In the Grandiose Parlor…

Professor Jubril Aminu, Nigeria’s former Education/Petroleum Minister, on loving and being patriotic about Nigeria:

Love for this country is just not there. People love their religion more than their country. I am from the North; people from the North are mad about the North but our leaders did not advise us to be as mad about our country. It is the same thing with the West and the East; their leaders did not advise them to be mad about Nigeria too. The people from the West love the West, but they were not thought to love their country, Nigeria. They were told to antagonise the federal government, because of the opposition stance. In my view, everything necessary should be done to get the people to love their country, Nigeria. Not in the fashion of what we see on the television every day, ‘We are Nigeria, we are one’….etc. Even children laugh at it. Invent real ways of making the people love Nigeria.

I remember this quote on patriotism from Mark Twain: “Patriotism is supporting your country all the time, and your government when it deserves it.” Continue reading…

Oil company Royal Dutch Shell accepts responsibility for two oil spills in Nigeria’s niger delta between 2008 and 2009 about the same time a UN report reveals (PDF) that decades of oil spills and flagrant disregard for environmental safety in oil-rich Ogoniland region may require at least $1 billion cleanup cost.

The clean-up exercise would be the the world’s largest and costliest, lasting up to 30 years. The report, released by the U.N.’s environmental program, said that drinking water supplies within the oil-rich Niger Delta have been damaged by 50 years of crude oil spills. In some areas drinking water is contaminated so severely it needs immediate action.

Nigeria recorded at least 3,000 oil spills between 2006 and 2010.

Last year a Nigerian federal high court ordered Shell Nigeria to pay 15.4 billion naira (about US$100 million) in special and punitive damages to a Rivers State community for an oil spill that occurred in 1970.

Every now and then, I get to read statements that make me cringe, this is one of them, coming from the Minister of State State for Energy (Petroleum), Mr. Odein Ajumogobia:

“If the oil companies operating in the Niger Delta had laid emphasis on capacity-building, there would have been limited crisis in the area [Niger Delta] today.”

Talk of relegation of duties.

When did capacity building become the responsibility of the oil companies? I do understand corporate social responsibility, but what about government social responsibility to the people they govern?

The Minister must have forgotten that it’s part of government social responsibility to watch and hold the oil companies accountable to the people in the Niger Delta!

I tried to think of a moment when this was done diligently… and I couldn’t remember any!

The Nigerian state appears gray and stuporous at the moment. Check this out:

Corruption continues

In the last 8 weeks, some big wigs have been docked over financial misappropriation – two former aviation ministers (Babalola Borishade and Femi Fani-Kayode) and an ex-governor (Michael Botmang). There are also fraud allegations against the sitting governor of Oyo state.

In addition, the Osun State election tribunal got entangled in a web of controversies over some telephone conversations between the tribunal Justice and the lawyer to the defendant (the state governor). The tribunal has since passed its verdict in favor of the defendant.

While on elections, it is strange that since the Edo state PDP governor lost the tribunal verdict on the governorship election on March 19 2008, four months ago, the Appeal Court has yet to seat on the case. As long as the appeal stands pending in court, the incumbent remains the substantive governor, even if the tribunal has ruled otherwise. Interesting!

Teachers on strike

All public primary and secondary schools in Nigeria have been on forced holidays following the industrial action of the Nigerian Union of Teachers (NUT), a labor organization for primary and secondary schools’ teachers.

The strike is now in week 4, and news media reports indicate there’s no resolution in sight. The Minister of Education, quoted by the media, insists the Federal government has no business dealing with the teachers!

While the NUT impasse ensures, Nigerian governors and public administrators wasted some 30 million naira congratulating the president on his birthday on the pages of Nigerian newspapers…on the wrong day!

NNPC buys protection

Yesterday, this blog reported that the NNPC, Nigerian-richest public corporation has been paying monthly ‘protection fees’ to the Niger-delta militias.

Probe panel under probe

Today, the Nigerian Tribune drops another bombshell: “Power probe panel under probe – Over N100m bribe allegations.”

