Signposts of Frustration And Hope
By Mikail Mumuni
Sunday, March 02, 2008
The Niger Delta Development Commission, NDDC, battles to restore hope in a region where a litany of abandoned projects point to decades of frustrated expectations
Like many other communities in the Niger Delta, land is a scarce commodity in Ogu, a town in the Ogu\ Bolo Local Government of Rivers State. In order to sustain its growing population, this Okrika community often encroached on lands belonging to its Ogoni neighbours, provoking bitter and devastating inter-communal conflicts in the process.
This was one of the problems the Niger Delta Development, NDDC, sought to bring to an end with the sand filling of a huge body of water as a means of decongesting Ogu town which is already overpopulated. The scope of the contract, which was awarded on June 13, 2007 involved the clearing of 50 hecters of mangrove forest and dredging of 1.5 million cubic meters of sand which will then be spread to form a new and modern part of the town. Work was at advanced stage when Newswatch visited the town Tuesday last week. Samuel Emmanuel, community liaison officer , CLO, for the project said agreement has been reached that land in the new town shall be divided equally among the families. "The project is of immense benefit to the community. Ogu community is surrounded by water .We have very limited land mass and our problems with the neigbouring communities have always been over land. Now that we will have enough land to ourselves, that problem is now over. This is a community of over 50,000 people. We have over 56 families. Agreement has been reached that sand filled land will be shared among the families. We thank NDDC for this gesture," Emmanuel stated.
The shore of the river is also being reinforced in order to check erosion. Similar shore protection projects are being undertaken in many other communities, including Buguma in the Asri -Toru Local Government of Rivers State. For the residents of Abua Central , Owerewere - Ochigba also in Rivers State, their own gift from NDDC is a 21- kilometer road and a12.5 meter span bridge. A substantial part of the road has been done and the bridge head will soon be connected. A young man who gave his name as Paul was loading freshly cut bamboo trees into a truck when Newswatch visited. He said getting the truck there was impossible before the road was constructed as many hills, now brought low, acted as natural barriers on the way. Paul said he now earns a living by supplying bamboo to building contractors.
Other projects of NDDC are spread across the oil producing states of Abia, Akwa Ibom, Bayelsa, Cross Rivers, Delta, Edo, Imo, Ondo and Rivers states. The projects are on roads and bridges, water supply, rural electrification, education, health care, jetties and canalization. In the health sector, NDDC is partnering with Pro-Health, a non governmental organisation to provide free medical services in eye, dental and other aspects of surgery as well as pediatric services . And through its Quick Impact Project, QIP, the NDDC intends to build a model secondary school in each of the 27 senatorial district of the member states. NDDC has also established a full fledged unit for youths and women development.
One of the vocations in which the commission is training this segment of the populace is agriculture. Akwanga Enyia, NDDC deputy director of agriculture and fisheries said 3, 800 youths and women have been earmarked for training under the first phase of the programme at the Songhai Farm settlement in Delta State. About 700 people from Bayelsa and Delta states and 580 from Akwa Ibom have since participated in the scheme. Enyia said participants would be trained in aqua-culture, poultry, piggery and other forms of agriculture. They would on graduation be grouped into cooperative societies and given access to credit facilities to establish their businesses. And for Nigerians who have never been to the Niger Delta, the sight of NDDC Assisted Mass Transit buses moving passengers from the oil producing states to major Nigerian cities like Lagos , Abuja and Kaduna testifies to the activities of the commission.
Between 2001 and 2006, NDDC completed 156 roads and 47 bridges. This road cover 3,000 kilometers. Some of the completed roads and bridges are the Ekpene Ukpa -Ekparaka road in Akwa Ibom, Ugheli Oguname -Okpe Olomu -Ovwodokpokpo road in Delta State, Kaima Kolokuma Sabagriea -Polaku road in Bayelsa State and the Eastern Bye Pass in Rivers State.
NDDC is not the first "interventionist agency" set up by the federal government to build and improve on the human capital and infrastructure in the Niger Delta. It was indeed the latest in a process that started with a report by Sir Henry Willink's Commission which was set up by the then colonial administration. The report submitted in 1958 said the Niger Delta deserves special attention and should be made a special area for development. The federal government in furtherance of the recommendation established the Niger Delta Development Board, NDDB, in 1960. That commission did not achieve much before it folded up. The Shehu Shagari administration in the Second Republic also attempted to redress the neglect of the area by establishing the Presidential Task Force on the Niger Delta to which 1.5 percent of the Federation Account was devoted. The Task Force was in place until December 31, 1983 when Shagari was deposed in a military coup. The void persisted till 1993 when the Oil Mineral Producing Area Development Commission, OMPADEC, came into being.
All those agencies, however, failed where NDDC is presently making appreciable progress. Timi Alaibe NDDC's managing director attributed those failures partly to the absence of a Master Plan that addresses Niger Delta's developmental needs and the peoples aspirations. " The failures of these [ past] efforts worsened the peoples' conditions, leading to frustrated expectations. This slowly gave rise to tension , anger and conflict and by 1999 the region was awash with thousands of abandoned projects, relics of the peoples' expectations," he said . Alaibe spoke late last year while delivering a convocation lecture at the Igbinedion University, Okada on Sustainable Development and the Challenge of Good Governance In the Niger Delta Region.
The challenge to produce a Master Plan was posed by former President Olusegun Obasanjo to NDDC when he inaugurated the first governing council of the body in 2001. That has been met by the commission in collaboration with non-governmental agencies operating in the area, oil companies, the federal and state governments as well as other stakeholders. Christy Atako, NDDC head of corporate affairs said the commission brought all the stakeholders to work on the Master Plan so as not to repeat the mistakes of the past. "There was a case where OMPADEC, an oil company, a state government and a development agency did a water project each in a community. This community had four water projects with none really functioning or serving the people," Atako recollected. Alaibe said President Umaru Yar'Adu has issued directives that all those concerned must follow the Master Plan to the letter and avoid derailment or duplication of projects.
Wole Soyinka, Nigeria's Nobel laureate winner in Literature is no fan of Obasanjo. But he says NDDC remains one of the positive points of the former president. " The NDDC has taken on an enormous burden on behalf of this beleaguered area. This organization, created by the president should be marked down as one of the positives points of this administration anytime I want to criticize him [ Obasanjo]," Soyinka said during a visit to NDDC head office in Port Harcourt, Rivers state. The visit was part of the fact finding mission to the Niger Delta by the Nobel Laureate Commission, an independent international pressure group of about 200 living Nobel laureates.
General Alexander Ogomudia, retired, a former chief of defence staff is also full of commendation for the NDDC for its road project in Uzere, a community in Isoko South Local Government area of Delta State. "The road project has been actualized. There is no doubt about NDDC's impact on the lives of our people," he said.
Ledum Mitee, president, Movement for the Survival of Ogoni is, however, not too pleased with NDDC. He complained that there was no Ogoni person on the board and the senior management cadre of NDDC. He also pointed out that communities where there is violence and militancy were the ones being courted with projects.
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