PIB & HOST COMMUNITIES: REPORT OF CONFERENCE PROCEEDINGS

The 2-day conference, Host Communities & the PIB: Opportunities, Challenges and the Way Forward held at Aldgate Hotel, Sani Abacha Road, Port Harcourt, Rivers State on April 23 - 24, 2013 was an outstanding conference bringing together 55 participants from various states in Nigeria’s Niger Delta region, advocates and stakeholders in the oil and gas industry plus 12 speakers and panelists over the two days. 

As the central point of oil production, the Niger Delta region is most gravely affected by oil prospecting and exploration activities in which the traditional means of subsistence, farming and fishing in the creeks, streams and mangroves are adversely affected by constant oil spills, gas flares, blow-outs and leaks, with spiraling effects on health, soil productivity, aquatic life and the environment. The conference therefore aimed to campaign for the improved governance of the environment and to strengthen the structure for community participation in the Petroleum Industry Bill (PIB), Nigeria’s latest legal regime for reforming its oil sector.

Lamentations of Niger Delta villagers: We no longer get fishes to catch in our creeks

By Gbenro Adeoye:

Mrs. Margaret Sunday, a fish farmer in Kenyangbene community, Gbaramatu Kingdom , an Ijaw coastal community in Warri South West Local Government Area of Delta State, has been in the business for about two decades. But in the period, Sunday said the last eight years have been tough, given the increasing oil exploration activities in her community.

Some 15 years ago, Sunday said she caught a weekly average of 20000 fishes, a figure that has reduced to about 1000 fishes.

Sunday said, “Even the 1000 fishes cannot be caught around the community, we have to go far away from the community. We used to catch plenty of fishes here before, but today, it’s very few and it’s getting more and more difficult for us to survive. We are supposed to be rich because of the oil but sadly, we are poor because our government does not look after us.”

According to Sunday, keeping her children in school is increasingly becoming a challenge due to the effects of pollution in her community.

Kenyangbene hosts a major oil flow station belonging to Chevron Nigeria Limited, where oil directly flows from the oil well to for primary treatment and control. However, the lot of the residents deeply contrasts with the heavily-guarded multi-million dollar investment seated within the community.

It is is predominantly made up of wooden shacks, with some planks, windows and doors hanging loosely from their nails and hinges. A familiar smell of fresh and smoked fish pervades the community, which is largely dominated by fishermen and fish mongers.

Although the community has light and potable water running in tiny silver pipes, our correspondent learnt that the utilities were the results of protests by community members.

An Ijaw community leader and executive member of the Egbema- Gbaramatu Central Development Foundation, Mrs. Josephine Ogoba, said, “They did not just get the light and water, they fought before the oil company succumbed to their demands and decided to supply them.”

Also, Kenyangbene has a public primary school, Kenyangbene Primary School, but to get secondary school education, pupils have to go to other communities by boat. There are no health centres in the community and residents have to rely on local drug stores.

The community chief, Mr. Aaron Ifitimo, said the community had been largely neglected by relevant authorities, adding that most policies affecting them are carried out without due consultations with the residents.

He said, “Government does not know what we are facing because they don’t visit here. Government officials ought to go round to the communities they govern but they have not been doing that.

“Last year, we had a serious flooding problem, where people died and crops were destroyed. But our government is only interested in taking all our money and leaving us worse than it met us.”

In the creeks, our correspondent observed that plants in the stream corridors have blackened roots, with the smell of oil spreading through the forests. Two other coastal communities in Warri South West Local Government Area, Batan and Egwan II are, however, faced with a different kind of problem.

Following the discovery of oil wells in the communities, Shell Nigeria reportedly asked the members of the communities to relocate to new sites without adequate compensation for their troubles. Ogoba said, “The residents were only asked to relocate to a new place but there was no provision for them except for a jetty. So far, people have refused to move to the new place as there is only one house there.”

In Ekpan, Uvwie Local Government Area, which is not an oil producing community, residents suffer the effects of air pollution from gas flaring by the Warri Refinery Petroleum Company located within the community.

