IRIN special report on proposed Niger Delta bill

[This IRIN report does not necessarily reflect the views of the United Nations] A bill proposed by President Olusegun Obasanjo for the development of the Nigeria's strife-torn Niger Delta has had a difficult time gaining unanimous acceptance. In fact, none of the groups in the region, often in conflict with one another in recent years, have found the draft Niger Delta Development Commission (NDDC) bill acceptable. On 1 September, traditional rulers from the Delta, grouped in the Traditional Rulers Oil Mineral Producing Communities of Nigeria (TROPCON), urged the National Assembly to throw out the bill, saying it was not meant to serve the interests of the people in the oil region. Both the government and militant activists in the Niger Delta agree that the region, which produces most of the country's wealth, has suffered untold neglect in the 40 years since oil production began there. But there are strong differences on how best to redress the grievances of the area's inhabitants. Obasanjo's bill proposes a development plan for the impoverished Delta to be funded with 0.5 percent of the annual budgets of the oil transnationals operating in the country and half of the 13 percent of oil revenue which, according to the constitution, should go to each producing region. But Chief Edwin Clark, a leader of the estimated four million Ijaws - the biggest ethnic group in the area - says not only did the government not consult the people in drafting the bill, but also the provisions are insufficient. "All we are saying is that the beneficiaries of the bill are not consulted," he said in a protest sent to the national assembly. "We will like to have a say. The bill is defective in certain aspects. We are saying if the bill is passed in this form it is not our bill." The communities in the three core delta states of Rivers, Delta and Bayelsa contest the government's definition of the Niger Delta, which includes the neighbouring oil-producing states of Cross River, Abia, Imo, Akwa Ibom and Edo, on the grounds that people in their areas have suffered years of abject neglect. In addition, Clark says, the 13 percent of oil revenue reserved for the oil states should be left intact, while more funds should be provided from oil taxes, rents and royalties accruing to the federal government. Another point of disagreement is membership and chairmanship of the board of the NDDC. While only indigenes of the real oil-producing communities were eligible to be members of an Oil Minerals Producing Areas Development Commission (OMPADEC) that operated under the country's former military rulers, the NNDC bill does not make any such provision. Community leaders also complain that unlike the decree that established OMPADEC in 1991, the NDDC bill does not provide for prior consultation with the oil-producing communities on proposed developmental projects. They maintain that OMPADEC failed in the past because it was politicised and severely underfunded, pointing out that up until this year, the federal government had withheld 41 billion naira belonging to the commission. (The exchange rate of the naira is now 100 to the US dollar. For most of the existence of OMPADEC, a rate of 22:1 for governmental transactions coexisted with a parallel rate under a two-tiered system that was scrapped at the end of 1998.) OMPADEC, the community leaders say, received only 20 billion naira in the six years that it really functioned - by 1997, it had all but collapsed and was placed under a sole administrator. More radical elements in the Delta are worried that the bill does not address their demands for a decentralisation of state power so as to give the area more political autonomy and control over the oil resources that form the backbone of Nigeria's economy. "What we are against is a unitarist state that takes control over the resources of our people and gives us handouts," Nengi Ebitimi of the militant Movement for the Survival of Ethnic Ijaws of the Niger Delta told IRIN. Government officials have met various interest groups in the Delta, including a forum of the area's elected representatives, to work out mutually acceptable amendments to the draft bill. In the meantime, "let us appeal to our Niger Delta brethren to continue to exercise restraint", ethnic Ijaw lawyer A.J. Owonikoko urged in a recent article in 'Thisday' newspaper. "They must realise that were it not for democracy, the first version of that bill would have become law undebated and nobody would have been happier for it."