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Traditional rulers, communities canvass new role for securing oil installation

By Anietie Akpan (Calabar), Oluwaseun Akingboye (Akure) and Julius Osahon (Yenagoa)
10 July 2016   |   3:27 am
Against the backdrop of the recent bombing of oil facilities and plans by the Federal Government to militarise the Niger Delta, to forestall further vandalisation, traditional rulers and community leaders ....
King Okpoitari Diongoli

King Okpoitari Diongoli

Against the backdrop of the recent bombing of oil facilities and plans by the Federal Government to militarise the Niger Delta, to forestall further vandalisation, traditional rulers and community leaders in the region have called on government to assign responsibilities to them, which would enable them manage, monitor and secure facilities.

Only recently, the Niger Delta Avengers began a series of blowing up of oil installations in the country, which has resulted in the reduction of the country’s oil production. Currently, Nigeria produces less than the projected 2.2 million barrels per day. A situation, which led the Federal Government to deploy more military presence in the Niger Delta region.

Speaking with The Guardian, the traditional ruler of Opokuma Kingdom of Bayelsa State, King Okpoitari Diongoli and a community leader, Chief Thomas Okorotie, canvassed for the involvement of traditional rulers and host communities in securing oil installations.

Okorotie said one of the fundamental problems, which in fact, led to the vandalisation, is caused by oil companies, who use divide and rule system to deal with communities, but argued that genuine involvement of traditional rulers remained the best option to building sustainable peace and security in the region.

For Okorotie, “along with his people, the Community Development Committees, the youths and women group, they are all there. By the time you put all of them together, in conjunction with relevant security agencies, you will know you have a structure for peace and security.”

King Diongoli, on his part, called on government not only to empower traditional rulers, constitutionally, but also to involve host communities in the co-ownership, management, monitoring and securing of projects initiated by oil companies.

He said, “traditional rulers are the closest people to the communities and if you talk about pipelines, oil installations and all of that, except the off-shore, all the on-shore facilities are on land and are either owned by families, communities or in the broader sense, kingdoms, and they all have leaders.”

According to him, “the best way to manage these facilities is for the host communities, led by their traditional rulers, to own the projects or be co-owners. Owning the projects will make them part and parcel of it.”

The Ibedaowei of Opokuma Kingdom said, “when they are co-owners, there is no way they will vandalise it. Apart from the constitutional role, they should be given responsibility to manage, monitor and secure these facilities in their area.”

He continued, “now if you engage the local people in both production and securing oil facilities, you will find out that the busy mind will not have time to steal or attack oil installation or facilities.”

To end the lingering problem in the petroleum industry, as well as stem the growing militancy in the Niger Delta region, when President Olusegun Obasanjo assumed office in his first term, he set up a committee, called the Oil and Gas Industry Committee (OGIC), with a mandate to take a comprehensive look at Nigeria’s oil and gas sector and offer better ways of managing the industry.

The late Rilwanu Lukman led the OGIC. The committee submitted its report, and its recommendations formed the basis of Petroleum Industry Bill, which has since been subjected to further reviews and adjustments.

The bill seeks to: Create a conducive business environment for petroleum operations;
••enhance exploitation and exploration of petroleum resources in Nigeria for the benefit of Nigerians;
• optimize domestic gas supplies, especially; for power generation and industrial development;
• encourage investment in Nigerian petroleum industry;
• optimize government revenue;
• establish profit-driven oil entities;
• deregulate and liberalize the downstream petroleum sector;
• create efficient and effective regulatory agencies;
• promote the development of Nigerian content in the oil industry; and
• protect health, safety and the environment in petroleum operations.

Obatuga

Obatuga

The key implication is that it will become illegal to employ foreigners for certain skills that can be sourced locally, where such skills are sourced from abroad due to unavailability locally, a local understudying the expert is a requirement. The above meant more jobs for Nigerian local contractors, especially, those from the oil producing regions.

The bill did not receive the desired treatment by the National Assembly, so, in 2012, the former President, Goodluck Jonathan, represented the bill to the National Assembly. The bill prescribes 10 per cent of the net profit of upstream oil companies to be paid to oil communities fund, a development that had drawn the ire of some legislators from the North, who felt that the way the PIB was structured wouldn’t benefit them.

The bill, in its section 117, states that the fund shall be utilised for the development of the economic and social infrastructure of the communities within oil producing communities. Section 118, subsection (5) states “where an act of vandalism, sabotage or other civil unrest occurs that causes damage to any petroleum facility within a host community, the cost of the repair of such facility shall be paid from the PHC fund entitlement, unless it is established that no member of the community is responsible.”

A new version of the Petroleum Industry Bill, PIB, removes the strategic Host Community Development Fund. The new bill may have bowed to pressure from the International Oil Companies, IOCs, by scrapping the aspect of the bill that emphasises local content, as the new bill is silent on the issue.

The IOCs were allegedly against the old bill, because it emphasized local content, contrary to their preference to export gas, and reluctance to produce it for the Nigerian market.

The Chairman of Ayetoro Youths Congress (AYC), Mr. Iretolu Ajinde, also condemned the idea of deploying military personnel, whom he said, sometimes, “abuse the fundamental rights of the people.”

The Jegun of Idepe-Okitipupa, Oba Michael Obatuga, urged the Federal Government to dialogue with people in the area, whose continued vandalisation of public infrastructures, according to him, is an expression of grievance on some needs not met by the government to their communities.”

The traditional ruler said government should create room for more dialogue, give more concessions and sense of belonging to the people.The Muri Munene of the Efut, Muri Effiong Mbukpa, also condemned the idea of using the military to police the pipelines. The traditional ruler said, “if you use the military, you will only succeed in provoking sentiments and other negative things, which will not augur well for the government and the communities, but if you give the job to the traditional rulers, I think they will do a better job.”

He said, ‘if any traditional ruler fails in this duty, the ruler should be held responsible, because we deal with the communities and the pipelines pass through the communities. The village and clan heads and paramount rulers should be held responsible for any vandalisation. But they should be empowered to do that.”

The Muri Mbukpa said, “during the early stages of colonisation, tax collection role was given to traditional rulers to make sure that people within the community paid taxes. Now that government is talking about increasing internally generated revenue, the traditional rulers will be in a better position to do that. I think too much neglect of these people by government is not helping matters.”

The Olu of Igbokoda, Oba Afolabi Odidiomo, however, frowns at the idea of engaging militants to provide security to pipelines. In his words, “it is an indirect way of saying that government has shirked away from its responsibilities. We are encouraging those who are not supposed to have weapons to do so.”

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