IRIN Focus on conflict in the Niger Delta

Competition for resources and the climate of mistrust it sometimes creates are seen as a major factor in the conflicts that have pitted ethnic communities against each other in Nigeria. The Niger Delta is a case in point. At the end of May 1999, for example, an estimated 200 people were killed in clashes near the oil town of Warri between Ijaws and Urhobos, on the one hand, and Itsekiris on the other over the relocation of a local council headquarters. "This is not ethnic hatred," Mofia Akobo, chairman of the Southern Minorities Movement, told IRIN. "These different groups are fighting for issues such as land, water rights and compensation," said Akobo, whose movement represents the various ethnic groups in six states of the Niger Delta. The Delta covers at least 70,000 sq km where the River Niger breaks into a labyrinth of creeks before reaching the Atlantic. For over 40 years, hundreds of billions of dollars worth of oil have been extracted from the area, but its upward of seven million inhabitants remain poor and lack the most basic amenities. Moreover, environmental groups in the Delta say, the oil industry has caused massive damage to the environment through activities such as land clearing, gas flaring, oil spillage and dredging. In 1958, prior to independence, a study of Nigeria's minority ethnic groups commissioned by Britain's colonial office recommended that a special authority be set up to develop the Niger Delta. This recommendation was never implemented and many in the Delta feel that the report's description of the people of the Niger Delta as "poor" and "neglected" remains as true today as it did 40 years ago. In December 1998, over 5,000 Ijaw youths from more than 500 communities gathered at Kaiama in the Niger Delta to discuss their grievances. The meeting resulted in the Kaiama Declaration, which calls for greater decentralisation of political power and for local communities to be given a larger say in the development of the Delta. The meeting also set up the Ijaw Youth Council "to coordinate the struggle of Ijaw peoples for self-determination and justice". The four million Ijaws, reported to be Nigeria's fourth largest group after the Hausa-Fulani, Yoruba and Igbo, occupy most of the Niger Delta, which is inhabited by some 20 ethnic minorities. During the past year, youths from these communities have occupied oil installations, kidnapped oil workers and targeted government security employees, notably in Odi, Bayelsa State, where 12 policemen were kidnapped and executed. "We believe in non-violent direct action. This includes closure of oil flow stations but it does not include kidnapping of oil workers or violence," Isaac Osuoka, spokesman for the Ijaw Youth Council (IYC) told IRIN. Asked why the IYC could not stop criminal behaviour by Ijaw youths, he said: "We are not a police force. We are not able to stop crime. Branding those responsible for the deaths of the policemen in Odi as Ijaw militants is an attempt to brand the whole Ijaw people as killers." Turner Isoun, a member of the Ijaw National Council and adviser to the Bayelsa state governor, argues that the Ijaw cause has been hijacked by criminals. "Somewhere there was criminalisation of a good cause," Isoun told IRIN. "This was brought about by mercenary opportunists and they are not necessarily Ijaw youths or even from the Niger Delta. These fringe groups clearly do not represent the groups advocating for redress of the neglect in the Niger Delta." Many Delta activists say that ethnic tensions are deliberately exploited by external parties for their own selfish purposes. "Mischievous handling of compensation funds and employment, delineation of local government boundaries, and use of thugs have been used to promote ethnic conflicts which serve the interests of government and the oil companies as they divert attention from the real cause of the problems: resource management and conservation, and basic human rights and social development," the Niger Delta Wetlands Centre, an environmental NGO based in Port Harcourt, said. Oil companies attribute the upsurge in violence to demographic changes which have increased the influence of the youth and reduced the power of chiefs and traditional leaders to sort out problems. "The oil companies initially thought that they could maintain good working environments by identifying either well-placed traditional or community leaders," Peter Ozo-Eson, director of projects for the Centre of Advanced Social Sciences, a Port Harcourt think-tank, told IRIN. "They gave them a lot of money but that money never went to develop the community and some of these leaders became millionaires." "There is no permanent electricity in Port Harcourt, literacy is about 50-60 percent and there are still a lot of youth with university degrees who do