What Happened To APC Report On Federalism?

By Martins Oloja

As politicians are jostling to secure their positions within #PROJECT2019, defecting to different parties in pursuit of relevance for only themselves, subordinating the sanctity of the rule of law to personal interests, perfecting how to truncate press freedom, we need to ask political leaders in the governing party what they want to do with the most important document they produced and made public in January this year: ‘Report of The APC Committee on True Federalism’.

*Buhari and el-Rufai 

 I am fully persuaded that it is public interest to ask about this all-important document and failure to be genuine about how to implement the contents before next year’s election may undermine national security too. And here is the thing, those who always afraid of the hard questions in the governing APC, should not regard this question on what they want to do with their report as a political question: It is a question on nation building and the future of the world’s most populous black nation, Nigeria.

The Petroleum Industry Governance Bill (PIGB) – A Watered-down version of the Petroleum Industry Bill (PIB)

By Idowu Oyebanjo

The 8th Senate has passed the PIGB which, when assented to by the President, will give birth to a new era for the Petroleum Industry in Nigeria. Most of the countries that established National Oil Companies as did Nigeria have actually developed their Petroleum Industries to benefit their citizens and nations especially in making electricity available as a free commodity which in my opinion can also be implemented in Nigeria.

*Buhari: President and Petroleum Minister 

After several years of attempts to reform the oil and gas industry in Nigeria, the watered-down version of the original Petroleum Industry Bill (PIB) may be on its way for Presidential assent with a 5% levy on fuel sold or distributed in Nigeria.

Fuel Scarcity: Where Are The New Refineries?

By Erasmus Ikhide

General Muhammadu Buhari sold a dummy to Nigerians in 2015 at his electioneering when he promised to build more refineries and fix the old ones if elected the President of Nigeria in the next four years.

Three critical years of his mandatory four years in office have been wasted on revitalizing his troubled health. He has been chasing supposedly corrupt imaginary political enemies without actual prosecution, while his favoured kitchen cabinet members like Abba Kyari, the Chief of Staff and Maikanti Baru, the Group Managing Director of the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC) have been massing up billion of dollars for his reelection in 2019.

President Buhari’s democratic governance style has shown that a new type of military tyranny which does not require physical strength or actual presence to secure its callous suzerainty is blooming at full mast all over Nigeria.

 Nearly two decades after the military was literally chased to the barracks, a democratically elected president has become so clueless and adamant like a rogue tyrant superintending over the gloom and despondency of the suffering mass of Nigerian people.

Those Spoiling Nigeria

By Sunny Ikhioya
The foundation of any nation state is based sorely on unity, you cannot attain unity without peace and justice. And, you cannot attain peace and justice without love and honesty. To enable us understand this further, let us look at our national anthem that we all stand up everyday to honour.

 Those who composed our national anthem had this in mind when they wrote in the last verse of the first stanza thus: “One nation bound in freedom, Peace and Unity”. Have we really considered the weight of this verse as we recite when the opportunity presents itself? Have our leaders really tried to govern this country in an atmosphere of fundamental rights, as enshrined in the United Nations charter on freedom?

Has it not been a situation of the strong always oppressing the weak ? Have the minority rights ever been upheld to the letter as enunciated in our Constitution? One good thing that is happening in this country is the discovery of crude oil in places outside the Niger Delta, like in Lagos and a few in the north as being touted in certain circles. Will these oil producing areas be treated the same way the Niger Delta region has been treated, with disdain and neglect? My answer is no.

Already, the rumour mill is rife with stories about relief and compensation given to areas affected by the oil drilling activities in the north, especially to  Emirs. The NNPC is in position to clarify details on this but surely they will not get the Niger Delta treatment. I do not know if our leaders take time to read and digest the national anthem, the second stanza, verses five and six which speaks of  building a nation  “ In love and honesty to grow, And living just and true”. Have we related to ourselves in love and honesty? Where the Jigawa man is saying that the oil in Bayelsa belongs to Jigawa?

 Why have the Niger Delta people been completely deprived of the control of their natural resources? The Petroleum Industry bill, PIB, designed to take care of the interest of all, has been kept in the cooler by the majority ethnic groups in the National Assembly for almost eight years now. Where is the justice in that? The last verse of our national anthem says; “To build a nation where peace and justice shall reign”.  It is indisputable that, in a nation where peace and justice reigns, progress is guaranteed. The composers of our anthem noted this fact and all of our past and present leadership have accepted it as such. It therefore follows that all the past leaders,  including the present leader ship have failed to govern with justice, honesty, fairness and equity.

