‘Why Niger Delta deserves FG’s apology’

By Niyi Adebimpe
Utomi

(Contd. from Monday interview)

One issue that is still raging in the nation is the Niger Delta crisis. What solution do you think is applicable here?
Yes, it is a political solution. It should not begin with oil. There is this general lack of charity that suggests that because there is oil, people there are struggling to have it. They forget that there was the Willings Commission which the colonial administration set up as part ofdiscussions and negotiations towards independence till before oil became a serious factor in Nigeria. Oil did not become a serious factor until the 1970s though it was discovered earlier. Why did the Willings Commission come about to show that the minorities of the Niger Delta were marginalised? Specifically, it was because of the nature of the body politic in context that did not take enough of the dividends of progress at that time to that place. Education was far more backward in those places, infrastructure was not there and all other kinds of things. So, the cry of marginalisation was there long before oil was discovered in commercial quantity. With oil, it was compounded.

There is an additional thing that I think people who will want to be just and fair in any discussion on that subject must bear this in mind. What is the vision of Nigeria that the founding fathers had? What were the issues in terms of the nature of the financial relationship between the units and the federation? Back at the time the Willings Commission was set up, it was one in which federating units as in true federal systems basically owned, managed and developed their resources. The federating units then paid a certain portion to the centre. So, in the spirit of the Nigerian federation and the kinds of issues we were dealing with 50 per cent derivation, nobody complained and everything went well.

The misfortune that Nigeria suffered was that oil became a serious factor under military rule. Under military rule, we were more or less operating a unitary government. Some groups of people dominated this unitary government and they had power and were not the ones in the area from which oil was produced, the fate of the country continued to be altered.

So, by the time military intervention occurred, we had what ordinarily was the vision of the founding fathers – 50 per cent – amounting to less than two per cent and the struggle became an imperative literally, especially as things were compounded by the incredible disparities in the areas that produce this now dominant source of so-called wealth for the country and not only other parts of the country, but also the havens, enclaves created within their areas by the oil companies. You come out from the worst human condition into a small patch that is called Shell staff quarters, Chevron Estate, etc; you go straight from hell to paradise. So, the people could see the extent of the deprivation they were facing. Nowhere in the world has that kind of situation not managed that would not create this kind of agitation. So, people should be fair to the Niger Delta and realise that they are more victims rather than ‘being difficult.’

What do you think is the way out?
By being honest in engaging the Niger Delta. In fact, Nigeria does owe the Niger Delta an apology, almost in the way that the Australians have now apologised to the aborigenes. Nigeria owes the Niger Delta a special accelerated effort, not because all of Nigeria does not need it; every part of Nigeria needs a special programme. The truth of the matter is that we have a parasitic elite that devastated the country through and through; North, South, East and West.

However, we have an extremely peculiar condition of the Niger Delta. So, something special needs to be done. We had vehicles like the Oil and Mineral Producing Area Development Commission (OMPADEC), now the Niger Delta Development Commission (NDDC), set up to deal with that. But if you look at the amount of money now statutorily due to the NDDC, that has not been released by the federal government, then you ask, is there enough sincerity? Yes, you hear people pointing out that the governors there are thieves. It may be true, but it doesn’t take us away from the basic principle. That’s why I said it’s principle that drives me. Yes, they are thieves, why don’t you catch them and jail them? But do what is right. So, these are the real issues for me.

Now that we are depending so much on oil, can you project into the future of Nigeria?
It’s a very dangerous thing. I feel so sad about it. Commodities have not been the drivers of great wealth in the modern age, post-World War II, as such. Most of the major growing economies have relied more on human capital to drive their wealth, rather than natural resources. Indeed, so problematic have natural resources been that you now have this so-called phenomenon of the curse of oil where countries that have a lot of mineral deposits tend to underperform than those that don’t have. Indeed, there was a World Bank study that turned out to be known as the natural resource curse study, because developing countries that did not have natural resources grew much faster on average than those with natural resources. That was happening because elites were spending more time fighting over how to control those natural resources, rather than using their brains to create opportunities for their people.