Residents identified the soot observed on cars and other items within the community as the result of gas flaring. The Executive Director, Institute for Dispute Resolution and the National Coordinator, Campaign Against Arms Trade Network, Nigeria, Innocent Adjenughure, said more residents have been having respiratory ailments, which he ascribed to the pollution from the gas flaring.

He said, “We are not an oil producing community, but we have Chevron and WRPC on our land, causing pollution. Although, we have not been able to carry out any comprehensive survey, to know the exact impact of the gas flaring activity, we are sure that the black soot from the plant is causing harm to our people. Sometimes when I cough, sneeze or put a finger in my nose, I see black soot. The soot is like an umbrella over the community and it stains our clothes and covers our cars.”

In addition, the Chairman, Ekpan Development Committee, Mr. Godwin Omasibro, said the pollution worsens in the community after every rainfall. Omasibro, however, said that the leaders of the community have been using a delicate approach to make their grievances known to the government. According to him, other ways have got agitators killed in the past, although he failed to comment further on the issue.

He said, “Some people have died in this country for asking for their rights, so we are trying to tread softly. We have been talking to people but we have not been writing because what you say, you can deny later, but what you wrote and signed, will be difficult to deny.”

Also, Omasibro said an Italian, who was part of the team that constructed the plant where gas is being freely flared in the community, told some community members that it portended danger for residents. He said, “In 1978, when it was constructed, the Italian told us that after 50 years, we would start seeing some kinds of sickness that we never experienced before. Therefore, the health problems may start manifesting in some of us soon and in the children that are being born. In such children, the products of what their parents have taken in may manifest in them as predicted by the Italian.”

A farmer and fisherman in the community, Mr. Chris Wiliki, told Saturday PUNCH that he was already contemplating leaving his job for a more promising one, due to the dwindling fortune of the farming business in the community, occasioned by oil pollution.

Wiliki, who has been cultivating cassava, plantain and palm tree for over 30 years, said, “In the last 15 years, our lands have stopped producing good crops because of oil pollution. The fish ponds are also polluted; it’s only when it rains that the ponds gets cleaned a little by rain water.”

In her reaction, the Administrator and Media Officer for Spaces for Change, a human rights organisation, Ms. Funmilayo Fakeye, said residents should take interest in policies that seek to affect them. She said, “For instance, people in the Niger Delta should engage in dialogue over the Petroleum Industry Bill so that they can voice out their concerns before the bill is passed into law.”

PHOTOSPEAK: PIB Advocacy Tour of the Niger Delta 2

Photos of the Spaces for Change PIB Advocacy Tour of Niger Delta Communities: Kenyangbene, Egbema- Gbaramatu, Warri South West Local Government Area of Delta State; Ekpan, Uvwie Local Government Area

COMMUNITY SENSITIZATION AND PIB CAMPAIGN TOUR OF THE NIGER DELTA BEGINS

WHERE IS THE N6 BILLION PIB CAMPAIGN MONEY?

Federal Government planned to spend N6.201bn on an awareness campaign for the Petroleum Industry Bill (PIB). The objective of the nationwide campaign is to increase public understanding of the Bill's provisions and mobilise support for its speedy passage by the Nigerian parliament. According to news reports, the sum of N110.87m has been released and expended as of November 2012, leaving a balance of N6.09bn.

Now, the question is: How (and on what) is the Ministry of Petroleum Resources spending the funds budgeted for this campaign? How many sensitization meetings have been conducted across the country (as budgeted)? What steps have been taken to clarify the key provisions of the Bill, especially the controversial sections such as the Petroleum Host Community Trust Fund which continue to attract criticism for failing to establish a clear administrative framework? What efforts have been made to engage and assuage the civil society, critical stakeholders and generality of Nigerians who staged massive protests in January 2012 following the government's abrupt withdrawal of fuel subsidy?To what extent does the PIB address the range of policy and regulatory issues that triggered the January uprising?

Across several local and international news sites are sponsored personalized (supposedly PIB) ads steeped in unashamed narcissism. None of the ads attempt to explain what the PIB is about, but rather, seem determined to litter online spaces with vile adulations and nothing more!