not have jobs," Akobo said. "Now a chief becomes friendly with an oil company, he becomes a contractor, real or de facto, and he becomes more and more ostentatious with his wealth. This antagonises the youth as they feel that he has plundered their inheritance." Oil companies say that they have always worked hard to improve people's welfare in areas where they operate. "Since the 1950s the Shell Petroleum Development Company (SPDC) has assisted over 1,500 communities in its areas of operation by providing services in education, agriculture, health and water supply," Shell said in a recent brochure. But NGOs in the Delta have their doubts. "The Delta is littered with incomplete, abandoned and non-functional projects which were identified and delivered centrally without adequate consultation and planning with the communities," says the Niger Delta Wetlands Centre. "Such projects serve to daily remind the communities of the lack of commitment on the part of their government and industry." "The oil companies need to work with democratically-established development associations in the communities so that they tailor their interventions more appropriately to the needs of the community," Ozo-Eson told IRIN. "They are beginning to move in that direction," he added. In an attempt to assuage discontent over living conditions in the Niger Delta, President Olusegun Obasanjo proposed a bill to facilitate development of the area with federal government assistance. The Niger Delta Development Commission (NDDC) bill proposes a development plan to be funded with 0.5 percent of oil companies' exploration and production budgets and half of the 13 percent of oil revenue which, according to the constitution, should go to each oil-producing region. However, approval for the bill in the national assembly has been delayed, particularly over the definition of which states make up the Niger Delta. In recognition of this the federal government approved in November 1999 at least US $50 million in projects in the Delta. These include building roads and improving electricity in Bayelsa state and establishing a technical training school for youth in the town of Bonny, Rivers State. "The establishment of this technical college is primarily to engage the youths in profitable ventures and divert their attention from violence," Information Minister Dapo Sarumi told reporters in December. Many in the Niger Delta are sceptical about the bill. "This is an irrelevant piece of legislation," Nimi Walson-Jack, director of the Centre for Responsive Politics in Port Harcourt, told IRIN. Akobo commented: "We had similar bills for the development of the Niger Delta in 1961 and 1976 and we don't really see what is new. It is not a bill from the people of the Niger Delta. It is a bill from Mr President." Analysts point out that the NDDC's precursor, the Oil Minerals Producing Areas Development Commission (OMPADEC), which operated under former military regimes, failed because it was politicised and severely underfunded. "We are not going to solve purely community, regional and state problems through the creation of a federal bureaucracy," Ozo-Eson told IRIN. "We need to organise the fiscal aspect of our federation in such a way that the states and communities of the Niger Delta will be able to develop." Human rights and pro-democracy groups believe that violence in the Niger Delta will not cease until wider issues of governance and constitutional reforms are addressed. In a 10 December statement, the Constitutional Rights Project (CRP) said the ethnic clashes "reflect the need for constitutional reforms to live in a truly federal republic, with more powers to the component units or what many have called a restructuring of the federation" . "If the centralised government has less control it has less resources to loot from," CRP Director Clement Nwankwo told IRIN. According to Isoun, Niger Delta leaders do not want to secede from Nigeria. "They just want equity, fairness and justice and reasonable control of own resources," he said. "But if people are so bent on no compromise they will push it to the extreme which nobody wants." Obasanjo has set up a Constitution Review Committee, made up of nominees from the three main political parties, to examine the existing constitution and propose amendments for consideration by the national assembly and the state legislatures. But many in the human rights community argue that what is needed is a forum for all groups and ethnic minorities to air their views and to achieve constitutional reform. "The government has not addressed the issue of self-determination. We need a sovereign national conference where all the ethnic groups in the country can come together to dialogue," Oliver Onwubunta, information officer for the Institute of Human Rights and Humanitarian Law in Port Harcourt, told IRIN.