₦airaland Forum

Izonpikin:
....then we re-heat it....

LordAdam:
Who are you to use that as a yardstick?

In fact, why must you use that as a yardstick?

The use of secession is not to become better than your host country but to have 100% control (sovereignty) over your affairs. Especially, when the host country limits you or treats you unfairly.

Secession is similar to Independence.

In both cases, the party calling for secession or independence does not like the union or power ruling them and want to chart their own course.

Are you saying that Scotland should not push for secession because they are not going to do better than England?

I fail to see your logic.

-Lord

LRNZH:
I am sorry to state that you're clutching at straws. The yardstick we are using is if there is a secession, the new country should be doing better than the country it seceded from. Otherwise, what's the use of secession?
Is Namibia doing better than South Africa?
Is Eritrea doing better than Ethiopia?
Is South Sudan doing better than Sudan?
Is Somaliland doing better than Somalia?

LordAdam:
If this is your reply from all I wrote, then I'm done replying you.

I think I've done enough to prove that an individual from the Niger Delta has no business dictating to us what is good or bad for us.

I don't know where you are from, but these armed struggle will benefit you too.

Niger Delta armed struggle made the 13% derivation to be implemented in 2000.

Today, Imo and Abia states in the SE produce oil. Their state governments benefit from the 13% derivation.

Today, Ondo and Lago states in the SW produce oil. Their state governments benefit from the 13% derivation.

In the near future, NE states would start producing oil (Buhari approved billions of naira for oil exploration in the Chad Basin). They too would benefit from the 13% derivation.

Niger Delta is fighting not just for our future, but the future of more oil producing states in other regions.

Be careful which part of the towel you use to wipe your ass. It may well be the part you use to wipe your face tomorrow.

Enforce the confab report, these secession threats would drown.

If these armed conflicts continue, Biafra and Niger Delta Republic would happen. Since 1990, 34 new countries have been created.

The north better follow the saying, "A stitch in time saves nine."

Enforce the 2104 confab report.

-Lord

You ignored my question above because the data doesn't favour secession in Africa. No Wahala.

I will let you off on that note. To be honest, no one can predict tomorrow but we can hazard some intelligent guesses as you have just seen.

Take care my friend.

LordAdam:
Namibia.

Only 3 African countries have seceeded and gotten independence of recent. Namibia, Eritrea, and South Sudan.

South Sudan is still in its infancy. They would get it right with time.

Eritrea still fights a cold war with their former neo-colonialist--Ethiopia. Still, they are getting better with high GDP growth rates.

Namibia has "high political, social, and economic stability." They have a GDP per capita that is three times that of Nigeria. $6,118 vs Nigeria's $2,640.

I can give you a list of 5 countries and had independence at least 20 years before Eritrea that did not secede that are worst than Eritrea in Africa.

Even DRC is worse than South Sudan currently.

Let us have our own republic. Let us control our destiny. You are not Nostradamus.

-Lord

WeNigerDelta2:
Maybe I'm nuts or can't research properly....But everything I'm reading is showing Eritea Independence Day as May 1991 and Somali is July 1960 pre Nigeria.....Kindly correct me if I am wrong here, otherwise they are both past 20years...

WeNigerDelta2:
How many countries have seceded in Africa within the law 15 or so years...So there is not enough data in Africa to use as case studies...Thats why it's easy for you guys fear mong and point us to South Sudan....Who else have gained independence in Africa since?

LordAdam:
For lack of better alternatives: Yes, I am in support.

While in school, I received scholarship funds from one of the Niger Delta States Development Commission. It certainly helped in my studies. I received bursary from my state for 4 of the 5 years of my schooling. I received full scholarship for my fees for 4 years of the 5 years I schooled from an oil coy operating in my state. All of these without being related to a politician or militant.

Men, women, and children gave up their lives so I could enjoy those benefits. The armed struggle in part or in whole made it possible for me to enjoy those benefits.

Thousands enjoyed these benefits as I did.

If all of a sudden I support our aggressors, then I am a bastard. An ungrateful bastard from Niger Delta.

As I said, you are not a Niger Deltan, so you can never see things like we do.

-Lord

Shym3xx:
I believe you're look at accountability from a large government perspective i.e. Nigeria. You also can't rule out the Nigerian factor and the fact that almost everything is controlled from centre. However, with small government, governance would easier and people won't have to go through different layers of bureaucracy to demand accountability.

LordAdam:
You talk about South Sudan, but you fail to talk about Yugoslavia splitting into Bosnia, Serbia, Croatia, Macedonia, Montenegro, and Slovenia.

-Lord

LordAdam:
Those who oppose war must be reasonable enough to value peace.

The Nigerian state does not value peace.

-Lord

Shym3xx:
@ bold - illogical argument. The same argument can be made for the whole country, including the FG. Whatever they do with their resources is no one's business.

