Vol.3 Issue 24 POLICY WEEKLY June 05 - 12, 2020

Niger Delta: Promoting Ethical Values and Leadership

Policy Recommendations Since the closing decades of the 20th international best practices which century, the problems in the Niger results in loss of livelihoods. This The FGN should demonstrate Delta have become the cynosure of ethical concern is complicated by the sufficient urgency in the clean-up, attention at national and international fact that the oil companies sometimes remediation, reparation, and 1 r e s t o r a t i o n o f o i l - i n d u c e d levels. The Nigerian government, refuse to pay adequate compensation environmental damage. international agencies, civil society for environmental damage. Added to organisations, think-tanks, statesmen this, oil companies adopt divide and T h e F G N s h o u l d b e m o r e and academics have devoted so many rule tactics in relating to stakeholders concerned with community-driven energies and resources to address the in their host communities. For development projects (CDP) rather issues. Despite these efforts, the example, the December 2011 Bonga 2 than actor-specific and top-down problems of the region still linger. This oil spill incident from an offshore field strategies. edition of Nextier SPD Policy Weekly operated by Shell Petroleum discusses the moral foundation of the Development Company (SPDC) Oil companies should shun splitting stakeholder relations tactics in their problems of the Niger Delta with the which reportedly contaminated the host communities and strive to intent to articulate a framework for environment of 350 communities in involve all stakeholders in the promoting ethical values and Ekeremor, Southern Ijaw and Brass 3 management and minimisation of leadership in the region. Local Government Areas of Bayelsa the impacts that the companies State compelled over 285 people to Ethics pertains to how a moral being might generate. desert the polluted sea and should behave while value is the inner farmlands. On March 25, 2015, judgment that motivates and guides The stakeholders in the Niger Delta SPDC was held liable to US$3.6 human action and his construction of should imbibe value change from billion fine imposed on it by the pro-self to pro-others. pro-self (particularism) or pro-others 4 National Oil Spills Detection and (universalism) identities. Ethical values Response Agency (NOSDRA). serve as a compass for virtuous action Indigenes of Aghoro 1 community in Nextier SPD Policy Weekly provides and effective leadership, which in this an analysis of topical conflict, Ekeremor Local Government Area in discourse denotes the ability to security, and development issues Bayelsa State claimed that SPDC mobilise human and material and proposes recommendations to slashed their oil spill compensation to address them. It is a publication of resources with skills and sensitivity, N34 million from the N3.68 billion Nextier SPD. boldness and brilliance, concern and recommended by the NOSDRA. For further discussion of pragmatic creativity, foresight and focus for implementation of the optimum results. For the Niger Delta Frustrated and angered by their recommendations, please contact region, such attributes will help in displacement and loss of livelihoods, dismantling the structural violence built the people in the region adopted into the oil communities by the oil various coping strategies which raise www.nextierspd.com activities (Nwokolo, 2017). ethical value and leadership questions. Owing to harrowing [email protected], An entry point to the ethical value conditions, supposed custodians of +234 701 002 7301 issues in the Niger is the failure of oil values (traditional rulers, elders and companies to operate in line with even religious leaders) use their Nextier SPD (www.nextierspd.com) is an international development consulting firm that uses evidence-based research to develop and build knowledge and skills to enhance human security, peace, and sustainable development as means to achieving stability and prosperity in Nigeria, and in the African region. positions to gain control over various compensation which was first set for 1984 and later 2004, 2006, 2008, and resources received on behalf of various 2012 and 2020. Granted that the FGN commenced the communities from government and oil companies Ogoni clean-up in 2017 its non-substantial actions (Ikelegbe, 2006). The local leaders' hegemonic beyond a continued reiteration of the alibi of the need control over compensation triggered intense rivalries for adequate planning/preparation also raises integrity and disharmonious relationships within and between issues. communities. For instance, exasperated youth and vigilante in Nembe on account of disagreement over To address these ethical value and leaderships issues, the sharing of compensation payments from Shell certain steps are imperative. forced their chief into exile (Chizea and Osumah, 2017). In many other communities, youth were 1. The FGN should demonstrate sufficient urgency in the impelled to form militia groups and engaged in clean-up, remediation, reparation, and restoration of criminal acts such as oil pipeline vandalism, oil-induced environmental damage. Also, it should bunkering and hostage-taking with haemorrhagic ensure adequate compensation for people