Dispute over location of Niger Delta Body

Moves to push through a bill on the development of Nigeria’s volatile Niger Delta have been snagged by a dispute over the location of the headquarters of the proposed body.

While the Senate has designated Yenagoa, capital of Bayelsa State, as the headquarters of the Niger Delta Development Commission (NDDC), the House of Representatives chose Port Harcourt in neighbouring Rivers State.

Both state governments support the siting of the Commission in their capitals, but in a statement on Monday, representatives of the Urhobo ethnic group added a new dimension to the dispute. They called for the location of the NDDC headquarters in an Urhobo area in Delta State - either the town of Warri or nearby Ughelli.

“This time around, we claim as of right that the headquarters of the NDDC should be located in Delta State, which since the creation of Bayelsa State from Rivers State, has produced the greatest volume of oil and gas,” said the statement issued on behalf of the Urhobo Progress Union.

“That so far Delta State has not been proposed or even considered is evidence of the injustice of the last three decades and causes us to have fears,” said the statement, published in local newspapers. Reasons the Senate gave for choosing Yenagoa included Bayelsa’s relative under-development and the perceived need to provide new amenities for its
impoverished people. The same reasons counted against Yenegoa when the House of Representatives chose Port-Harcourt. They cited the existence of a fairly developed infrastructure in the oil-industry capital that should make it easier for the NDDC's operations to take off.

“To site the headquarters of the NDDC in either Rivers or Bayelsa - neither of which produces as much as Delta state - is to perpetuate the injustice of the past,” argues the Urhobo organisation, which also wants the first chief executive of the NDDC to come from their ethnic group.

Some analysts see the dispute over the location of the NDDC
headquarters as further evidence of the fractious nature of the ethnic minorities of the oil region that has contributed to the neglect of the area.

Despite producing most of the oil that accounts for more than 90 percent of Nigeria's exports earnings, the Niger Delta remains one of the most impoverished regions of the country. Restiveness among the local people in recent years, manifesting itself in ethnic clashes and violent disruptions of oil operations, has drawn local and international attention as well as promises of rapid development from the government.

Obasanjo, whose election ended more than 15 years of military misrule, decided to establish NDDC as a vehicle for rapid development to reverse what the government has acknowledged were “decades of criminal neglect”. “The dispute over the location of the headquarters is one of the unfortunate things that happen due to the long use of the politics of divide and rule,” Ogaga Ifowodo of the human rights group Civil Liberty Organisation told IRIN. “The result is that our people haven’t overcome the mentality of ‘if it's not on your turf you are not going to benefit’,” he added.

With the two houses of the national assembly holding conflicting views on the issue, the next procedural step to resolve the matter would be to convene a joint session of the legislature during which members would cast their votes for the various provisions and a two-thirds majority would carry the day.

Whether such a session would address the demands and concerns
raised by the Urhobos and incorporate them in the final NDDC bill remains to be seen.