We present the evidence (sourced from a variety of websites) to you and leave you to decide whether the N6 BILLION Naira PIB campaign fund is being spent appropriately or inappropriately. And what are the consequences?

You decide!

Groups Task Government on the Rising Cases of Baby Factories

On the occasion of this year’s International Children’s Day, a group of Nigerian and international non-governmental organisations, children and human rights organisations has condemned the rising commercialization of new born babies in parts of the country. 

Africans Unite Against Child Abuse (AFRUCA)-UK, the Environmental Rights Action/Friends of the Earth Nigeria (ERA/FoEN), Media Concern Initiative for Women & Children (MediaCon), Healing Hearts Foundation, Spaces for Change, Project Alert on Violence Against Women, the Charles and Doosurh Abaagu Foundation, and the Women Environmental Programme (WEP) in a joint release called for decisive steps by government and stakeholders to curb the menace popularly referred to as ‘baby factories’ boom.

‘This year’s Children’s Day celebration calls for sober reflection because more than ever before, our beloved country is again being made the laughing stock of the whole world’, said the statement, signed by AFRUCA’s Executive Director, Debbie Ariyo, Betty Abah, Gender Focal Person of the Environmental Rights Action, Spaces for Change’s Victoria Ibezim-Ohaeri, Josephine Effah-Chukwumah of Project Alert, Dr. Princess Olufemi-Kayode, Executive Director of MediaCon, WEP’s Priscilla Achakpa, Sophie Mbanisi and other rights activists.

The statement cited the recent clamp-down on a home in Imo State where 22 pregnant teenagers were rescued, waiting, according to media reports, to sell their babies each for between N50, 000 (Fifty Thousand Naira) to N350, 000 (Three Hundred and Fifty Thousand Naira), several police raids in Abia State of similar finds, more recently , the case in Lagos where an unborn baby’s sale had even been negotiated, increasing cases of rape of minors as well as and the recent discovery of a village near the Federal Capital Territory, Abuja, where, in the 21st Century, twin babies are killed at birth, and the recent arrests of Britons who allegedly entered the country to buy babies, as disheartening.

“In the light of this”, asks the statement, “any reason why anyone would doubt the rating by the Save the Children, an international organisation in Nigeria as one of the most endangered countries to be born?”

The release, while commending the prompt action of the Imo State governor, Rochas Okorocha in closing down all illegal motherless and adoption homes in his state, called on all other affected states, the Federal Ministry of Women Affairs, the National Agency for the Traffic in Persons (NAPTIP), the police and other relevant agencies to take urgent steps to bring the abominable act to a permanent halt.

“A nation can only beat its chest and look the world in the face when its most vulnerable groups are guaranteed safety and welfare, where children and indeed, humans are accorded the sanctity of life befitting humans everywhere. But what obtains in our nation today is a far cry and government must stop all its rhetoric and attend to this as a matter of urgency,” added Ariyo who was awarded an OBE by the Queen of England last year for her work for African children at home and in the Diaspora.”

“Nigeria is a country with laws regardless of what impressions people have, the problem has always been with enforcement,” noted Princess Olufemi-Kayode of MediaCon. “We do have the Child Rights Act at National level and at least most states in the country have enacted their Child Rights Law and the current Act defines a new child protective system that covers Nigeria’s ratification and agreement to the United Nations Child Rights Convention (CRC) and to the African Charter on the Rights and Welfare of the Child (ACRWC). Another question would be: what criminal charges are being levied against the hired virile men who were paid to pregnant these underage children? Definitely charges of rape should also be included in their charge! We have to make an example that this kind of human atrocity would no longer be tolerated in our country,” added Princess Olufemi-Kayode.

