naptu2:

Things are slightly better now, but I'll paint you a picture from the early 90s when the Niger Delta crisis started.


1) Crude oil is found in your ancestral land. The government steps in, pays you a pittance called "compensation" and takes your land from you.

2) The indigenes are mostly farmers and fisher folk. The oil companies cut corners to save cost. This results in oil spills. The oil spills kill off fish and render land infertile. The livelihood of the indigenes has thus been destroyed. Sometimes, vandals who cut pipelines to steal oil also cause spillages.

3) Sometimes (I stress, sometimes) the oil companies pay compensation, for environmental degradation, to village chiefs who pocket the money. Other residents do not receive a kobo.

4) The government of Nigeria, which should protect the indigenes (citizens), usually takes the side of the oil companies, because over 90% of government revenue is gotten from the oil companies. The citizens are expendable. (Basically, the government of Nigeria acts like an oil company, so it has more sympathy for the oil companies).

5) Citizens stage peaceful and sometimes violent protests. The government of Nigeria sends in soldiers and policemen to break up the protests (sometimes with maximum force). The citizens "are engaged in economic sabotage" (preventing government from getting oil revenue).

6) I can still remember my conversation with a former medical student at Uniben. I can't remember the medical jargon he used, but I can remember the shock (or should I say horror) that his voice conveyed. They conducted research and discovered high levels of carcinogens and respiratory problems in villagers in the Niger Delta. This was something that his books and lectures had not prepared him for. The cause. . . .

Natural gas is one of the by-products of crude oil. Once upon a time, it was thought that the gas was useless, so it was burnt (gas flaring). This releases toxic chemicals into the atmosphere which fall back to earth as acid rain. The villagers breathe this air. They drink water from polluted streams.

Recently, an archbishop took President Jonathan to task about the East-West road. Two years ago I had the opportunity to hear the bishop speak. He spoke about mothers bringing their children to him to bless them before they die, or asking him to heal them. He spoke about illnesses and extreme poverty. Everybody was in tears by the time he finished speaking.

Since 1999 the government has repeatedly given deadlines to the oil companies to stop gas flaring, but none has been met (also consider the fact that that gas could be used to generate electricity or sold). (The government can't enforce these deadlines because it is basically an oil company).


7) The government, oil companies and politicians sometimes sponsor inter-ethnic wars in order to gain easy access to oil fields.

Social Justice


8 ) Imagine that you live in your own village in your own country, yet you have no electricity (I'm not talking about power cuts, I mean that you are not connected to the national grid). Yet, at night, you can see a place, just a few metres away, that is a Shell or Mobil or Chevron camp. There's electricity there. The lights are blazing. That's because the white men are there.

9) Imagine that a boat comes to your village every friday to pick up girls. Some mothers would holler at the people in the boat, "na white man I want for my daughter o!" Imagine that one of those girls is your sister, or your daughter, or your mother, or your girlfriend; how would you feel?

10) To add to that, consider the fact that the people have no roads, schools, health centres/hospitals, electricity, etc, then you'll understand the reason for the Niger Delta crisis.

X) Most of what I wrote up there were problems from the early 1990s (many persist till this day), but there's also another problem. I mentioned the fact that some chiefs received compensation, on behalf of the community, for environmental degradation and pocket the money. Well, this problem has spiralled out of control.

Some people were appointed to government positions because they are from the Niger Delta (it was expected that they would use their positions to better the lives of their people). They got to these positions, took "their share of the national cake" and forgot about the people that they were representing.

Niger Delta militants emerged "to fight for the rights of the people". Well, some of them also took "their share of the national cake" and forgot about the people they were supposed to be fighting for.

naptu2: This was my proposal.

On-shore:

The individual who owns the land should own the resources and get the revenue derived from the resources. He then pays tax to the government.

The local government gets 25% of that tax and remits the rest upward. The state government gets 35% of the tax and remits the rest upward. 20% of the tax goes to the Federal Government, while the remaining 20% is put in an account in case of emergencies (to help states that have suffered floods, drought, earthquake, etc).

Off-shore:

50% of the revenue should go to the Federal Government, 30% to the litoral state and 20% to the local government.

The Federal Government should also shed some of its responsibilities (this it has already started doing) by returning private companies/institutions that were taken over in the 1970s and relinquishing functions/agencies like the Federal Fire Service, etc and devolving them to the state and local governments.

naptu2: Oshie Gas Flare, Niger Delta.


Dagogo Joel's arm was burned by the Oshie gas flare when he was a child. The flare--lit since early 70s and adjacent to Joel's home village of Akaraolu -- occasionally spews out flaming liquids on the countryside, and burned Joel's arm while he was fishing with his father.

naptu2: "Oil farming" in the Niger-Delta


That's not water, it's crude oil.