperate attempt by some unpatriotic elements in ...Read the full article.

Son of the Delta  # 2 | 01.08.2008 16:42

If anybody "Northernized" this issue it is the North. You cannot single out Niger Delta governors as "corrupt".When it is a well known fact that most of Nigeria's past military leaders for the past 4 to 5 decades were from the North and nearly all of them stole several billions of dollars from the Niger Delta's oil wealth.The current Northern governors are no saints too.Have any one in the North Including the author of this articles asked their governors or past military governors to account for the hundreds of billions of dollars they mismanaged and looted. On the Issue of Nigeria's civil war.It is on record that Murtala Mohammed lost woefuly.To understand the statement that was accredited to Dokubo I will advise you to find out more about the 3rd marine commandoes. If anyone started beating the drums of war it was your dirty Northern elites and not Dokubo.They called for Yar'Adua to adopt military solution.From all indication those causing these fresh round of conflict are from the North. The North refused to pay up the 300 billion naira NDDC money.The is in no way innocent.They choose to be part of the problem and not the solution.

ALORAINIDDEVIL  # 3 | 01.08.2008 19:06

just wait until Bode gets you....

ebiasain  # 4 | 04.08.2008 21:59

After reading a good portion of this writer's piece, I have to say, he doesn't have a good grasp of the fundamental issues at the core of the Niger Delta problem. Agreed, that all of the Niger Delta governors, past and present are corrupt, like the ones in Gombe, Sokoto, Kaduna, Kano and Katsina, yes, Katsina, past and present, but to suggest that the oil and gas industry has provided abundant jobs to the indigenes of the Niger Delta, is to display a very skewed understanding of what's driving the militancy in the region. Does this writer know the impact of massive environmental pollution? Has this writer considered the fact that the so-called oil and gas industry has been controlled by mostly Northerners in the past 50 years? Has he heard of someone called Lukeman Rilwanu, who has continued to be the adviser on petroleum matters since the begining of time! Come on, if oil was not the driving force of the feudal cabal of the North, why would Yar'Adua impose himself on the Nation, even when he didn't win the election, even at the risk of beclouding his 'impeccable' integrity? If the Northern leaders would steal this much and can't still develop or invest in their kit and kin, what kind of leaders are they? Now that the North have realized that they can live on their own, why not agree to the call for a Sovereign Natonal Conference?