Photo credit: Herald Sun News

Chinua Achebe and the Nobel Prize for Literature

In the last 24 hours, and unfortunately less than a week to the burial of Prof Chinua Achebe, there has been an upsurge in some quarters about the place of Chinua Achebe in Literature, African Literature to be precise, and the fact that his works as great as they are did not qualify him to win a Noble Laureate. So all those who love and revere Achebe should start crying over this sense of loss, that is more than even losing the great literary icon itself. I consider the dusts being raised by this two issues as quite unnecessary and either the handiwork of people looking for something to do or that of mischief makers lurking behind 'genuine' desire to re-educate us all on what we already know.

There are certain things that are uniquely Nigerian, and this is one of them. Creating controversies out of settled issues.

First, those who are of the belief that Achebe should have got the Nobel Prize in Literature have the right to air their views, those who believe it does not pan out that way are equally right. Whether they both know so is another subject of discussion. But I am disappointed at those who are making an issue out of this, same as those calling for a posthumous Nobel Award for him as if Achebe is less without the Nobel Prize. Such calls in my opinion tantamount to an insult on the name,person, and the globally acknowledged brand that is Achebe.

Indeed,it would have been good for Achebe to have been a Nobel Laureate. But it is better that he is Chinualumogu Achebe, which is far greater an honour and achievement than being a Nobel Laureate. Achebe has left a big indelible mark in the sands of time, generations yet unborn across Africa will always remain grateful to this man who told the story of who they are in a way they understood.

Nobel Prize?

There are several outstanding writers in history that never made it to the roll call of the Nobel Committee, controversial as those decisions were,most of which have reduced the Prize instead of elevating it, these writers were never lessened by that inability to be so chosen.

Great names that have been etched into the immortality of Literature's hall of fame such as Marcel Proust (I read his book, Albert Camus as a first year student at Nsukka, it changed something in me), Ezra Pound, James Joyce, Vladimir Nabokov, Virginia Woolf, Jorge Luis Borges, Gertrude Stein, August Strindberg, John Updike, Arthur Miller, Bertolt Brecht, Yannis Ritsos did not win the Prize. Those who have followed the Nobel controversies in literature know so well that all these names mentioned here were sidelined for reasons that has nothing to do with the quality, or lack of it, of their works. Can we forget that influential names in the field of Literature such as Mark Twain, Leo Tolstoy, Henrik Ibsen, Émile Zola never won the Prize?

The controversies that have trailed the Committee's decision in Literature stems from the uniqueness of arts, unlike say Medicine, Chemistry, Physics or even Economics where inventions , discoveries and even theories are easily identifiable for all to see. But not in literature, which brings us to the question of who decides what is "a lofty and sound idealism" as contained in the Will of Sir Alfred Nobel being the basis for choosing who wins the Prize. And this rests with the Nobel Committee some of whom cannot write a one liner.

Should we use the Prize to decide the best the world has to offer in literature when majority of the laureates have been European. Can we simply wave that off and say there is no European bias in deciding who becomes a Literary Laureate? Is it not on record that Swedes have received more prizes than all of Asia put together, is that a reflection of the intellectual prowess of the Swedes over Asians, or a mark that Asians have no literature that could be said to have '' a lofty and sound idealism''?

Is it not on record that Horace Engdahl, one time permanent secretary of the Academy, was quoted as saying that "Europe still is the center of the literary world" and that "the US is too isolated, too insular. They don't translate enough and don't really participate in the big dialogue of literature. A claim which his successor tried to water down saying that "In most language areas ... there are authors that really deserve and could get the Nobel Prize and that goes for the United States and the Americas, as well,", but he never made any attempt to deny that there is European bias in the selection process, acknowledging that "I think that is a problem. We tend to relate more easily to literature written in Europe and in the European tradition''.

So next time you try to mass market the sentiments of a few old men in Sweden the standard the entire world should defer to, please keep it to yourself.

The Nobel Prize would not have made Achebe more popular,more read or more respected. And without it, he is not lesser.

Chinua Achebe,we owe you a debt that can never be repaid!

Jee nke oma.

Kelechi Deca,
May,18,2013
Surulere-Lagos.