What Other Niger Deltans Must Do

By Sunny Ikhioya

The devastating effects of the activities of the Niger Delta Avengers on the Nigerian economy has made it imperative for the Federal government to reach a compromise with the militants. In fact, the PM News edition of Tuesday 7th June reported the setting up of a committee to discuss with the avengers. The questions that logically crop up from this development are: What will be the basis for discussions? Will the issues cover other Niger Delta ethnic groups? If an agreement is reached with the avengers, will that guarantee peace in the region? Do the authorities really want peace in the region? What must be done to guarantee that?

It is very important for all to know that the Ijaws are not the only ethnic group in the Niger Delta that have oil deposit in their land. The wikipedia source estimates over 40 ethnic groups in the whole region and almost all of them are oil rich and suffer the same degradation of their land as the Ijaws. The Ijaws also, are not the only tribe fighting for the resource control of their land.

The late Ken Saro Wiwa a foremost minority rights activist was of the Ogoni ethnic stock. But the recent militancy of the Ijaw group has made it seem like they are the only oil producing community in the region. The import of their struggle is, if they had remained docile, the federal government and international communities will continue to ignore the degrading conditions in the region. The people of this region have always been hard working and contributed significantly to the economic development of the country at different times in our history.

Long before crude oil came to the fore, it was known as the oil region and European businessmen set up trading posts in different parts of the region. It was known as the oil region because of the predominance of palm oil production. So, the peddlers of the lies that the other regions resources were used to develop the oil businesses in the Niger Delta are only deluding themselves or speak out of ignorance. The Niger Deltans have always been productive but they have never been known to come up with one voice on issues affecting them. It has always been to the advantage of those in authority to keep them fighting amongst themselves through the divide and rule technique.

The Niger Deltans have always been productive but they have never, ever come up with one voice because of the deliberate policy of the federal authorities to keep them apart. It began with the slave traders and later, during colonial times the British continued with it by setting tribes against one another, if it is not through land acquisition, it was deliberate trade decisions that pit one against the other. The federal government of Nigeria continued from where the colonial government stopped and it got to its peak during the civil war, with Chief Obafemi Awolowo as finance minister, the derivation policy for revenue generating communities was reduced to zero.

Even with the glaring pollution and destruction of their land, successive governments have continued to ignore their pitiable plights. You just have to go to the oil producing areas to experience first hand what goes on there. It is genocide through environmental poisoning. Even with their son Goodluck Jonathan as President, the majority ethnic groups rebuffed efforts to bring succour to the oil communities. For example, the Petroleum Industry Bill was killed in the National Assembly, now they have brought out a much toned down version that does not take the communities into consideration. You cannot allow the ‘goose’ that lays the golden eggs to die.

Buhari And The Niger Delta

By Ken Agala

On Thursday morning news broke that President Buhari had cancelled his trip to Ogoni due to threat to his life from the Niger Delta Avengers. This is a very wrong move as the President must have handed over the required impetus to the militants and thereby emboldened them.

*Buhari

Even Jonathan’s ‘chickening out’ of going to Chibok at the peak of the Boko Haram insurgency, is less of a ‘Chickening out’ than this. But I know a President can’t move against his security report and I wrote about this when Jonathan was called names for cancelling his Chibok trip.

While Nigerians were shocked to read a report that our oil production has gone down from the agonizing 1.4 million barrels to 1.1, a few days ago the Avengers bombed three more crude oil wells even when the military carried out an invasion of Gbaramatu kingdom and other Niger Delta communities.

With the Presidents action, the Niger Delta Avengers have received credible endorsement as a group to be respected and I believe many conscripts will begin looking for how to join them .

Frankly speaking it is despicable to be talking about cleaning up some Niger Delta communities while more environmental degradation is strategically perpetrated by Niger Deltans.

But there is a law called The Law of cause and effect. Every effect is the result of a cause and every cause must have an effect

When President Buhari in his brutally frank manner told his US audience last year that he can’t in all honesty treat regions that gave him 95% votes equally to those who gave him 5%, I expected that his party men from these 5% regions would have openly protested and forced him to withdraw the statement. That statement was very wrong from a President who has a mandate to treat everyone equally.