Japan shot into economic leadership from no natural resources. If you look at Singapore, it was a fishing village, but it positively impacted on the neighbouring countries; Malasia, Ireland, Indonesia etc. It impacted positively on them. So, I wish Nigeria would deal with oil as just a source of stimulation of the rest of the economy rather than depending on it. For 25 years now, our leaders have been talking of diversifying the economy from oil, but the more they make those pronouncements, the more dependent we become on oil. I don’t know what to say about the level of seriousness of Nigerian leadership. But truly, it is saddening that we say so much about diversifying and nothing is happening, because in truth, we have built all kinds of schemes to take away from the oil money, share it and go away.

I have argued, for many years now, that what we need is constitutional amendment that will put 50 per cent of our oil money away from the reach of government into a future fund invested abroad and so on. It’s only the dividends coming from them in the future that would flow into the budgets of the states and the federation. A further portion of the revenue from oil should go into a stabilisation fund that would be applied when the prices of oil swing back and front which has created problem for us in the past, leading to the so-called Dutch disease that we often struggle to explain; oil prices are volatile. And then, the balance should be what goes into the federation account, the so-called distributable pool fund. Until we can do that, we will continue to spend 80-90 per cent of this ‘enormous revenue from oil’ on recurrent expenditure. And as we do that, we will have very little capital expenditure to create the opportunity for real growth in the economy. That is a real frightening scenario.

How do you see these moves on electoral reform and constitution amendment?
I am not too sure what the moves are, but I do know that electoral process reform is very important and constitution amendment or review is important. There are a few salient issues that have come up for discussion and many people gave perspectives on them. One of those issues is the immunity clause business. And my argument, very frankly, is that we do not need to have a blanket immunity clause. The reason that immunity clause came up was that some said public office holders like governors and president may be distracted by frivolous suits. And I said very simply, on criminal matters, clearly that’s the state prosecuting. So, it’s not likely to be frivolous and so, there should be no immunity covering criminal matters. Even on civil matters, there should be a grand jury process as the Americans have it. You go to grand jury and it decides whether a case is worth prosecuting or not. It is made up of eminent jurists who can say this is a frivolous suit, it can wait till he leaves office or this one is serious enough even though it’s a civil suit; proceed and try him and so on. So, that is a very important one to touch.

Another is the need to restructure our revenue sharing formula both in terms of issue of derivation and all of that and the issue of having a future fund and stabilisation fund. Also, the issue of constitution amendment nature is taking the Fiscal Responsibility Act into the constitutional arena such that it is possible to coordinate the three tiers of government’s economic policies. This is because there are many times that the economic policy decisions of the Federal Government are sabotaged by the spending behaviour of the sub-units of government. Whereas, the Federal Government should not be able to dictate to the sub-units of government on what to do, a certain fiscal responsibility commission should be able to say that given current state of the economy, states, local governments and the federal government should spend in a prescribed manner. That is fiscal responsibility in the interest of the general economy. I think those are the very important constitutional issues that we need to deal with.

What about state creation as being agitated in some quarters?
On the issue of state creation, I have my prejudice, but not everybody agrees with me. A lot of requests for states flow out of people wanting more opportunities to become governors, just sharing the revenues that come to the government among few people, while not dramatically altering development for most people. I know that the Eastern Region did more for the Eastern people than these various governors are doing today. Definitely, just like Dr. Okpara did, Chief Obafemi Awolowo did a lot more for the Western people than most of the governors are doing. So, I don’t understand this business of states bringing more development. Yes, the original intention may have been this but I think we went beyond the elastic limit of state creation. However, there are in some cases where the problems are so naughty and maybe you need some kinds of areas to deal with political issues.

I also think that we need to deal with what I call gateway city status. I don’t think Nigeria needs four or five gateway cities that are essentially federal constituencies where the resources must move into, because the rest of the Nigerian economy are determined by them. It’s not just talking about Abuja as the Federal Capital Territory (FCT), we need to have a Lagos as a gateway city, we do need to have Port Harcourt as a gateway city and perhaps, Kano. This is in such a way that we budget and plan for them at that level. The way Lagos is, people pretend they are in Abuja and having a good time; it’s being very short sighted. Lagos should draw certain special allocation to create the hub that makes the Nigerian economy run better. The quality of life in Lagos needs to go up tremendously based on allocation from a kind of special fund. These are the constitutional issues that I think we should deal with.