The “power probe panel” is the same House of Representatives panel investigating how the administration of former president Obasanjo handled the electricity projects between 1999- 2007. It has been more than two months since the panel finished work, but yet to formally publish its recommendations as expected. Some of its discoveries have been discussed on this blog.

Power generation has dropped even below 2004-levels at the moment, even as the nation waits patiently to hear from its president on his ‘emergency power plan’… It’s been more than 12 months since the announcement, can you believe that?

A private equity group (Emerging Capital and Notore) is about to make money out of the chaos in the Niger-Delta…”want to redirect natural gas to a more beneficial use: nitrogen fertilizer, of which natural gas is the main ingredient.”

“You cannot let this humongous asset waste away while Nigeria flares gas and imports fertilizer,” says Onajite P. Okoloko, Notore’s 41-year-old chief executive. The Delta native shakes his head as he recalls his father and uncle blaming God instead of tired soil when their maize and fruit crops wouldn’t grow for consecutive seasons. “Half of Nigeria’s economy is agriculture,” he says. And yet “70% of the country sits on arable but poorly used land. Do the math…”

Okoloko is looking to hire 1,000 locals. Having locked in a 20-year gas contract on favorable terms, Notore will produce its fertilizer at less than $100 a ton; the market price is $350 to $450. “It’s stronger and cheaper than much of what you find in the West,” says Sangudi. “An amazing opportunity.” “We want to compete internationally,” adds Okoloko. “But we have to take care of Nigeria and Africa first.”

Watch the story on Business Week: Creating Wealth out of Chaos.

Read the full text: Can Greed save Africa

One of the readers of this blog sent in an email asking why there hasn’t been postings on Nigeria as it used to be, specifically wanted to know what I think of Margaret Hill, the three year old girl who was seized from a car on her way to school in the Niger-Delta city of Port Harcourt. I responded thusly:

There is really nothing to blog about Nigeria lately that hasn’t been blogged about already. Well, maybe not quite. There is a new ‘low’ in town – snatch and kidnap a toddler and demand ransom! And anyone can do this – not just some rag-tag bandits operating in the back waters of the Nigerian oil cities – it could be striking teachers and university professors, transporters, and even medical practitioners – after all they all have beef with the feds. In fact we all do.

The events in the Niger-Delta have gone from worst to ‘worst squared’, mathematically speaking. That the scams of the kidnappers have persisted this long is a reflection of one thing: Failed intelligence, no, non-existent intelligence gathering more aptly describes the situation. The often dreaded State Security Service (SSS) and the other security and intelligence gathering apparatus of the Nigerian nation have remained impotent in dousing the fire of the Niger-Delta insurgents – criminals I mean. With the zeal and speed with which planned social protests are thwarted in Nigeria, one would have expected the same treatment for the water bandits. How wrong. Nigerian security operatives have not the balls nor teeth to muster a good fight.
One thing is clear: The ransom dollars that have been paid over the years have complicated matters in the Niger-Delta. Now, the next thing is to have the camouflaged boys roll out their tanks once again and level the towns and villages – as usual. This is how to save Nigeria, this is how it’s been done in the past and how it will be done again. This is the Nigerian standard procedure.

• Benn Loxo Du Taccu: Groovy Naija

• African Shirts: Plaut and Hearing – Embattled Nigerian Vice President’s interview on World Today

• NYT: Egypt: Blogger Gets 4 Years- An Alexandria court sentenced a blogger, Abdel Kareem Nabil, to four years in prison for insulting Islam and Egypt’s president through his Internet writings.

• BBC: Oil worker shot dead in Nigeria

• Via TechCruch: Tree-Nation is a Barcelona-based entity that wants to plant 8 million trees in Niger, in the shape of a giant heart. Their hope is that this re-forestation campaign will help the environment and the people of the country.Tree Nation

• Meskel Square: Where have all the bloggers gone?

• African Unchained: Investing in emerging markets