I expected Mr. Presidents media team to tactically twist that statement in way that it’d give some form of confidence to people from the 5% region but they rather coined the name ‘wailers’ for these 5 percenters .

Buhari, When Transparency Matters

Paul Onomuakpokpo

What is more alarming in the midst of the current  crisis  of  fuel price increase is not really its searing impact on the lives of the citizens . Of course, the increase throws into sharp relief the calamitous  progression of  the administration of President Muhammadu Buhari  from a disavowal of promises to a brazen affliction of the citizens with policies  that would effectively plunge  them to the nadir of despair. But what is clearly grimmer is the path of the lack of transparency that the Buhari administration has taken.

*Buhari 

Remember, desperate to clinch the presidency in 2015, Buhari and his co-travellers in the All Progressives Congress (APC) in the giddy days of the campaigns made several promises that apparently portrayed them as fully reconciled to the urgent need to rescue the citizens from the depredations of a ruthless political class. They promised to pay unemployed graduates N5,000, create jobs for the teeming population of the unemployed and through a magic wand known only to them transmute the  severely decimated naira  from trailing behind the dollar  to a pedestal of parity of  N1 to $1.

But since almost a year that Buhari became president these promises among others have either been blatantly denied or totally neglected.  It is not only that the promised stipend has not been paid but that the rank of the unemployed has bourgeoned against the backdrop of failing companies due to the worsening economic crisis.  And instead of the promised parity, the naira continues to crash, with heightened speculations that it would soon hit N500 to a dollar .

No doubt, while the citizens wait for the government to make the right policies to improve their condition, it is clear that they are currently beset with  a cruel fate. Or how else do we explain a situation where while their economic power is becoming more vitiated, they are compelled by the government to pay more to live in the country? Since those first few days of the Buhari administration when it appeared as if electricity had improved in response to his so-called body language, the nation has been plunged deeper into darkness . Yet, the Buhari administration increased the tariff regime, contrary to his promise to improve electricity. The citizens protested, whined about the injustice in paying for a service that was not provided. Some went to court to seek judicial ramparts against this impunity. But the Buhari administration and the electricity companies have had their way.

The Avengers And A Nation’s Injustice

By Paul Onomuakpokpo

Despite the nation’s attempts to remain oblivious of being a pastiche of unresolved contradictions, it is often confronted with the stark reminders that it cannot keep forging ahead until it decisively launches itself on the path of enduring stability.  Such cohesion would continue to elude the nation in so far as tepid efforts are only made to identify what gnaws at its well-being at those moments that there are threats to the interests of those who consider the country as their exclusive patrimony. 

If the victims of Fulani’s antediluvian practices of herding livestock had not demonstrated a clear resolve to shake off their ogre, a disposition vitalised by national outrage, we would not spare a thought for those whose farmlands and other means of livelihood are being decimated by the business interests of others. But as has been shown in the herdsmen-farmers’ crisis and other crises in the past, the  state’s intervention rather provokes  the aggrieved citizens’ animus against it. The citizens are reminded of the state’s smug indisposition to appropriately provide the right answers to the questions they have raised about what should be done to guarantee their existence as eligible stakeholders in the polity. When this is the situation, aggrieved citizens feel more alienated and driven to resorting to self-help.

It is the same way that the state has responded to the question of socio-economic injustice in the Niger Delta. Whenever the indigenes of the  region lament  that their major means of livelihood, farming and fishing,  have been destroyed by oil pollution , a situation aggravated by a dearth of commensurate compensation,  the rest of the citizens who largely benefit from the resources of the region often dismiss them as a people who are never appreciative of what the state has done for them. Thus if the citizens now resort to self-help, the state does not see the need to consider the merit of their case in the first place. Its response brims with hubris and hauteur as expressed in the immediate deployment of its might to squelch any protest.

To be sure, while the attacks on oil facilities in the Niger Delta have drawn attention to the problems of the area, continuing to take up arms against the state is not the best strategy by the indigenes of the region. Such a strategy benefits only a very negligible number of people who are invited by the state to negotiate some selfish terms of peace. Such deals have transformed those previously marooned in the creeks as agitators into billionaires. They now possess the financial sinews to bulldoze their way into public offices or as king makers in the political arena,  and to set up  universities  and other big businesses.  It is because such a strategy of selective state beneficence does not improve the lot of the majority of the people that there is a ceaseless replication of the tactic of threatening oil production in the Niger Delta.