impacted effects on the Nigerian economy. Between May in the various oil-bearing communities. Elsewhere in 2018 and May 2019, Nigerian National Petroleum the USA, the Barrack Obama presidency in the wake Corporation reported that it recorded 2,014 pipelines of the BP oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico in 2010, made vandalised points and loss of N188.8 billion to crude remediation its highest priority and fully asserted oil theft. itself in the process. Such leadership should be emulated by the Nigerian governing elite. Efforts of the Federal Government of Nigeria (FGN) to deal with the coping strategies of the Niger Delta 2. The FGN should be more concerned with community- youth have not been free from ethical value and driven development projects (CDP) rather than actor- leadership issues. The FGN deployed hefty military specific and top-down strategies like PAP which operation known as the Joint Task Force (JTF) to tends to signal that “violence pays” on account of its arrest, control and contain economic crimes exclusion of non-combatant militants. In the short perpetrated by various militia groups such as term, CDP can guarantee material benefits for all Movement of the Emancipation of Niger Delta stakeholders, de-legitimise self-seeking agendas by (MEND), the Niger Delta Avengers (NDA), etc. pro-self elements and thus promote community However, the JTF intervention has been associated cohesion. In the long term, CDP can foster the with brutal abuses of human rights and development of local institutions to be integrated with displacement in many communities such as Odi in political structures and processes. Bayelsa State, Yeghe community in Rivers State, and Kokodiagbene in Gbaramatu kingdom in Delta 3. Oil companies should shun splitting stakeholder State (Chizea and Osumah, 2017). Similarly, men relations tactics in their host communities and strive and officers of the JTF supposed protectors of oil to involve all stakeholders in the management and infrastructure have been alleged of complicity with minimisation of the impacts that the companies might oil thieves by providing standing guard at illegal tap generate. Similarly, oil companies should liaise with points and providing armed escort to ships loaded the various groups representing host communities to with stolen crude after receiving bribes. In June establish priorities for their social investments and 2018 in Warri, Delta State, the Ijaw Youth Congress local development in terms of job creation, accused members of the JTF code-named healthcare, and environmental protection. Operation Delta Safe of aiding and abetting oil bunkering, oil facilities vandalism and crude oil theft. 4. The stakeholders in the Niger Delta should imbibe value change from pro-self to pro-others. To generate Alongside the military solution, the FGN has this value change, sensitisation should be used to re- adopted interventionist measures such as the Niger orient the people on the importance of pro-others Delta Development Commission, Ministry of the rather than pro-self activities. Non-governmental Niger Delta Affairs, Presidential Amnesty organisations can undertake this task by identifying Programme (PAP) and Hydrocarbon Pollution and partnering with progressive elements in the Restoration Project. These measures have largely region through government consultation. been plagued by ethical value and leadership issues such as brazen fiscal rascality, exclusion, spoils politics, internal disorganisation, leadership instability, and lack of effective coordination among Finally, to promote ethics of accountability and the interventionist agencies and other stakeholders transparency, communities should mount social (Aghedo and Osumah, 2013). Similarly, the failure of pressure on the managers of the various interventionist the FGN to implement reports and agencies to provide their scorecards for services they recommendations of several panels it set up to look into the Niger Delta problems has generated have delivered at regular intervals. Such scorecards integrity issues (Omoweh, 2011). The same ethical should be juxtaposed with projects executed in the value issues trail the failure of the FGN to keep communities. Perpetrators of corrupt and shady deals several promises to end gas flaring in the region should be named, shamed and prosecuted.

References Aghedo, I. and Osumah, O. (2013). “Development at Bay: The Niger Delta Ministry and the Challenges of Post-Conflict Reconstruction”, Benin Journal of Social Sciences, 21(1), pp.127-143 Chizea, B. and Osumah, O. (2017). “Traditional Rulers, Resurgent Militancy and Insecurity in the Niger Delta Region of Nigeria”, Osun Sociological Review, 4 (1-2), pp.19-34 Ikelegbe, I (2006). Beyond the Threshold of Civil Struggle: Youth Militancy and the Militarisation of the Resource Conflicts in the Niger Delta Region of Nigeria, African Study Monographs, 27(3): 87-122 Nwokolo, N.N (2017) Building “Peace” and Neglecting Structural Violence, Peace Review, 29:4, 497-505, DOI: 10.1080/10402659.2017.1381523 Omoweh, D.A. (2011). Political Economy of Natural Resource Struggles in the Niger Delta, Nigeria, Being the 33rd Public Lecture at the University Chapel, Covenant University, Ota, Ogun State

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