Government and the Niger Delta Struggle

The resolution of the Rivers State crisis at the highest level of governance poses a number of questions. For example, how many more groups of disaffected Niger Delta dissident is the Federal government willing to make peace with and at what cost? How does making peace with dissident groups benefit the majority of the Niger Delta people? What is government doing to retrieve all arms, most of which are said to have been put in the hands of political operatives, in circulation in the Niger Delta? Is government willing to go down the road of paying ransom for peace? How adequately has development plans originating from Lagos or Abuja addressed the needs of the area? How readily is the federal and state government willing to interface, jointly, with the indigenes to meet their needs? What is the overall cost-benefit if government makes a genuine effort to engage all of the stakeholders of the Niger Delta in a grass roots engineered development effort?

We also examined closely the recently published Niger Delta Development Master Plan offered by the NDDC. We believe that as presently conceived and operated, the NDDC will meet the same fate as its predecessors. Notwithstanding, it is possible that the broad developmental objectives stated there-in may offer opportunities for meaningful change in the Niger Delta even though it was prepared using a top down approach. This is especially true, if and only when the indigenous communities are involved both in the identification and execution of needed projects and when the communities as stakeholders have a say in selecting the contractor that will execute the projects. We are strongly against the practice of awarding contracts based on patronage. This approach has left behind a large number of unfinished projects and still greater number of projects that never got-off the ground, but are falsely recorded in the books as having been completed.

We believe and recommend that handling of the contracting process for heavy infrastructural projects such as dredging of waterways, road and rail construction as well as telecommunication and power must be a coordinated effort between the federal and state governments as well as the United Nations Development Agency (UNDA). All awarded contracts must be made known to indigenes and the contractors must sign an undertaking that no less than 75% of their work force shall be indigenes. With regard to projects that involve socio-economic development, oil related pollution control, health, water and sanitation, we believe and recommend that the communities should play a leadership role in their planning and execution. A most important resource that the NDDC, indeed government, must not fail to tap into is the wealth of indigenous human resource that reside abroad. The NDDC should immediately begin to collate information on indigenes of the area, from various specialties, that can serve as consultants in any of a number of projects on their plan.

<<previous page next page>>