Grandiose Parlor

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

If the insurgency in the Nigeria oil rich Niger-delta is allowed to continue unresolved, it will cumulate into a catastrophic event of epic proportions with dire consequences on the socioeconomic and political stability of the nation. This is not a dooms-day prophesy, or a forecast that requires some complicated regression analysis; it’s simple common-sense.

What bothers me most is the nonchalant attitude of those most affected by the event: the state governments and their legislatures (members of the House of Assemblies). It is apparent the feds have given up on the issue, or have simply ran out of workable solutions that could quell the violence, short of heeding the demands of the militia: granting the region more control of the black gold being sucked out of their lands, and the release of their leaders and colleagues locked-up in various jails.

While I do not subscribe to the tactics of the militia in the Niger-delta, I can relate to their circumstances given the devastation oil exploration has brought on their environment, and the relative and disproportionate underdevelopment of the region. However, I wish these militia could see how misguided their actions are.

Continue reading…

In Nigeria, gaining access to national data (of relevance) on the Internet can be likened to squeezing water out of a rock. When I received the (unofficial) figures for the states as estimated by the 2006 census, I did one of the things I had wanted to do in a long while: cross-tab the monthly allocation each state receives from the federal government with their population. Since I couldn’t get a more recent figure from the Budget Office of the federal ministry of finance, I used the only available data I could find online- the 2004 May federal allocation to the 36 state governments. My jaw dropped on seeing the figures for Bayelsa state.

• The total population of Bayelsa state is 1,703,358; it’s the least populated in the nation.

• Bayelsa received 5,325,414,955.84 (Naira) in May 2004 from federal account (PDF document); the second highest in the nation. This works out to 3,126.42 Naira per citizen . The highest allocation-per-citizen ratio* in the country And this is just from federal account, the figure doesn’t include locally generated revenue.

*Allocation-per-citizen comparison: Nassarawa state in northern Nigeria=609.22; Delta state another oil-producing state=1,562.35.

Though Bayelsa is sparsely populated, it is one of the states in the oil-rich Niger-Delta - an impoverished region enveloped by years of endemic sectarian violence and decades of environmental degradation. With its natural resources - Bayelsa has a sizable portion of the oil and gas that bankrolls the Nigerian government - and based on the data presented above, it is mind boggling why the state remains so underdeveloped and its people impoverished. It can be argued that because of its very difficult terrain (riverine, swampy, marshland with mangrove vegetation), the cost of infrastructure development in Bayelsa is several times that of a “dry-land” state.

This is a valid argument; however, with population of 1.7 million people, developing Bayelsa shouldn’t be a Herculean task - if the leaders know what they are doing. And this hasn’t been the case; with the likes of D.S.P Alamieyeseigha - the former governor, who’s now on trial for corruption - the fortune of the state has been grossly mismanaged.

Opinion leaders from the Niger-Delta strongly believe that the federal allocation to the region and all other oil-producing states should be increased from the current 13% - a call I’d supported until when I ran the numbers and saw the data on Bayelsa. It is a tough sell why this should be, and I can relate to why this call has not been answered. After all, if Bayelsa (and other oil producing states) can’t manage its purse at the present size, there is no guarantee that it would do so with a fatter allocation.

If indeed the state census figure is accurate, instead of the various activist groups in the Niger-Delta clamoring for a bigger bite from the federal account, they should look inwards, and ensure that the decent portions they are receiving at the moment are well-managed. The emphasis shouldn’t be on how much, but how well-spent these monies are. Of course, more money is good, but it’s not always a sliver bullet.