Abuja Land Swap Initiative: The Challenges Within

Under the Land Swap Initiative (LSI), 3302.49 hectares of land belonging to 22 (Twenty Two) predominantly poor indigenous villages and communities in the  Federal Capital Territory (FCT) have been compulsorily taken away,  partitioned and parceled out to 13 (Thirteen) private property developers despite heightened due-process concerns regarding the handling of important issues around land, resettlement, compensation and livelihoods in the community.

Recently introduced by Honourable Bala Mohammed-led Federal Capital Territory Administration (FCTA), the Abuja  land swap scheme is garbed with the comforting rhetoric about “delivering decent and affordable mass housing in a well-planned city for all Abuja residents including the original inhabitants of the FCT”. The essence of the LSI is to give an investor a particular percentage of land in a district in exchange for the provision of infrastructure in the earmarked district comprising Kabusa, Waru, Zhindna, PigbaI, PigbaII, TakusharaI, Burum, TakalafiyaI, TakalafiyaII, Chafuyi, Shape, Yimitu, Burum, Gbagyi, Dakibiu, Zokoyakwo, Sheretti, Ketti, Anaknayita, Dnako, Lokogoma, Wumba, and Wasa within the Ketti and Waru community in Abuja Municipal Area Council. Even though the landowning rural dwellers are still in occupation of those districts, the title to their ancestral lands and farmlands has been transferred to the private developers.

Palpable fear and tension pervades the villages affected by the land swap scheme. This fear is well founded: development projects of this nature are often preludes to forced evictions and large-scale displacement of the urban poor, including indigenous communities. Within the 22 villages that make up the Ketti and Warru districts–known as Sector “O” District, Phase IV - in Abuja Municipal Area Council of the FCT, inhabitants reiterate that the land acquisitions had happened without their consent; without notices of intention to acquire and/or of revocation of our existing customary rights; without any comprehensive plan for resettlement and /or integration of the affected communities; without provision for payment of adequate compensation; without provision for alternative farmlands; and in total disregard of the constitutionally-guaranteed right to fair hearing.

Despite assurances by the Minister of the Federal Capital Territory, Senator Bala A. Mohammed that affected communities would be carried along in the implementation of the programme, recent events show that the FCTA has no interest and will to engage the local people and communities in fulfillment of that promise. For instance, it was not until after the FCTA had executed MOUs with private developers, and distributed partitioned communal lands among the contracted investors that it then announced to communities of its intention to carry out survey work and to subsequently commence enumeration of, and valuation of crops and economic trees within Ketti and Waru Districts. 

Later efforts to engage inhabitants of the already-distributed districts apparently fall short of stipulated legal rules and due process procedures pertaining to land takings by the government. Queries raised by community representatives regarding the nature, character and modalities for transferring the allocated lands to foreign investors have been ignored and remain unanswered. At an April 26, 2013 town hall meeting involving predominantly  Hausa-speaking FCDA officials and the community representatives, the president of the Original Inhabitants Development Association of Abuja demanded an explanation of the land swap scheme in Hausa so that majority of the locals in attendance would fully understand the nature of the scheme. FCDA officials declined that request. Likewise, the FCDA has not responded to similar demands contained in petitions, position papers and press statements issued by the local youth wing, Ketti District Community Youth Forum.  

Rather than provide relevant information on the precise nature, scope and content of the project and establish processes for effective consultations and participation of the affected communities, the FCDA resorted to using force to suppress local agitations. The arrest and unlawful detention of four local youths involved in the organization of the Cultural Heritage Day is quite illustrative. The cultural event had presented an opportunity to mobilize and sensitize local youths and inhabitants on the implications on the LSI on their collective wellbeing. 

While efforts to improve housing and urban infrastructure within the city metropolis are welcome, pushing people from inadequate housing into homelessness is not the solution to the acute housing shortage currently witnessed in the federal capital.  Spaces for Change supports the right of the inhabitants of Ketti and Warru to have a say in decisions that affect their lives. Genuine consultation with, and participation by the affected residents in the design of FCTA’s housing development strategies and programmes are indispensable strategies for ensuring that the human rights of the indigenous communities are respected.

 

To download Spaces for Change's full report: Abuja Land Swap Initiative: The Challenges Within, click here