Nigerian oil companies and Niger Delta Development

IF all the stakeholders in the Niger Delta region, the multi national oil companies should take the greater blame for the environmental devastation resulting from several decades of oil exploration and exploitation.

In their search for the black gold, they have combed the swamps and ravaged the mangroves; polluted the rivers and rivulets; scorched the farmlands and left the people gasping for breath just like the fish in the region, which have been suffocated by oil spills.

With this unflattering track record, one would expect the oil companies to throw their full weight behind efforts to revive and regenerate the environment for a people that have been so unjustly treated.

Given the enormous impact of their activities on the environment, they are expected to be at the forefront in the critical task of urgently developing the oil basin that has suffered so much neglect in the past. It is, in fact, in their interest to develop the region where they operate in order to guarantee peace, which is very necessary for them to continue with their work.

Rather than lead the assault on underdevelopment and injustice, however, some of the oil companies are busy throwing spanners in the works. For 51 years, they have planted more Christmas trees [capped oil wells] than those that would yield economic benefits.

It is, indeed baffling to learn that the oil companies are defaulting in the discharge of their statutory obligations to government agencies charged with the responsibility of developing the Niger Delta. The recent disclosure that oil firms owe the Niger Delta Development Commission, NDDC, a whooping N7.55 billion came to many as a rude shock.

According to the Managing Director of the Commission, Mr. Chibuzor Ugwoha, the foreign oil companies operating in the Niger Delta have accumulated $50 million in unpaid royalties to the NDDC. This, he said, is besides other statutory returns payable in naira, which the oil firms have also not remitted to the Commission.

Ugwoha said the 2005 audit report of the Nigeria Extractive Industry Transparency Initiative (NEITI) showed that some of the oil firms did not remit the funds, which represented part of the three per cent of their total budget which they are legally obliged to pay to the NDDC every year.

He said: “We are equally aware that a certain amount of money due to the Commission from the government is yet to be paid and that makes development difficult because we need a lot of money to be able to develop the region.

Those who know the terrain of the region will agree with me that where it is possible to construct one kilometer of road in some places with less challenges, it takes far more to build roads in the Niger Delta because of the terrain.”

He stated that the Commission was committed to a comprehensive development and transformation of the region, which he believes would ultimately curb the activities of militants.

He said: “President Umaru Yar’Adua had on August 6 during the inauguration of the new Board of the NDDC charged us that the region should be transformed and that we should focus specifically on major projects that would impact on the lives of the people so that problems that had lingered in the region will be things of the past.

However, these cannot be achieved without adequate funding as part of the funds due to the NDDC is yet to be remitted from the contributions on the part of oil companies and industries that operate in the Niger Delta.”

News Source: AllAfrica.Com

Tags:  Nigeria, oil companies