The whole scrounging business the insufficient oil is breeding is counter-productive. Ibadan is a classic example of everything wrong with oil. That was a city built during the latter days of colonial rule and in the first republic with money from cocoa. However, the city has stagnated since oil was dicovered with amala politics/mentality cos oil breeds lazy people/thinkers and everyone is out for stipends from oil for owanbe parties.

Another oil curse is how lazy most Yoruba people have become. I remember vividly that last year during the Oba-of-Lagos-gate, some idi.iotic and ignorant Yoruba chic posited an utterly disrespectful post that Yorubas lack the mental business acumen to make any Yoruba city thrive and Yoruba only produce the lands and conducive environment for business to thrive, while the Igbos are the brain. And you've to wonder how come the same Yorubas who own at least 80% of Nigerian businesses in diaspora (over 90% in the UK) lack the fundamental skills to thrive in business in Nigeria. The answer to that is the oil and the generation of lazy Yoruba folks it continues to breed in Nigeria, thus disgracing the industrious/creative Yoruba folks doing well outside the shores of the country.

Give these people their oil and get back to what we do well as a people. You lot are disgracing us.

Shym3xx:
This argument has to be the most illogical/counterintuitive argument ever, since most of the proponents of this argument are fond to citing it only when pipelines are blown up, thus affecting the income/revenue the country generates from the oil sector. However, it seems they like feigning ignorance about the fact that environmental degradation via oil spillage and gas flaring has been happening in that region for decades. So, if you care that much about environmental degradation – why not critique the neglect that region has suffered from successive governments? Why cite that now when they’re demanding justice (rightfully so) and not during the different oil spillages by opportunistic oil companies? Why only care when revenue generation is affected? To tackle this issue objectively, you’ve to be open minded in your our outlook with a clear head. Fair enough, the militancy has more to do with self-interests than the actual interest of the people from that region. But that doesn’t negate the fact that the region is the most cheated in the country and, they deserve far more than they’re getting.

Also, the 2.2m barrel of oil Nigeria exports daily isn’t enough to cater to 180 million people and the earlier folks realise that, the better it would be for all of you. The owners of the oil deserve at least 50% of the revenue/income generated from it – while others need to look inwards for ways to maximise whatever potentials they’ve in their respective regions. The over-dependence on oil is counter-productive, hence the whole country is the way it’s. And the region that’s the most dependent on oil is the most backward region in the country. That’s not rocket science. Oil breeds a generation of lazy people/thinkers

You lot need to start critiquing objectively cos like MLK said, “Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere”. Let these people enjoy what God blessed them with.

WeNigerDelta:
Why you make some great point...You need to stop it with this, oh look at Lagos and you guys should learn crap...Why haven't other Yoruba states learnt and develop it like that, are they suddenly not as peaceful as Lagos...
Also not everywhere in the region is volatile, what about Akwa Ibom and Cross River? Are investors dodging billets there too? They are as peaceful and anywhere in Yorubaland, still they are no better than anywhere else in the ND...
We have given Nigeria a chance for 50 plus years...We have been more patriotic that y'all claiming patriots today...Tell me what's more patriotic that feeding everyone for half a century with nothing to show for it but Abuja and Lagos.
How about you guys be patriotic and tell your govt to make a concerted effort to develop the region for 10years like it did Abuja? How about movin the capital to the region for just a period to fast track such development? Nah Niger Deltans to deserve that right? We deserve a paltry 13% and lousy nddc n ministry.... What we want in development, they did it for Abuja with our money without setting up any AbujaDDC...Until then we will always agitate l, no amount of right ups will change our reality and mins on ground...

WeNigerDelta:
I stopped reading when you said the agitations by the women have been largely successful...It clearly shows your ignorance about the true state of events in the region...
Go and ask those same women, which of their demands were met long term....The govt and IOC paid lip service to save face in the international community, after that as usual shared some change to a few thieves and its business as usual....
The Ugborodo women are still working on how to take Chevron hostage again...They tried last year and were stopped, I'm sure they will try again...

rhynno:
I prefer to trek frm Lagos to abuja.

..dan reading dis encyclopedia...

ODUBEZE:
In as much as I don't support their methodology but are you saying that the innocent villagers should take the hit?
like I said if your people are in the same village would you cheer them on?
Lord please give this generation wisdom!

ODUBEZE:
I hope you will say the same when your family will be treated like the people of Gbaramatu?
SMH for your likes

tinkinjow:
Story storyyyyyyyyy!

bejeiodus:
Your write up made an interesting read.
The Niger Delta crisis goes beyond your superficial attempt to explain it. There is a need to bring the people to the table and seek their thoughts on what should be done.
The agitation didn't start with Ken Saro Wiwa like you wrongly pointed out, but with Isaac Adaka Boro who declared that part of Nigeria an independent nation in 1966.
If a struggle has been on since 1966 and it is not showing signs of abating, does that not tell a sane mind that it requires more than the?

