Vice President [now Acting President] Professor Yemi Osinbajo recently paid a familiarisation and fence mending visit to the Niger Delta region, starting with the Gbaramatu Kingdom in Delta State. The visit provided him with an opportunity to reinforce the resolve of the Federal Government to ensure the establishment of the proposed Maritime University slated for Okerenkoko in the area. According to the Presidency, similar visits to other communities in the region would follow in due course.
Several factors inspired the visit, among which is the need for the government to demonstrate its commitment to adopt a wider space for dialogue than had been the case all along. This much was promised by President Muhammadu Buhari in a bid to reinvent the interface between the government and the agitation in the zone. The visit therefore created the opportunity of a face to face engagement between the leadership of the zone and the top stratum of the government. Secondly the visit also provided a first-hand experience for delivering some home truths to the zone, closer to home. The difference between a Presidential address from Aso Rock Villa in Abuja and from the creeks is clear.
And the dividends of the initiative came sooner than expected as Osinbajo came, saw and was dismayed. Expressing his disappointment at the state of affairs in the zone, Osinbajo lamented over the level of economic stagnation, squalor and environmental degradation. Of particular concern to him was the inexcusable failure of past efforts at remediation by generations of government development agencies to make any impact on the terrain. According to him, virtually every part of the region is dotted with signboards of proposed infrastructural projects, most of which are uncompleted and or simply abandoned. This he rightly attributed to the lack of change in the state of affairs in the region.
Osinbajo rested the blame for the situation on the inexcusable failure of generations of interventionist initiatives by designated agencies ranging from the Niger Delta Basin Development Authority (NDBDA) in the 1960s, the Oil Mineral Producing Areas Development Commission (OMPADEC), the Niger Delta Development Commission (NDDC) and the Presidential Amnesty Programme. He also noted the failure of the oil producing companies to do the needful in order to change the story of the environment, as their efforts have not addressed the complement of challenges of the terrain. Osinbajo however called for synergy among the stakeholders in the zone with respect to fostering for it a future of promise and pride for the country. Comparing the potentials of the region with territories of similar disposition worldwide he launched a new perspective of the region that should serve as the new template for defining the region. Like any other river delta region of the world the Niger Delta remains a terrain with inexhaustible potentials for economic wellbeing for the country. This makes the present state of the Niger Delta as a bedrock of militancy and vandalism, an aberration of monumental proportions. The state of affairs there is akin to where swine are allowed to trample on precious nuggets.
That is why the visit of Osinbajo to the creeks should provide the needed inspiration for a turn-around in the conduct of affairs of the region by all stakeholders comprising the Federal, state and local governments, as well as all other actors in the region. While the federal government should walk its talk on dialogue, the leaders of the zone should also work towards the de-escalation if not total cessation of militancy and vandalization by the armed youth, of critical oil and gas infrastructure. It is not for nothing that throughout human history of wars, all conflicts always end not on the battle field but on the humble round table.
