PETROLEUM SUBSIDY, RESOURCE CONTROL AND THE PLIGHT OF THE HOST COMMUNITIES

This piece was triggered by a vexed spirit - mine actually. Vexed with the injustice the oil producing communities have endured in this country through the years. To avoid a false start due to my heated passion, I have decided to share with you perspectives of others (whom I ensured were not Niger Deltans), excerpts which are showed below.
 
“The problem, in a nutshell, is that for fifty years, foreign oil companies have conducted some of the world’s most sophisticated exploration and production operations, using millions of dollars’ worth of imported ultramodern equipment, against a backdrop of Stone Age squalor. They have extracted hundreds of millions of barrels of oil, which have sold on the international market for hundreds of billions of dollars, but the people of the Niger Delta have seen virtually none of the benefits. While successive military regimes have used oil proceeds to buy mansions in Mayfair or build castles in the sand in the faraway capital of Abuja, many in the Delta live as their ancestors would have done hundreds, even thousands of years ago—in hand-built huts of mud and straw. And though the Delta produces 100 percent of the nation’s oil and gas, its people survive with no electricity or clean running water. Seeing a doctor can mean traveling for hours by boat through the creeks.”  John Ghazvinian - The Curse of Oil (The Virginia Quarterly Review, 2007).
 
“The region, a watery maze flung across 50,000 sq km in southern Nigeria, is also home to some of Africa's poorest people, and some of its worst environmental destruction. There are villages without power, water, health clinics or schools; pipelines that scar the earth; oil slicks that shimmer on rivers; flares that blaze bright and loud, burning off the gas that gushes to the surface along with the sweet crude”. Simon Robinson - Nigeria’s Deadly Days (Time Magazine, 2006)
 
Now, let’s proceed. The nation has experienced lots of protests in the past week over the removal of the fuel subsidy. While I do not question their right to protest peacefully, however, most of the placards and speeches made by the protesters provoked my consciousness over a more fundamental issue. The whole petroleum industry operates on a fundamental injustice. The last couple of days, I've heard the phrase "Our Oil" coming from diverse coordinates of this country (and with different accents) so much that it evokes the question we have unjustly answered through an unjust and unfriendly piece of legislation. Who owns the oil? The Nigerian constitution (unjustly) vests ownership of all minerals, oil and gas in Nigeria to the federal government. In all of this, no place was given to the host communities, who traditionally (even before the amalgamation and subsequent independence of this country) own(ed) the land and everything on/in it. No attention was given to that fisher man whose catch rate has diminished by the day such that he can't even find enough to feed his family? Yes, that fisherman who doesn't even enjoy the subsidy - he paddles his canoe to fish, rides his bicycle on land and cooks with firewood. What’s the place of that rural dweller who’s been buying PMS at rates in excess of N150 per litre even under the subsidy regime? What's the place of the farmer, whose farm land has been submerged in a pool of hydrocarbon, rendering the land barren and desolate? He can't facebook, blog or tweet so he's dying gradually with no means to tell his story. It is at the expense of these men and women that the wealth of the nation is gotten, yet they hold no stake. The oil that powers this nation, the amount (subsidy) causing the uproar, they all come from the Niger Delta and for over 60 years of oil prospecting, exploration and production, the region has been bearing the full brunt of it all.
 
From 1914, the date of the Colonial Mineral Ordinance, the first oil related legislation in the new colonial state of Nigeria, the grant of licenses for oil production was restricted to British companies and individuals. No special consideration was given to the host communities and there were no states then. Thus, Shell was given exclusive exploration and production license in 1937, before the monopoly was broken in 1937 following the granting of license to Mobil. Upon attaining independence, others such as Gulf (Chevron), Elf and Agip joined the fray. The government attempted to nationalize the petroleum sector by increasing her stake through the creation of Nigerian National Oil Company (NNOC) in 1971. This was followed by the creation of the Nigerian National Petroleum Company (NNPC) by Decree 33 of 1977. The main onshore exploration and production activities undertaken today by foreign oil companies in Nigeria are in joint ventures with the NNPC, the state oil company (Source: Human Rights Watch – The Price of Oil, 2011). In all of these, the host communities were not carried along. The states were also not parties to the joint venture licenses. The implication is that the oil producing States are positioned as beggars, waiting on the federal government to feed it with whatever crumbs they deem necessary through the miserly 13% derivation. This is clearly a fundamental anomaly! The relationship between the federal government and the oil producing states has been more of parasitic than symbiotic – the centre continuously sucking up the states and host communities with no regard to the development of the region. The time to push for fiscal federalism and resource control is now. It is not enough to carry placards over an upward movement of pump prices when the whole petroleum industry operates on this fundamental injustice. Also, the fact that Lagos alone has over 60% of all cars implies that the state alone has been consuming over 60% of the subsidy money. This is obviously an imbalance and not fair to other states, especially the oil producing states where all the oil money comes from. For me, the kind of subsidy we have is like patching a leaking roof of a house with a faulty foundation. You can patch it to prevent the roof from leaking, but the building will continue to have a foundational and structural defect and would collapse in only a matter of time unless the foundation is redesigned or reinforced. The starting point of that redesign/reinforcement is through resource control and fiscal federalism
 
