Resource control A Warri boy

Resource control A Warri boy's perspective

I grew up in Warri and its environs from 1961 and 1983. I had my youth service posting in Bauchi and came to Lagos in 1987 to continue growing up. Since then I have been in and out of Warri but never staying longer than a week before rushing off to my beloved Lagos which is quite ironical when I think about it. I will tell you why. In the 1970s and early 1980s I never could stay away from Warri for long. Warri to me was the beginning and end of the good life. It was a small town that had very few facilities that did not seem to bother us. We had our small aerodrome, our small S.S.Q. (Senior Service Quarters) your GRA equivalent, our small Warri Club, a few concrete roads courtesy of Osaigbovo Ogbemudia, our small big field (stadium) but, above all, we had love.

My friends were Itsekiris, Ijaws, Ibos, Isokos, Kwale, name it. It was a true rainbow coalition. We lived in harmony. As an Urhobo boy I was aware of some land dispute between the Urhobo and Itsekiri but it was not a big deal. It did not stop me from answering my Itsekiri name or my parents from speaking Itsekiri at home when they wanted to exclude me or anyone else who did not understand Itsekiri from their discussion. We could stay out late from watching films at either New Rex, Delta or even Premier Cinema. Robbery was a distant echo. When we said, "I am a Warri boy" you would think we were saying, "I am an American."

In school I would get into arguments with Port Harcourt and Lagos boys about which is a better place. In frustration they would always ask - "wetin dey that una Warri sef." We would counter "everything" and we liked it so. Looking back now, we really did not have much but we did not care much. We were content to buy our "dodo and beans" meal, visit Lagos once in while and just revel in everything and nothing.

Then the decay started. The roads came to the end by themselves. The pipe-borne water to various homes gave up; eating for most families became a struggle. Robbery that was a distant echo became a clear and present danger. I started losing some of my friends to armed robbery. Suddenly we started getting an education on how naive we had been. How far worse things have gotten. How some ethnic groups have been benefiting while others were suffering. Our girls, like the ones in Italy, started looking for expatriates to buy a piece of their bodies. They made babies in the process to the shame of their parents. Soon enough what seemed like a paradise in the 1960s to the 1970s started going bad in the 1980s. We now saw what the Port Harcourt and Lagos boys had been saying that we had nothing. At the collapse of everything it became clear that if there were going to be any change, those massive pipes which took oil from the area from where we heard and I know now that Abuja, Kaduna, Lagos and every other place was built in Nigeria, had to be stopped or something had to be done to stop the land from dying.

It was going to be nasty. The legal framework for exploration and production of petroleum and the development in these areas was different. The Federal Government that owns the petroleum do not consider the host communities important. After all none of their children was in power. The states were aggrieved and had little in terms of derivation. Thus these areas had no right to be treated better than anywhere else in the state. The oil companies did not think it was their business to provide the basic amenities for host communities. The result is increased neglect of the people.

Yet, the Niger Delta area which stretches from the Benin River Estuary to the Imo River Estuary in the eastern flank is the richest land in Nigeria. Today, it accounts for not less than 90 per cent of our country's total export earnings. Crude oil, gas and other mineral deposits are in abundance. Besides these natural endowments, the area which occupies about 29,100 square kilometres, excluding what "our big brother" (Federal Government) calls the continental shelf, is home to the Warri Refinery, the Eleme-Port Harcourt, Bonny Industrial Schemes, the abandoned Delta Steel Company (DSC) Ovwian-Aladja, the Abua Oil Field under the management of the Nigeria Petroleum Development Company (NPDC). These are classified as Federal Government lands and property.

But sadly, this is where the greatest politics in Nigeria comes into play. Ironically, what should have made the Delta the cradle of Africa's industrialisation has more or less become a sad "metaphor." Our own Delta should have been what Pittsburgh is to the United States of America (USA) in the auto and steel industry. Our own Warri, Aladja, Uyo, Ughelli, Oghara, Bonny, Eleme, etc put together should have been the centre of Africa's industrial growth. For these communities put together make it possible for Nigeria to rank as the largest producer of crude oil in Africa and amongst the 10th in the world.

Today, the area is denied Federal Government attention. About 80 per cent of the rural communities have no access to drinking water. Even in the urban areas, drinkable water is a luxury; still, the water are sourced from contaminated streams. Regular oil spills destroy aquatic life. Unemployment is at its peak.

What to do? Let anyone you can find or lay hands upon pay the price. The oil companies came under attack so did traditional rulers perceived to have been enjoying from all sides. The pipelines got opened - not vandalised. We cannot live by the river and wash our hands with spittle. The scooping to survive started. If the government would not help us let us help ourselves, they argued.

Now with a meager 13 per cent derivation and a Delta State governor determined to make a difference, we now have a state that has the makings of being great again. My beloved Warri is seeing good roads again and just maybe they would not make area boys of my people anymore. We have a right to the lion share of what comes out of our back yard since we also bear the brunt of leakages and spillages and loss of all kinds of life. We can see clearly now that with more money in our hands and a clear programme of development, perhaps, our little Warri and its environs can be transformed like Abuja, Lagos or wherever.

Perhaps our schools can qualify to bear that name again soon. The days of Bunsen burner in the laboratory might come back. The days of hospitals with drugs, of towns with roads, water and even light. When the people are fed and have opportunities to better their lives, they would come out of the gutter of constant fighting, armed robbery and the like. Allow us control our own destinies and watch us go back home to rebuild our homes and perhaps create more cities. Maybe then our girls would look upon our men with more hope or prospects.

This resource control without constitutional arguments or federalism is a simple matter. If the rest of the country is fed from my backyard I should not go hungry or lean. If anything, my continuous survival or existence must be ensured. I should be petted like a bride otherwise I shut the source of pleasure and let the groom go lean or die in the process - seeing that from my lean state, death is the next stop, allowing me to get fatalistic just might not do any thing for us all. In the alternative as the bride I might seek to remain celibate and seek a divorce on grounds of cruelty, denial and everything that smacks of inhumanity. Let the groom take heed.

Over the years the "Big Brother" (Federal Government) concept has deprived the people the benefits of their God-given endowments. Many years back, 1957 precisely, the Sir Willink Commission, set up to study the fears of the Niger Delta people actually predicted the cruelty that has become the lot of the people. "We are impressed by the arguments indicating that the needs of those who live in... the Niger Delta are very different from those of the interior. We agree that it is not easy for a government or legislature operating from far inland to concern itself or even fully understand the problems of a territory where communication is difficult, building is expensive and education is scanty."

The solution is therefore simple: Allow the bride control her natural endowments because the groom has been most inhuman and irresponsible. The positive reconstruction works currently going on in Delta State is enough indication that the people of the Niger Delta best appreciate and understand their problems. They are thus the best to solve them.