In the Grandiose Parlor…

Nigeria crude oil production may decline by as much as 30% as the oil sector suffered two devastating blows on the Bonga and Escravos oilfields. The attacks occurred within the last seven days.

Royal Dutch Shell operates the floating Bonga offshore facility that produces about 200,000 barrels per day. Chevron produces 120,000 barrels per day from the Escravos oilfield. The output from the two oil fields is about 20-30% of Nigeria’s total crude oil production, which was about two milion barrels per day before the attacks.

The attack on the Bonga facility, located some 65 miles from land, marks a new era of Niger Delta militancy: It is the first offshore location attacked.

The attacks fields precedes the government plans for the Niger-Delta summit, an exercise designed to find lasting solution to a crisis that has become tougher and more complicated.

Whatever plans president Yar’Adua has for the Niger-Delta, now is the time to fast-track such and ensure it works. The days for mouthing empty policy statements are over, likewise is the era of scoring quick ceasefires and cash settlements.

President Yar’Adua has his job cut out for him, and his administration will now be judged on one yardstick: His ability to not only contain the insurgency, but build an environment in the Niger-Delta that makes militant violence unnecessary and unprofitable.

Yar’Adua and advisers must be focused on one end point: A fail-proof workable solution that addresses the root causes of the problems in the Niger Delta once and for all. This is the only solution.

In its Vision 2020 plan, the Government of Rwanda aims to transform the country from a largely agriculture-based economy to a knowledge and information based economy, in an effort to reach middle income status by 2020. The Government has emphasized its intention to use investment in ICT as the key driver for this transition and as a vehicle for improving the delivery of public and private services, particularly in the rural areas.

Watch video:

Source: Africanloft Media / World Bank.

I’m all for a greener earth and healthier environment. However, the current global drive to produce crop-derived ethanol or biofuel as a substitute for fossil fuel may just be a double-edged sword for Nigeria and Africa in general.

Ethanol (ethanol fuel) is being used as an additive to gasoline (petrol) in most modern economies, and its use is being canvassed in Nigeria as well - Ondo state government is about to partner NNPC on cassava ethanol project.

While ethanol can be derived from diverse sources, its primarily produced from corn in the U.S, and cassava in Nigeria. The demand for corn by ethanol plants has pumped up the price of corn in America – and this effect will be seen in Nigeria when ethanol plants start using cassava.

Cassava is the source of several stable food items in Africa. When farmers would rather plant cassava and sell their produce to the ethanol plants for more money- then what happens to the food prices, including garri and other items derived from it?

There is no doubt that Nigeria needs to leap-frog into this modern time of biofuel-production and usage, but for its benefits (biofuel is a greener and sustainable energy source) to be most apparent and meaningful – generation of cassava/corn-derived biofuel must be done with care and control to ensure its impacts on food supply and price are minimal.

Natural gas is a by-product of the oil drilling, and Nigeria flares the largest quantity in the world. The Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC) told the House Committee on Petroleum that meeting the government’s target to end gas flaring by 2009 is unrealistic without proper funding.

Even Shell said it would cost about $6 billion USD to end flaring at the 1,000+ wells its owns in Nigeria.

There are no easy options to stopping gas flaring, this has been made clear enough. What would have been the best approach is to use the gas domestically to power electricity plants. Even this comes with a several billion dollar price tag.

May be it’s time to just shut all onshore oil wells until Nigeria is ready to deal with the issue. After all, the people whose lives are being made miserable should matter most than some petrol$$$ or special interest groups…right?

Video below speaks to the issue gas flaring:

The Honorary Strategic Adviser to President Umaru Musa Yar’Adua on Energy, Dr. Rilwanu Lukman, issued a bleak report on the Nigerian power sector:

Lukman said the hope of generating electricity above 4000 megawatt this year was unattainable. He stated that although the nation’s short term demand was 8000MW, only 4000MW could be attained A target to attain 10,000 had been set for last December. Lukman identified hasty privatisation, improper coordination in the power sector and inadequate tariff structure as factors responsible for the failure of the reforms begun by the Obasanjo administration. He called for an effective holistic master plan for the development of the electricity industry, including appropriate funding. Without them, he said, no nation could develop that sector. The former OPEC president, however, said there could not be a one-off solution to the problem of power supply, describing the problem as a moving target.

The report has all the right phrases and recommendations; pretty much along the same line of what we heard in 2000 through 2007. A power reform exercise that cost $10 billion!

Online conversations on the botched Kenyan elections have been raging for days since violence erupted after voting. ChatterBox, the algorithmic aggregator on [tag]AfricanLoft[/tag] has been helpful (at least to me) in monitoring the “chatter” on post-election violence. Today’s update at 5:45AM lists as #1 the discussions on “Ushahidi”, the web tool created to record the incidence of violence in the country.. In fact, the top three items on ChatterBox are articles on the [tag]Kenyan elections[/tag].

