3.3 Economic Root Causes of the Niger Delta Conflict
3.3.3 Demands of the Oil Producing Communities in the Niger Delta
85 the Royal Niger Company made enormous profits did not stimulate any
discernible measure of multiplier entrepreneurship for the local people in the region. As oil palm mercantilism blossomed for the coloniser, the indigenous peoples, who sustained this trade, remained in relative poverty. Their life circumstances and chances revolved around primitive conditions. Without piped water, without energy supply, without a modern household and with little access to modern education, the colonised was essentially incapacitated and fatalistically resigned to fate in a better world hereafter.
In view of the foregoing, the next section identifies and disentangles the key grievances and demands of the oil-bearing ethnic minority communities in the Niger Delta.
86 Claims to mineral land rents remain the most forceful demands expressed by the oil- bearing states in Nigeria. For instance, Suberu (1996: 27) argues that, traditionally speaking, local communities in the Niger Delta where in control of land rights. However, the introduction of the Land Use Decree of 1978 meant that ―ownership of land in any state of the federation is vested in the State Governor in trust for the people of the state‖
(Suberu, 1996: 27-28). The justification for the Federal Government‘s action is the Petroleum Decree of 1969 and the relevant provisions of the 1989 Constitution which vest in the Federation ―control of all minerals and gas in, under or upon the land and territorial waters of Nigeria‖ (Federal Republic of Nigeria [FRN], 1989: Sec. 42).
A perusal of these provisions indicates, however, that they ―clearly refer to mineral wealth ownership and not land ownership which, under the practice of the constitution, remains vested in the states‖ (Suberu, 1996: 28). In essence, therefore, ―the Federal Government‘s retention of mineral land rents would appear to be unconstitutional since the states are clearly entitled to such rents as of right‖ (Suberu, 1996: 28; FRN, 1980:
93). Perhaps, a more complex issue pertains to ―the attempt by elements from the oil bearing communities to juxtapose mineral rents and royalties as resources legitimately belonging exclusively to the oil-producing sections‖ (Suberu, 1996: 28). The following assertion by MOSOP is illuminating: ―MOSOP insists that oil royalties and rents are the property of landlords and that the Federal Government must return to the oil-bearing communities all royalties and rents paid to it by the oil companies since 1958‖ (The Guardian, 17 March 1993: 9).
This notwithstanding, the constitutional position on the matter is unequivocal. Suberu (1996: 28) argues that ―while rents are a tribute to the owners of land – in this case the state governments – royalties are levies on minerals, whose ownership remains in the hands of the Nigerian Federal Government.‖ The Pius Okigbo Commission on Revenue Allocation clearly states that
the owners of the minerals on which royalties are levied are indisputably, under the existing laws and under the Constitution, the Government of the Federation.
It follows that the payment of a part or the whole of the revenues from this source to the state (or community) were the mineral is produced does not derive from a legal right but from political or other considerations. To transform this political act into a legal claim of right as the producing states seem to want is to do violence to reality (FRN, 1980: 93, quoted in Suberu, 1996: 28).
It is useful to note, en passant, that the ownership of natural resources is informed by the ―Regalian Theory‖ and the power of ―Eminent Domain‖ respectively (Ebeku, 2007).
Briefly stated, the ―Regalian Theory‖ or jura regalia ―refer to royal rights, or those rights which the King [State] has by virtue of his [its] prerogatives‖ (Ebeku, 2007: 19). On the
87 other hand, the power of ―Eminent Domain‖ is the power of the state to arrogate private property ―for its own use without the owner‘s consent (with or without payment of compensation to the owner)‖ (Ebeku, 2007: 19). Crucially, this power rests squarely on the dominion of its sovereignty over all lands within its defined territory (Ebeku, 2007:
19).