The United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples states in Article 26 that “Indigenous peoples have the right to the lands, territories and resources which they have traditionally owned, occupied or otherwise used or acquired. As such, they have the right to own, use, and develop and control such lands, territories and resources that they possess”. Although Nigeria is a member of the United Nations, a certain piece of legislation exists, that strips the indigenous people of their rights as outlined above. People sit in the comfort of their Abuja offices and remotely partition our lands and allocate it to themselves as oil blocs without recourse to the original owners of the land. They cede the land to the state and the resources therein to the federal government – the indigenous owners are seen as tenants on properties that were passed on to them or acquired by them/their fore fathers even before the country was amalgamated. The resources of the region, the people and their well being have been sacrificed on the altar of our national economy. While the economy of the nation thrives on the largesse of the proceeds from the region, the economic and socioeconomic conditions of the people continue to deteriorate. The economy of the nation practically runs on the proceeds from the land, yet the land stinks with poverty and the stench of spilled crude oil, dead and decaying fishes, mollusks, crustaceans, etc is deeply nauseating. From Saudi Arabia to Venezuela, Qatar to Russia, UAE to Texas, host states/provinces/communities benefit directly from the proceeds of the resources of their land. This draconian legislation that has ensured our continuous impoverishment must be repelled. It is the height of injustice!
 
If these crimes and injustice against the oil producing communities were only economic in nature, then the people would have risen above it, for the people of Niger Delta historically are hard working farmers and fishermen. But nay, their environment has been severely polluted and their means of livelihood have been taken away from them. Their rivers have become sterile and their land barren. Oil prospecting and mining activities have left the region violently polluted. The Niger Delta, one of the largest wetlands in the world was once very rich in biodiversity; today most of the choice species have been driven into extinction. Not only the plants and animals are endangered, the people are also endangered. The UNEP Environmental Assessment of Ogoni brought to fore some of these concerns. The report shows that the Ogonis drink water contaminated with benzene, a known carcinogenic substance, at levels over 900 times above World Health Organization (WHO) guidelines. They drink water from wells with hydrocarbon contamination at levels 1000 times greater than the Nigerian drinking water standard of 3 microgrammes per litre. In some places, 8cm of refined product was found floating on the ground water – same water they drink from wells and boreholes. Any government or structure of government that would allow her people, the very people that produce the wealth of the nation, to be so maltreated, impoverished and endangered does not deserve continuous patronage. If the State and the host communities were parties to the joint venture license, surely most of these issues would have been sorted out in a timely and responsive manner. But alas, Abuja is too far from Bori, Buguma, Eket, Oloibiri, Gbaramatu, etc.
 
People often accuse the Niger Deltans of being too selfish for demanding for resource control. What they fail to realize is that every state of this nation is so blessed, and they all have the potential to be viable. But no, we have chosen to be spoon fed from the centre and refused to tap from the enormous potentials of solid mineral, agriculture, etc. The only way we can bring development to the people is to make the centre less attractive. This can only be achieved through fiscal federalism and resource control. It will make all federating units to sit up, with the masses being the overall beneficiary.
 
I started by sharing perspectives of others and I’ll also want on to end on same note. Below is an excerpt of an article from the National Geographic.
 
“Beyond the city, within the labyrinth of creeks, rivers, and pipeline channels that vein the delta—one of the world's largest wetlands—exists a netherworld. Villages and towns cling to the banks, little more than heaps of mud-walled huts and rusty shacks. Groups of hungry, half-naked children and sullen, idle adults wander dirt paths. There is no electricity, no clean water, no medicine, no schools. Fishing nets hang dry; dugout canoes sit unused on muddy banks. Decades of oil spills, acid rain from gas flares, and the stripping away of mangroves for pipelines have killed off fish.” Tom O’Neil - Curse of the Black Gold: Hope and Betrayal of the Niger Delta (National Geographic, 2007)
 
We should bury our head in shame as a nation, for Tom O’Neil’s description of the Niger Delta is just so apt and accurate. That a region that produces about 2.4 million barrels of crude oil per day can be so described accurately with the words above, is a national scandal and disgrace. History will be unkind to us if we hang on to the current structure and refuse to do things differently. The nation stands accused!
 
Written by R. Tombari Sibe. Sibe99@yahoo.com.