Ushahidi – which means “witness” in Swahili – is a collaborative effort of the Kenyan bloggers, it is built by David Kobaya, a Kenyan programmer. The tool is a simple google map mash which will be driven by users who have witnessed instances of violence and can record such events. As it is with participatory media, [tag]Ushahidi[/tag] usefulness will depend on how often data are inputed into the system and their accuracy.

The emergence of Ushahidi marks another era in the use of social media in Kenya. Citizen participation in news coverage and aggregation has been tested and effectively used in Mzalendo – a web site created to monitor the Kenyan parliament. Ushahidi takes this concept further by allowing anyone with Internet access to document events of violence in their neighborhood; this is an excellent use of web technology in civic matters. And the idea emerged, collaboratively, from bloggers pained by the extent of irresponsibilities of their political leaders.

Contrasting the Kenyan Digerati with their Nigerian counterpart; it is apparent that the latter hasn’t been very active in the use of simple web-based technologies in driving civic and political issues. Yet, they populate and aggregate on several channels and domains on the Internet where they – or we, since I belong to this group – postulate and lament on issues of national relevance.

Yes, we have collectively clamored for justice occasionally when we feel so grieved – as was the case following the death of Osamuyia Aikpitanhi during his forced deportation from Spain, or during the Nigeria proclamation campaign, which was later profiled on the BBC. I’m sure there are other examples.

However, those instances as laudable as they are, have now become landmarks of little significance. In this fast-paced, quick-changing environment of the Internet, there is need for more sustained collective efforts that go beyond just being merely reactionary to national issues.

Nigerians need champions who will take the bull by the horn, and create useful web tools as the Kenyans did with Mzalendo and Ushahidi.

Do we have events and circumstances that demand the use of such tools? Absolutely yes!

The Kenyan Mzalendo can be replicated in [tag]Nigeria[/tag] given the limited of information on activities in National legislature and on our representatives. I have raised the topic on this blog ( here, here and here) and have asked for input. Although the response hasn’t been encouraging the idea is still on the table, and will come to live someday.

We have instances of lethal road traffic accidents occurring almost daily – those events can be documented using a simple google map mash-up like Ushahidi. I’m convinced a documentation of the locations and severity of such accidents makes advocating for workable interventions easier when dealing with law and policy makers.

How about the Niger Delta? The conflagration has continued for years, bloggers have ranted and will continue to rant, yet there is no dedicated and Nigerian-created domain documenting the environmental degradation of the land nor the activities of the oil companies, good or bad.

I can’t remember who made a statement some years back, that given the monotonic manner of discussing Nigerian issues – where everyone and anyone just rant and rant about what is not right, there will come a time when the bulk of web information written on Nigeria by the Nigerian online pundits will be dominated by one theme: cry of woe!

Even if it is ingrained in our collective DNA to always “cry” and “complain”, we should also muster the mental capacity to engage in social and collaborative ventures that ‘breathe live into our cries’- either in the virtual world and real life – beyond the individualized rants of woe – or vitriol, that is becoming too familiar.

An interesting conversation is going on between two seasoned African bloggers – Erik Hersman (via Thought Leader) and David Oluniyi Ajao. The topic couldn’t have been more relevant: e-commerce and online payment platforms in Africa.

I’m attracted to Erik’s statement that “the solution for Africa needs to be bank and carrier agnostic” -this David opines, is feasible “if African countries had a tight economic union”.

There are similar Pan-African driven discussions as Erik-David’s debate on the blogosphere and mainstream media, but I feel given the socio-economic and political state of the continent – beyond their intellectual appeal, many of those conversations are dead on arrival: There are just too many limiting factors that make the realization of the vast majority of Pan-African concepts too diffucult – if not impossible. Don’t get me wrong, Pan-Africanism is a great and sweet concept – who wouldn’t want to have access to the second-largest and second most-populous continent in the world?

Even in Nigeria – a country I’m most familiar with, and it’s immediate extension, the West African subregion – the creation of an online payment system that is “bank and carrier agnostic” is still difficult but carries a better chance of happening and succeeding.

I think for such a system to emerge, the creators must look beyond the formal financial institutions and economy, after all more than a third of the workforce or productive age group in this region are still stuck in the informal economy. According to the BBC, “the informal economy really is the backbone of the Nigerian economy. It is the backbone because most services that Nigerians require to keep things running come from the informal sector.”

One “common denominator” characteristic of most Nigerians – including those in the informal economy – that I’ve discovered is that they all purchase airtime minutes. Could those minutes be used some how as legal tender for online transactions and e-commerce?