Arrested development and outsourcing the Niger Delta

The Nigeria’s East-West Road is losing verve. It does not prop up in official discussions the same way it did when Goodluck Jonathan was president and a certain Godsday Orubebe was minister of Niger Delta Ministry, the federal government organ charged with delivering the road. Before he stopped being minister on May 29, 2015 following the failure of Jonathan at the presidential polls, Orubebe had proclaimed in one forum sometime in 2013, that the road would be completely ready for use in December 2014.

That was his proposition anyway. And since God is usually invited into process in Nigeria, it could be taken that God refused to dispose the proposed date for Orubebe. I am saying this because the issue was not absence of money. If anything, its abundance created the confusion. According to report, there was a mindboggling $2.1b on the table and the Presidency under Jonathan allegedly did not know how to do the allocation to achieve results.

Just 50 per cent of the big money would have settled the matter of the East-West Road beyond appeal, but nobody remembered to include the road in the allocations. Even Elder Orubebe lost concentration when it mattered most because he was busy attending to other things, like building a financial war chest to forcefully succeed Dr. Emmanuel Uduaghan as the governor of Delta Delta on May 29, 2015.

It still has to do with God. After all, in giving the deadline for completion, Orubebe said, “by the grace of God, the road will be completed in December 2014.” Therefore, if the road was not finished, it meant God held back His Grace. As we know, nothing happens in Nigeria by actions or inactions of men. Something external and transcendental must be responsible. And so, Orubebe was in order if God did not approve of his finishing the East-West Road as promised.

The East-West Road, which was awarded in 2004, has burst three widely proclaimed completion dates in 2010, 2012 and 2014. The charge now is for Nigerians, especially the folks from the South-South geo-political zone to be faithful and wait patiently for God’s time, which is usually the best.
But first, let me explain something. The way it is taking forever to finish, people may think that the East-West Road is a highway from Japan in the Far East of the globe to Canada in the Far West. That is not the case. The road is a mere 330-kilometre road from Warri through Port Harcourt to Oron in Akwa Ibom State. It is not even a virgin construction but enhancement of an existing route into a dual-carriage.

I passed through the Warri-Port Harcourt segment of the road two weeks ago after about three years. I had flown from Lagos to Warri two days earlier for the burial ceremony of late Senator Felix Ibru at Agbarha-Otor and I was continuing on road to Port Harcourt to attend the editors’ conference. Between Warri and Kaiama looks good. In fact, that stretch of the road has been completed, except the new bridge across River Nun. It is at this point too that the dual-carriage from Warri terminates and traffic from the opposite ends merges onto a common lane.

The smoothness continues to Mbiama or Yenagoa junction, where the road literally vanishes, leaving motorists to invent their own routes through Mbiama. My desire to get through the crucible fast and meet the opening ceremony of the editors’ conference at the Port Harcourt Presidential Hotel soon dissolved into apprehension and a deep concern for the poor Toyota Camry car that was doing the journey.

As the driver turned and returned to avoid deep gullies and search for a way out, the effect on the car was frightening. It was registering inside as if the entire suspension systems including the four tyres had been lost and the car was screeching on its bare chasis. I squeak and cursed repeatedly those causing me and my car this pain. We got through the less than two kilometers distance after 30 minutes.

And that was even a very good effort. On a bad day like when we were returning the following day, it could take an hour or far more to drive through Mbiama. The place is also a rough transit station for all manner of trucks including fuel tankers, which park indiscriminately on both sides of the failed road to increase the tension. I was imagining the unspeakable frustration on Mbiama’s market day when humans and equipment would contest, perhaps violently for right of way on the failed road.

In the midst of all this, there was something more frightening. All through, from Warri to Port Harcourt, there was no activity on the road yet neither the Federal Government nor any of the 36 state governments had announced a work free day, which Setraco, the contractors handling the road could be observing. The to and fro movements of men and material and the randomness of intensive construction activities were all gone.

I did not have the courage to seek explanation because I was afraid I could be told by probably an uninformed local opinion leader that the Federal Government had abandoned the road and the contractors had therefore decommissioned from site. Even if nobody was going to say that exactly, there was the likelihood that some APC stalwart would remind me not to expect wonders and so much speed from 73-year old President Muhammadu Buhari in a matter that Jonathan, Orubebe and all the Niger Delta political operators could not determine in six years and I would have nothing to say in reply.

Still, the appeal must go to Buhari to do something about the road, which connects the two oil cities of Warri and Port Harcourt. It is too important to be abandoned. On this, I have a stone that could kill many birds at the same time, including an eagle called militancy. Let’s look at it this way. If crude oil production in the Niger Delta has reduced by about one million barrel per day due supposedly to agitations for better life, what stops a deal that will bring the loss back on stream and the accruals warehoused for direct intervention in the issues creating the agitations?

At the going price of $40 dollars per barrel, it translates to a daily loss of $40m or N4b. Yet the Federal Government is not clearly doing much to recover the lost barrels outside negotiations. For just four months we will be talking of hefty accruals of N480b, which can conveniently fix what is outstanding in the East-West Road and there could be change for other things.

In fact, other concerns in the region can be isolated for determination using this model. That way, instead of seeking to create multiple agencies that will only deliver goodness to a rogue elite class, the Federal Government can cut a direct deal to save 50 per cent of crude oil money for five years and outsource the management of the fund to the UN to manage for good purpose. This may sound stupid, but I can’t think of a better approach for now. The war on pipeline vandalism and the Niger Delta Avengers involves money. I am saying in effect that the same resources expended to create war can be vired into creating peace and no law would be broken.

Even now, a Rotimi Amaechi, who is talking excitedly about building a rail line from Lagos to Calabar in less than three years had opportunity to do something much less with so much resources and time but failed. I don’t know what President Buhari thinks of him, but he (the President) should be guided that this same man could not deliver a rail line from Lagos Bus Stop to Waterline, less than five kilometres in Port Harcourt in eight years with his huge share of the 13 per cent derivation fund as governor.

The deliverance of the Niger Delta can hardly come through existing structures and operators. The region can no longer rely on leaders who serve themselves or wait for God to come down to serve the people. There has to be a new template and if it requires outsourcing the area to the UN or some more serious minded nation as a Mandated Territory, so be it! What will matter in the end is development not blind nationalism.