Federalism And The Niger Delta Demands

THE 16-point demands of leaders of the Niger Delta region to the Federal Government on Wednesday highlight the fundamental fallacy underpinning the Nigerian state. While some of the demands appear even-handed and altruistic, the perceptive observer would detect the selfishness that binds the country’s elite and their failure to forge a diverse polity that can deliver greatness. Nigeria’s crisis of development, however, is located firmly in its distorted federalism; correcting it is the only guarantee of lasting peace.

Nigeria’s fiscal system identifies it as a unitary state pretending to be a federation. The reality is stark. Leaders of the Niger Delta under the aegis of the Pan-Niger Delta Forum met with President Muhammadu Buhari and his deputy, Yemi Osinbajo, in an effort to end the devastating vandalism and sabotage of oil and gas and power infrastructure in the region. Criminal elements, latching on to regional grievances, have bombed, cut and torched production facilities, oil and gas pipelines and power infrastructure. According to the government, its losses amounted to N2.1 trillion between January and October this year alone. Before that, Osinbajo had revealed how the country’s oil production had slipped dangerously to between 900,000 barrels per day and 1.1 million bpd. Power supply has dipped dangerously due to vandalism. For a country in the midst of a recession, and dependent on oil and gas whose prices have fallen by 50 per cent, for 90 per cent of government revenues, the impact of militant gangs blowing up production facilities has brought the economy to its knees. The criminal activities have conflated with politics, corruption and the divisive tendencies of the key ethnic segments of the state.  In the Niger Delta region, for example, the International Crisis Group, a non-profit, identifies widespread alienation of the people from the centre as providing a fertile ground for violent militants to operate.

Having so far failed to put down the militancy after 16 years of military action and eight years of an amnesty programme, the dialogue option was an opportunity for both sides to correctly diagnose the root causes of the problem and proffer lasting solutions. The golden key, fiscal federalism, was treated perfunctorily. “The region supports the call for true federalism and urges that the Federal Government should treat the matter expeditiously” was only one line. Like the five other geopolitical regions, the Niger Delta lacks visionary leaders.  Their emphasis on allocation of oil blocks and oil and gas assets, “economic development and empowerment,” restructuring and funding of the Ministry of Niger Delta  Affairs and the Niger Delta Development Commission, are self-serving. Cleaning up the Ogoni area and oil-damaged areas, resettlement of the Bakassi communities, catering for internally displaced persons and providing critical infrastructure are just demands. But the government has over the years been equally ineffective in every other part of the country. The demand for a maritime university is curious; why not the implementation of the decision to upgrade the Maritime Academy in Oron, Akwa Ibom State, to a degree awarding institution?

No country is crime-free, but Nigeria has found itself faced with a national crisis anytime gangs of criminals take on the state, hiding behind regional agitation.  The first wave of insurgency in the Niger Delta region 2000-2007 featured bombings, kidnapping, robberies and pitched battles between militants and security forces and between rival gangs. The then President Umaru Yar’Adua offered the militants a choice: Surrender your arms, accept an amnesty programme, be trained and rewarded with stipends.

The truce collapsed shortly after Goodluck Jonathan lost the 2015 presidential election to Buhari. Several regional leaders and militants hosted by Governor Seriake Dickson in Yenagoa, Bayelsa State, had threatened war if Jonathan was voted out of office. The indictment of some ex-militant warlords then provided the spark for a return to militancy.

There can be no end to this cycle unless Nigeria is run as a proper federation. Fiscal federalism is the solution, not an aside, as the forum appeared to suggest. Giving oil producing states only 13 per cent of revenues as derivation is unjust and no longer sustainable. The 1963 Constitution that was discarded by military intervention in 1966 rightly used 50 per cent as derivation, with 30 per cent shared among all the then four regions and 20 per cent reserved for the centre. Every part, every state in Nigeria, has minerals, agricultural land and abundant human resources. The Nigerian state no longer has the luxury of taking resources from one part of the country and dispensing crumbs to the indigenes.

The militants will not have sympathy from the local populace if the bulk of revenues from resources on their soil and waters are domiciled locally. This is the main demand the Niger Delta leaders should have made. Asking that troops be withdrawn is unreasonable. Government cannot fold its arms while heavily armed criminals are unleashing violence and terror on lives and property.  The state has to enforce its writ.

We also deplore the insinuations that persons who have looted the public treasury and have cases to answer in the courts be let off simply because they hail from a particular region. Such notions of entitlement ruined the NDDC and its forerunner, OMPADEC, laid low the Niger Delta ministry and even the amnesty programme. All became cesspools of corruption and waste that created a few billionaires and left the mass of the people further pauperised. The same illusion of entitlement led to the failure to utilise the opportunity provided by the Jonathan Presidency to reverse the infrastructure imbalance, environmental degradation, poverty and unjust derivation principle. Instead, mass looting and alienation of other parts of the country took centre stage. Regional leaders should have persuaded Jonathan to do what they are now asking Buhari to do.

Other federations, such as Canada, the United States, Australia, India, Malaysia, Switzerland, Belgium, Brazil and the United Arab Emirates, provide worthy templates of resource control that we should emulate. Every region and state should join the clamour for fiscal federalism to avert bloody conflagration in our increasingly wobbly federal contraption.    

PUNCH