The North and Resource Control
by
The agitation by southern or rather South-South governors for resource control appears to be perceived in the North, by the elites as a sort of gang up. It is propagandized as a campaign to undermine the North, by depriving it of oil revenue. At the same time those who are against resource control are the same people who felt that the principle of true federalism must be observed to allow states to implement their desired legal system.
This is either an irony or a contradiction. This article is not a legal or constitutional discourse on the legitimacy or otherwise of resource control. This submission is simply an affirmation that resource control by states will in no way undermine or incapacitate the North. It is an incontrovertible fact that the dependent nature of many states both in the North and in the South on oil revenue hampers the ability of those states to device other means of sustenance. States that depend on handouts from the Federal Government need to learn to stand on their feet. If the country belongs to us all, then we all have a duty to contribute to it not just to benefit from it.
The wealthiest nations of the world are not necessarily those that are blessed with oil or other natural resources. And natural resource is not an insured and permanent means of prosperity. Countries such as Switzerland, Belgium, Italy, France, South Korea, Malaysia etc. are economically prosperous today not for the reserve of natural resources that abound in those countries but simply the human potentialities that enable the countries to industrially advance themselves.
Those in the North who felt that absence of oil revenue means the end of the world belong to the class of elites and leaders who are bankrupt of ideas on ways and means of transforming adversity into challenges and prosperity. Free oil revenue given to the North over the years only produced a clique of wealthy Generals and their lackeys. It, on the long run, undermined the region's agrarian economic base. It encouraged and sustained the culture of parasitism. Nigeria's oil wealth was hardly of any major benefit to the common man in the North.
Rather, over the years, the wealth was used to maintain an idle and unproductive feudal institution such as emirates and chiefdoms. Someone may argue that even before the oil wealth these obsolete institutions existed. Yes they did, but not with the grandeur and this modern flamboyance, associated with these structures. The North's share of oil proceeds also partly went to the creation and maintenance of an arrogant and atavistic reactionary aristocracy. Oil, not only crumbled and washed away the region's groundnut pyramid, it also washed away productive nomads from the hinterland, negatively metamorphosed them into hustling contractors and so-called independent marketers, who are today even part of the stumbling block of the smooth running of the petroleum sector. The oil proceeds also pulled well-fed, healthy, self-subsistent and self-contented and productive peasants into cities, and towns as beggars and lumpen proletariat. It transformed resourceful youths who should be at work, school or sport field into pest 'blackmarketers'.
The North without unlimited and unearned oil proceeds will mean a rapid neutralization of the region's ever widening social class difference. It will end the shortsighted moralist and purist tendencies and policies of newfound charlatans that disregard economic and social consequences of their actions. It will encourage productivity, intellectual discourse, research and development of other sources of economic growth. It will dissolve the social structured oppression and exploitation erected by haughty and redundant ex-military rulers, bureaucrats and conservative political class whose back is on the wall today as a result of civil rule. If the nation's oil resource was used for the development of the North, the North could not have remained as it is at now.
The educational imbalance between the region and the South could have been bridged. The North could have been equally industrialized. Deforestation could have since been tackled. Begging could have been wiped out. Social amenities could have been that of state-of-the-art. There is none of that. Those analyzing the North on the presumption that Niger-Delta's oil wealth was used to transform the North from a desert into a paradise are not fair to the ordinary people inhabiting the region. In comparison to, especially the eastern part of the country, where architectural masterpieces adorn rural areas, our own villages are not only backward but also primitive. The Kachallas and Hashidus' opposition to resource control could probably be taken seriously if they have once cared to oppose the mismanagement of the nation's oil wealth by fascist military rulers. Abacha's period of thievery and roguery and the billions he and his blood associates siphoned, is enough to educationally advance the North, establish modern industries for the region and end its dependency, beggary and backward status.
The billions wasted, known as the gulf war wind fall, during IBB's eight years of recklessness, is enough to end the desert encroachment, connect all Northern villages with roads, build hospitals and schools in the most remotest of human habitations and generally uplift the standard of living of the plebs in the North to that of their counterparts in other parts of the country. Here we are today, with all the shocking and startling revelation of money stolen by Abacha and his likes, reactionary lots in the North still shamelessly abet criminality on the ground that the recovery is persecution.
The conservative forces in the North who vehemently believe that oil resources from Niger Delta is a divine and constitutional right of the North to enjoy must first shake-off ethnic, sectional and religious sentiments. Nationalism in sharing of resources and sectionalism on politics is incongruous. If the states of the Niger-Delta are to control their resources today, the masses in the North have nothing much to lose. They can easily adjust and withdraw back to their farmlands and live the life their counterparts in Zimbabwe, Kenya, Cuba, China, Malawi and other non-oil bearing nations are living. There is no doubt that resource control will bring pecuniary situation to most states in the North and of course, other non-oil bearing states in the South. But this could be overcome with a dynamic, progressive, visionary leadership if it could be found.
A similar situation like this happened in recent history. With the collapse of communism and the breakup of the Soviet Union, Cuba from 1989 was denied the privileges of free and heavily subsidized petroleum it usually got from the then U.S.S.R. Fidel Castro did not waste time sulking. All he did was to declare a "special period". In this period, Cubans were made to adjust themselves to new realities; the tobacco, sugar cane, meat and tourism industries were re-activated. Just over a decade now, Cubans have overcome their former status as 'Soviet Dependency'. Resource control will serve the best interest of the North. It will instill political and socio-economic discipline: it will check the proliferation of chiefdoms and emirates. It will reduce the junketing of the state governors. It will check the paid advertorials of insignificant developmental project, reduce the high rate of sectionalistic seminars, conferences and regional meetings.
The North will be at a more advantageous position if it first learns to live without oil money. Non-oil bearing states from the South will also be better off if they divorce themselves from the illusion of anti-North solidarity and work harder to device means of being productive and contribute to the national coffers. It has become customary for political elite from the South-East and South-West to also portray themselves as oppressed. And belonging to the part of the country that is productive. States like Lagos, Oyo, Ekiti, Osun, Ogun, Anambra, Ebonyi, Enugu are equally as parasitic as states from the North. Federal net export income still remains ninety eight per cent from petroleum.
Mismanagement of the nation's oil resources over the years was not only perpetrated by military rulers from the North. Elements from the South played a major role in the recklessness and the subsequent crippling of the nation's economy spanning different regimes. Behind every Abacha, there is a Diya, an Ani, an Etete. Also, behind every Babangida, there is an Aikhomu and their likes. That states should harness and control resource does not mean impoverishing the Federal Government or other states that have little or no resource; this piece simply proffers that for a partnership to work where no one feels more or less important, the mentality of sharing of national cake should be replaced with a determination and productive culture of contribution to the buildup of that cake.
The present arrangement whereby Malla Kachalla, Chinwoke Mbadinuju, Segun Osoba, Abubakar Audu, Bisi Akande, Sam Egwu go to sleep waiting for Obasanjo to collect money from Peter Odili and distribute to them is not in the best interest of national unity.
Shehu Sani, is the President, Civil Rights Congress.