Conceived in the 1970s, the Trans-Saharan Gas Pipeline, TSGP, was to bear natural gas from Warri in the Niger Delta to Niger Republic, Algeria and Europe. On January 14, 2002, then Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation, NNPC, and Algerian national oil and gas Sonatrach signed project preparation Memorandum of Understanding, MUO. They also contracted Penspen Limited in 2005 for feasibility study; with result privileging project as technically and economically viable.
Futuristic in economic diversification; in content, however, the project was couched in exclusion, injustice and federal arrogance against the Niger Delta host communities that own Nigerian oil and gas fields. Led by the Ijaw, the regional minorities demanded for inclusion as collateral partners. It was a just demand considering the environmental and health hazards associated with oil and gas explorations. The Federal Government responded by escalating its military campaign in the region. Data by the Monitoring Unit of the Ijaw Youth Council (IYC), shows more Niger Delta youths were killed in the period following the feasibility MOU.
On July 3, 2009, in Abuja, the energy ministers of the Tripartite of Nigeria, Niger and Algeria signed an intergovernmental agreement on project with the final agreement signed July 28, 2022. Host communities were never consulted nor mentioned in this document. It was a gross injustice.
Then the project came to a well-deserved end in a dramatic anti-climax: The Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta (MEND,) stepped out of the shadows and intervened. It told anyone who cared to listen that until the contentious issues of resource ownership and environmental degradation associated with oil and gas exploitations were resolved, the TSPL was an exercise in futility. And it was so.
One lesson we took away from the TSGP misadventure was Aso Rock’s insistence that Nigerian Instrument of Independence bestowed on the state full ownership of all minerals under the earth. This faulty argument has popped up again in our opposition to the Nigeria-Morocco Gas Pipeline, NMGP.
Among our objectives, we aim to prove that Nigerian independence never depleted nor negated pre-colonial Treaties of Friendship and Protection between the Kings and Chiefs of Oil Rivers Protectorate, known today as the Niger Delta region, and the British government. We take a closer look at the NMCP.
Imperialist-inspired NMGP
The idea to build a monster pipeline, the so-called NMGP, from Brass Island in the Niger Delta to Europe through Morocco was unveiled when King Mohammed VI of Morocco visited President Mohammadu Buhari in December 2016. The pipeline will carry three billion standard cubic feet of gas per day from the Niger Delta to Dakhla in Morocco. The route covers Benin, Togo, Ghana, Cote d’Ivoire, Liberia, Siera Leone, Guinea, Guinea-Bissau, the Gambia, Senegal, Mauritania and Morocco. In Morocco, it will link the existing Maghreb European Pipeline, MEP, originating from Algeria to Spain in Europe.
The total length is 5600 kilometers from Brass to Morocco. But when you factor in MEP, it becomes 7000 kilometers with thirteen Compressor Stations. Pipeline configuration is 48 Inch X 5,300 Km (offshore from Brass Island of Bayelsa State in Nigeria to Dakhla in Morocco) and 56 X 1, 700 Km (onshore from Dakhla in Morocco to MEP). The price tag is $25 billion.
When the final MOU was signed in Rabat, Morocco, by the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation Limited, NNPCL; ONHYM of Morocco and Economic Community of West African States, ECOWAS, it became clear that the document effectively placed the Niger Delta people and their resources under Moroccan control and suzerainty. The sectarian NNPCL claimed pipeline would create wealth and control desertification through sustainable and reliable gas supply. There was no mention of controlling the perennial floods plaguing host communities that produce the gas for fighting desertification.
No true lover of freedom should support this project. Imposed NMGP is an existential threat to the region and must be stopped. It is illegal, exclusive, exploitative and imperialist-inspired. The propaganda churned out by the Federal Government in justification of this project is suspicious considering its silence when Morocco, a North African country, gate-crashed into ECOWAS as full member. Today, Morocco controls the ECOWAS and NMGP. The secrecy that characterised the origin of the pipeline exposes it as the Trojan Horse to railroad militant Arab expansionism into the Niger Delta and Black Africa.
Grounds for rejecting NMGP
We are opposed to the NMGP on four grounds. One, in the Islamic world, West Africa is deemed Moroccan exclusive sphere of influence. Any West African president, minister or general who considered himself true Muslim is expected to unquestionably take directive from the Moroccan monarch; even when such directive is contrary to self and national interests. Dissent could earn the dissenter serious sanction or assassination by Islamists. The fate of Anwar Sadat
The 2016 meeting between King Mohammed VI and President Buhari was one between the Master and the Servant. Servant Buhari compromised national interests, as he could neither think nor talk before his guest, taking directive from a powerful foreign Master. We are saying no to the NMGP. The unhealthy decision to establish it was anti-One Nigeria. Only conflicts can logically emanate from it.
Two, Europe cannot be electrified with gas from the Niger Delta while the region remains wrapped in primordial darkness. Europe will go to war to stop that were the reverse the case.
Three, what the host communities of Niger Delta want is the abandoned Brass Liquified Natural Gas, LNG, and not this fraud called NMGP. And four, the violence visited on host communities in the era of fossil fuel looms large in this age of natural gas wonder. Moroccan-controlled NMGP will provoke unmanageable resistance no amnesty can contain, rest assured.
Pre-Colonial Treaties voids NMGP
On October 1, 1960, the independent Nigerian government exchanged notes with the British High Commissioner in Nigeria. Known as accord No. CO. 2737 of October 1, 1960, the document transferred all treaty obligations on the British Government to Nigerian Government. Importantly, the transfer excluded the Ijaw and other minorities of the Niger Delta covered by separate treaties known as the 19th Century Protection and Friendship Treaties between Rivers Kings and Chiefs and the British monarch.
Dr Harold Dappa-Biriye, who represented regional minorities in the 1957 and 1958 Nigerian Constitutional Conferences in Lancaster House, London, stated in black and white that he was never a party to the treaties transfer, “I, as the Treaty Mandatory of Rivers Kings, Chiefs and People, did not give consent to the deal. What is worse is that the Governor of the Eastern Region did not comply with the constitutional Provision for such transaction. Under Paragraph 65 of the 1954 Constitution Report, it is clear that Legislation giving effects to international Agreements will not operate until the Governor of the Region had declared by notice in the official gazette of the Region that it shall so have effect. There is no such Gazette. Therefore CO. No. 2737 of October 1, 1960, is defective in respect of Treaties affecting communities in Rivers State.”
To buttress his point, Dr Biriye gave two instances where the British Government itself agreed that pre-colonial treaties with Ijaws and other parties were not affected by national independence. First instance, “A Statement by the British Government was read to the 1958 Constitutional Conference that treaties between the Crown and Rivers Kings and Chiefs are valid despite the advent of Independence to Nigeria and self-government to the Regions. The Statement also affirmed that the Treaties imposed Moral Obligations on Great Britain. In my reply accepting the statement, I maintained that Moral Obligations are the acme of human society. I said further that it is only in a generation where Morality is at a discount that men resort to legal mechanisms to wreak their wrongs.”
To be continued tomorrow.
Eke can be reached via: Email: chigachieke@yahoo.co.uk