Shifting focus away from the ownership of land issue, the negative effects of oil exploration on the Niger Delta environment have been extensive. In particular, oil exploration has led to ―the indiscriminate destruction of marine life by explosives used in seismic surveys; the pollution of water, land and vegetation by seepages and spills from oil wells, tankers and exposed high-pressure pipelines; and the devastation of crops and trees by the intense heat resulting from gas flaring‖ (Suberu, 1996: 31). All of this, of course, is compounded by the naturally difficult terrain of the oil producing communities. As the following quote indicates:
Like in many other oil-rich areas of the world, the regions where oil is found in Nigeria are very inhospitable; they are mainly in swamps and creeks. They, therefore, require massive injection of money if their conditions, and standards of living, are to compare with what obtains elsewhere in the country where possibilities of agriculture and diversified industry are much greater (Asiodu, 1993: 36)
Ikporukpo (2007: 27-31) has also noted that
[t]he complex networks of distributaries, creeks and extensive swamps making up the Niger Delta are awe inspiring to people, [governments and potential developers]... the area is usually described in geography and other related books and documents as a difficult environment... Being intimidated by the physical geography of the Niger Delta, the perspective that the area cannot be developed emerged very early in the history of Nigeria. For instance, this was apparent in the debates in the Eastern and Western Nigerian Houses of Assembly before and early independence. The common belief then was that an area (particularly the outer Niger Delta) where everywhere is water [logged]
cannot possibly be developed. Request for locating infrastructural facilities in some parts of the Niger Delta were met by ―are you going to put them on top of water?‖ responses (quoted in Ogundiya, 2011: 68-69).
Such perceptions, according to Ikporukpo (2007: 30),
... lingers to the extent that even such attempts to develop the region through Commissions such as the Niger Delta Development Board (NDDB) in the early years of independence, the Oil Mineral Producing Areas Development Commission (OMPADEC) and the Niger Delta Development Commission (NDDC) have been largely unsuccessful (Ikporukpo, 2007: 30, quoted in Ogundiya, 2011: 69).
88 Against this backdrop of what Ogundiya (2011: 1) describes as the ―Geography of Terrorism and the Terror of Geography‖ thesis, certain implications are deducible:
1. that the apparent prolonged neglect of the Niger Delta is perhaps non-intentional, but associated with the geomorphology and the topography of the region and the perception that the area is a difficult terrain naturally unsupportive of infrastructural development;
2. that the cost of development in the Niger Delta is probably unbearable to the Nigerian state because the cost of development in the Niger Delta is probably several times the cost in any other part of the country;
3. that the governments of the region (state and local) have apparently behaved not much differently from the Nigerian state (Ikporukpo, 2007: 32);
4. that the physical geography makes the area prone to diseases of all kinds which poses serious challenge to healthy living;
5. that there is a significant relationship between the ecology of Niger Delta and the prevalence of poverty in the region; and
6. that the oil companies, though not terrorized by the region‘s geography when oil is being exploited, apparently get terrorized when it comes to being good corporate citizens (Ogundiya, 2011: 69-70).
Whatever the merits of the above contention, Ogundiya (2011: 70) contends that ―[t]he terror of geography is superficial, and nothing but an attempt by the political elite [of Nigeria] to cover up their atrocities and further perpetuate underdevelopment in the Niger Delta.‖ The paradoxical reality is that, in the course of oil exploration and exploitation, most oil companies have managed to penetrate ―the remotest swamps of the Niger Delta whose poor development has been predicated on the difficult terrain‖
(Ogundiya, 2011: 70). Moreover,
[t]he abundance of modern infrastructural facilities of electricity, water, housing, telecommunications, and recreation, even to international standards, around oil installations, sharply contrasts the dearth and decay witnessed in host communities, demonstrating the fact that communities could be better developed in spite of terrain constraints (Ogundiya, 2011: 70; Chokor, 2000: 63).
There can be little doubt that the most radical demand of the oil-bearing communities involves the agitations for a restructuring of the internal territorial configuration of the federation. Among the Ogoni community, for example, there have been demands for greater ethno-political autonomy in order to give to the Ogoni the ―right to the control and use of a fair proportion of Ogoni economic resources for Ogoni development‖
(OBR, 1990: 4). On the other hand, the Ijaws have called for an autonomous Ijaw federation within a Nigerian confederation (National Concord, 11 December 1992: B2).
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