This country urgently needs to be restructured and the wealth of the people put in their own hands.
A reworking of our federal system of government will do a lot to ease the tensions in the land.
I must admit that there has been a commercialisation of the struggle for pecuniary gains but the government must go beyond enriching some few to the detriment of the others. The people of the Niger Delta have are being fed only a crumbs of the food cooked I'm their backyard, they deserve a place at the dinner's table.

The current military action going on in the Niger Delta should be a stopgap measure. A successful victory should not make us lose sight of the need to treat the disease for the well being of the Niger Delta.

Odunharry:
According to the figures posted up there by the poster i quoted..
if we calculate the 13% for all states for each year I think

omenka:
Seems someone is feeling the heat.

Odunharry:
8.1trn no be moi moi o...
The Niger Delta in all honesty is suppose to be the most developed in Nigeria..What do we have?? thieving politicians, pollution etc etc..

Past and present leaders truly should be held accountable first..

8.1 TR Naira ke? I don buliv it

Odunharry:
LRNZH...
Nice article..it's long but reading it is worth it..

Violence truly isn't the answer..
So many people need to be held accountable starting from leaders in Niger Delta.

Lalasticlala

modath:
LRNZH,
Mehn dis thing long oooo

Introduction
The days of The Movement for the Survival of the Ogoni People (MOSOP), formed in 1992 are long gone. When playwright and activist, late Ken Saro-Wiwa started this group, the emphasis was on giving his Ogoni ethnic group a platform to demand for social justice. They wanted an improvement in their standard of living and a stop to serious environmental degradation.

Successive Nigerian governments (mostly military) have relied on the 1979 constitutional amendment which allows the federal government full ownership and rights to all Nigerian territory. All compensation for land would "be based on the value of the crops on the land at the time of its acquisition, not on the value of the land itself." Hence, many Ogonis, like other Niger-Deltans were pushed off their lands to allow for crude oil exploitation with minimal compensations. Shell Petroleum Development Company of Nigeria (SPDC, henceforth Shell, the largest oil and gas operator in Nigeria), like most of the other multinational oil companies, has had a history of oil spills in Ogoniland since one of the first recorded oil spill in 1970 in Boobanabe, Kegbara Dere due to a fire at an oil well. Unfortunately, Shell has not been known to cleanup sites of oil spills even though under Nigerian law, oil companies have to start cleaning up spills within 24 hours, whatever the cause, and return the affected land to as close as possible its original state.

This is the recipe for the historic issues that bedevil the Niger-Delta till date. When Ken Saro-Wiwa and the rest of the 'Ogoni Nine' were brutally murdered on trumped up charges by the Sani Abacha regime in November 1995, very few believed his pronouncements on the marginalisation by the government and the environmental neglect by the oil companies in the Niger-Delta. Until in 2011, when United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) researchers found that the people of Ogoniland had lived with chronic oil pollution throughout their lives. This pollution has contaminated the fields where they grew food, the water where they fished and the wells from which they drank.

MOSOP issued a 30 days ultimatum to the oil companies (Shell, Chevron, and the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation) for
i. payment of US$10 billion for accumulated rents and royalties for oil exploration since 1958 and for damages and compensation for environmental pollution, devastation and ecological degradation
i. immediate stoppage of environmental degradation; and
iii. negotiations for mutual agreement on all future drilling.
Nigerian soldiers overran Ogoniland as a result of this development and the rest is bitter history. Although the oil fields and installations in Ogoniland have since largely remained inactive since then, major oil pipelines still cross through Ogoniland and oil spills continue to affect the region, due to such factors as a lack of maintenance and vandalism to oil infrastructure and facilities.

https://venturesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/11/ken_saro_wiwa.jpg
Greenpeace
The Late Writer and Activist, Kenule “Ken” Saro-Wiwa

Federal Government Efforts
The Niger Delta problem is two fold. Poverty in the midst of plenty wealth and man-made environmental degradation. The first is a Nigerian problem. In the time I spent in the Niger Delta as a young man in the early 2000s, two things stood out: Port-Harcourt was not the garden city I expected it to be, but I was also surprised at how much communities under companies like Total and Agip were being treated with 24 hours electricity, road, water, free education, scholarships and jobs. In the Nigerian North East where I spent my childhood, this largesse by the oil companies would have been an eternal game changer. My summary conclusions were that here are groups of people who are not taking full advantage of the opportunities before them.

