Nigeria loses N3.4 trillion to crisis in the Niger Delta

Ayomide Owonibi, Lagos - Updated: Tuesday 14-04-2009

One of the nation’s refineries
in Port Harcourt, Rivers State

A report by the presidential committee on the Niger Delta, has said that Nigeria lost N3.4 trillion to oil theft and sabotage in the first nine months of 2008.

Chairman of the Niger Delta Technical Committee, Mr. Ledum Mitee, who made this known, also declared that the figure showed that the cost of ensuring that peace reigns in the troubled region was crippling the Nigerian economy and causing a steady decline in the national output.

“If we were to buy peace, we would be spending less than what we are losing in the crisis,”he added.

The November report by the Niger Delta Technical Committee, said attacks on installations resulted in shutdowns and spillages with consequent losses in revenue estimated at about $20.7 billion.

The estimated average of 700,000 barrels a day lost during the months from January to September multiplied by each month’s average Nigerian crude price.

The report added that the $20.7 billion was exclusive of another estimated $3 billion lost to oil bunkering over the first seven months of this year alone.

Mitee, who is a political leader in the Niger Delta’s Ogoniland, confirmed the figures disclosed in the report.

The report also said that there were unaccounted costs in human misery, with about 1,000 persons killed within the same period and another 300 taken as hostages.

The committee was set up in last year December under the auspices of President Umaru Yar’Adua to resolve the crisis of the Niger Delta but hasn’t been made public.

Militants’ attacks and crude theft since 2006 had kept more than 500,000 barrels a day shut down in Nigeria, which was vying with Angola for the title of Africa ’s top oil producer.

The report proposed an amnesty for militants if they were willing to disarm and said the committee’s work had attracted interest from militants and communities.

But judging by the level of angst we perceive, we share the views of those who believe that there is a looming danger that the present Niger Delta crisis could easily escalate,” the report said.

Based on the figures disclosed, “the cost of failure is too enormous to contemplate,” the report added.