New Ministry For Niger Delta And All That…—Kanayo Esinulo

Sure, the proposed new ministry provoked some measure of joy from some vocal stakeholders in the Niger Delta. This enlightened social category ought to have been suspicious about what the ‘Abuja move’ was designed to achieve. Let’s face it, the new Ministry is essentially designed to buy time, engineer a false sense of understanding of the Niger Delta condition by the political establishment in Abuja, and make the Niger Delta Development Commission, NDDC, look minimally useful and incapable of shouldering infrastructural responsibilities in the region, whereas the same Abuja deliberately starves the Commission of critical funds with which to perform.

Unfortunately, some more visible stakeholders in the region’s affairs simply failed to read between the lines, as it were. This myopia could possibly be attributed to two factors: the creation of the new Ministry and the constitution of the Niger Delta Technical Committee led by Ledum Mittee almost at the same time, may have engendered the assumption that the two developments could trigger off a whole new direction, a new hope, a properly defined new approach for the region. What is often missed by some stakeholders in the Niger Delta, however, is that as they are busy “strategising” in Port-Harcourt and elsewhere, the Northern elite who are masters of the power game in Nigeria, are steps ahead, manufacturing new slow-down ideas that cannot lead the region anywhere, but inevitably would become the working paper for the federal establishment.

Was the initial appointment of Dr. Ibrahim Gambari as chairman of the Technical Committee not part of the Northern strategy to ensure that the region and the character of the struggle there retain a specific pattern? For the many years that the military fraction of the Northern elite ruled, what development came to the region? The Liquefied Natural Gas project, the refineries, the gas companies, etc. were sited in the region because they had to be there, anyway. Now that the 1967 bogey of “your Igbo neighbours are your enemies” sold to the region by the General Yakubu Gowon regime are scales gradually falling off the people’s eyes, new bogus stratagems needed to be put in place to keep the region governable for as long as possible, and for crude oil to continue to be lifted by heartless multinational oil corporations operating in the region for their profits and those of their commission agents. Yes, the crude must continue to flow, even if people in the creeks can hardly scoop clean water from streams, farmlands remain uncultivable, people become used to acid rains, and gas flaring making night look like day. What is important to the rulers of Nigeria is that Abuja as a city continues to boom, the centre of consumption. The Niger Delta region remains what it has always been: the centre of production – where the eggs are laid.

What is needed in the Niger Delta is not the unnecessary jubilation over the creation of a new federal ministry for the region, but a clear understanding and a proper analysis of where the proposal leads everyone. For months, I suspect, this country is going to be entertained by disagreements that would ensue among the eight oil-producing states over such trivialities as where the headquarters of the new ministry would be sited, the state of origin of who heads it and where the permanent secretaries and other strategic staff would come from. These are carefully laid points of ambush by those whose idea it is. The fracas would, as carefully calculated, consume reasonable time and energy. And I repeat: that is what the authors knew would happen and are anticipating. And the leaders of the region, I bet, would not disappoint them. As the bickering persists, it would be considered right to re-introduce, for comic effects and robust distractions, characters like one Asu Beks who would, I suspect, be deployed to throw up his usual ugly card: the real and the political Niger Delta. To factor in some roles for such characters is always part of the game plan of those who rule Nigeria . They use them to diminish the worth and character of popular political struggles, so that feudal rule would continue and thrive indefinitely.

For sure, some incurable optimists may see my position as pessimistic and pre-emptive. But it is unpatriotic to underdevelop a whole region, a whole people for decades, using the natural resources in their ancestral home, at their backyard, to construct Abuja, unevenly spread national wealth and opportunities, and leave the area in perpetual poverty and misery. That is what has been happening for decades, and the younger elements in the region now say they can no longer take it, as their elders readily did.

Let me make myself absolutely clear: the creation of a new ministry for the long cheated region is not going to improve the conditions there. A ministry is a bureaucracy, and bureaucracy has no speed in these parts. Take a trip to the place and you’ll probably understand what I am saying. If there is any place that requires a ‘Marshal Plan’ in Africa south of Sahara today, it is Nigeria’s Niger Delta region. In fact, what the political establishment in Abuja needs to do is to move in and develop the place, just as it did with patches of villages and hamlets that are now Abuja.