The second, man-made environmental degradation from oil spills is unfortunate. The Niger-Delta has the highest concentrations of biodiversity on the planet, it has abundant flora and fauna, arable terrain that can sustain a wide variety of crops, agricultural trees, and more species of freshwater fish than any ecosystem in West Africa, itself blessed with diverse biomes. No other region in Nigeria will fully appreciate the resultant effects including lack of fish and crops sustainability, acid rain, severe heat from gas flaring stations.

Successive civilian governments have attempted to address the Niger-Delta issues. A few examples include:

1. Creation of The Niger Delta Development Commission (NDDC) and National Oil Spill Detection and Response Agency (NOSDRA) by the Olusegun Obasanjo government in 2000 and 2006 respectively. Obasanjo's government also acceded to the requests by law-makers from this region by allowing the principle of derivation as under the proviso to Section 162 (2) of the 1999 Constitution as amended. This allowed providing a recompense to the producers of any natural resources for the expropriation and sequestration of their rights to control and manage same, by the Nigerian State. It was actioned through the Revenue allocation Act where not less than 13% of all proceeds from petroleum sales were made available to oil producing states.

2. Umaru Musa Yar'adua's administration introduced amnesty for armed militants in the Delta, authorised the release of Asari-Dokubo and Alamieyeseigha in 2007 thereby leading to about 30 thousand pardons. Ex-militants were offered international and local scholarships, and vocational skills acquisition training. The same government created the Niger Delta Ministry in 2008 with an indigenous Minister in charge of the development of the Niger Delta area, and a Minister of State in charge of youth empowerment in the same region.

3. The recent commencement of cleanups in Ogoniland as instructed by the Muhammadu Buhari's government in 2015 according to the long delayed UNEP Report on the environmental restoration of Ogoniland. The actions approved by Buhari, include the amendment of the official gazette establishing the Hydrocarbon Pollution Restoration Project (HYPREP), the contribution deposit of $10 million will be made by stakeholders to cleanup oil spills, and provide safe sources of drinking water in Ogoniland. The Calabar-Lagos rail line had been budgeted for in 2016. It is planned to connect major Niger Delta towns to the Lagos commercial hub and provide a cheap means of goods transportation.

https://16745-presscdn-0-7.pagely.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/05/image-53-e1464607813827.jpg
TheNews
The Minister of Environment Amina Mohammed (left) inspects a clean-up demonstration site in Bodo, Gokana Local Government Area of Rivers State, on Sunday, accompanied by NDDC's Acting MD Mrs. Ibim Semenitari, (right)

Anyone who says the FG's effort is not enough probably has a point. More effort is definitely needed. I have not shown efforts by state and local governments in the Niger Delta because in my opinion, they have largely failed the region.

Way Forward
All hope should not be lost. Violence by militants arises from a certain poverty of intellect and the penchant for the enlightened Niger Deltans to keep quiet and watch while the lower witted youth of the region and some of its leadership brandish arms and cause wanton damage. The bad eggs have been throwing away everyone's babies with the bath water for too long.

Like all other geopolitical zones in Nigeria, every time someone is killed or properties are destroyed in the Niger Delta, we are making a business case for why we should not have development in the affected area. No sensible business entity will put its resources where there is no assurance of making a profit. It is in this profit that all social value arises. In other words, there is no development until there is a profitable business case. There can't be investments which bring profit if there is no prevailing peace and common sense.

Pipeline contracts are not the solution and neither is the call for secession. I strongly doubt that the more peaceful Ibibio, Anioma, Kalabari, Urhobo, Itsekiri, Edo and other Niger Deltan tribes will be in a hurry to form a state in an Ijaw dominated Niger Delta Republic. The history of the Ijaws points to them not sharing the same vision on peaceful conflict resolution and civil correction of injustices with surrounding tribes. Secession will likely lead to a splintered Niger Delta. The controlling forces in such a scenario will be neighbours like Cameroun or other foreign powers.

I am an advocate for activism. Our voices should be heard and our issues should be addressed. We have people in instituted authorities from traditional chiefs to elected local government, state government, legislative officers and appointed ministers. If they do not understand why they represent us the people, we should or stage peaceful protests in their homes and offices and vote them out eventually. Former president Goodluck Jonathan, an ijaw man himself, has set a precedence for votes to count. The days of the military where we needed to take up arms to be heard are over.

What have the government officials in the Niger Delta achieved with the 13% oil derivation funds received for close to two decades now? What is NDDC's impact on its people for the past 16 years? Which projects have the Niger Delta Ministry accomplished since 2008?

https://www.redpepper.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/nigerdelta1.jpg
Science for Human Rights
Women stand next to an oil wellhead that since 2004 has been regularly spilling crude oil near the community of Ikot Ada Udo in the Niger Delta.

Psylas:
But Ghana is better than Nigeria

SuperSupremo:
Lol
Ghana and Nigeria are like.....