Kachikwu: Niger Delta has nothing to show for FG’s $40bn investment

The Minister of State for Petroleum Re­sources, Dr Ibe Ka­chikwu, on Thursday dis­closed that the Niger Delta region has nothing to show for the over $40 billion the Federal Government and oil companies have invested in the development of the re­gion.
Kachikwu, who spoke in Abuja at a meeting with tra­ditional rulers from coastal states in the oil-rich region, challenged the monarchs to find out why the huge amount of money has not led to the development of the zone.
He said the Federal Gov­ernment has no plans to mil­itarise the Niger Delta region –despite the continuing at­ long and urged the various groups to engage the gov­ernment to find lasting so­lutions to the Niger Delta challenges.

Kachikwu explained that the $40 billion was the cu­mulative figure from allo­cations to the Niger Delta Development Commission (NDDC) derivation reve­nue shared to the states in the zone and financial com­mitments to development projects by oil companies operating in the area.
The minister lament­ed that despite the cease­fire declared by the Niger Delta Avengers (NDA), oil pipelines were attacked on Monday, leading to the loss of 150,000 barrels of crude oil daily.
He said: “If you look at the amount of money that has been put into the Niger Delta over the last 10 years, on paper it is over $40 bil­lion. These have come from the NDDC, derivation and oil companies’ investments.
“But as I go to the creeks, I see no single infrastruc­ture that you can point to as the result of these invest­ments and what it means is that we must now begin to do a soul-searching within ourselves and ask where did all these monies go to, who took them, what were they applied for, what were the roles of our own people and others not necessarily from the region?”
Kachikwu continued: “Unless you solve the gov­ernance and transparency issues in terms of spending this money, it doesn’t mat­ter how much money you put into this place, you are going to go back to square one and so we must begin to ask fundamental questions about how these institutions are run and what roles our traditional rulers play in the decision-making process on how these projects are run; there are lots of home truths that must happen.”
The minister stated that while the government comes up with modalities for dia­logue, stakeholders in the region must separate crimi­nality from their genuine ag­itation for development.
He said: “We must, in going forward, separate crim­inality from the genuine demands of the Niger Del­ta because once you throw criminality into it, individ­uals who are self-serving disrupt the message we are sending and there is a good message you are sending but it must be delivered very ag­gressively on the negotiation table and not on the field of destruction.”
Kachikwu warned that the government will not re­sist the temptation of com­ing against wanton destruc­tion of oil facilities and lives in the region.
The minister said there was a need to ensure that the current ceasefire arrange­ment worked with the in­clusion of every known mil­itant.
“I urge you to continue to reach out to whichever splin­ter group that has not come into this, that they must en­gage. My position is always that the solution to the Niger Delta crisis is not by force of arms, either from the mili­tants or the Federal Govern­ment. The best is to engage and it can only take place when there is an environ­ment to engage,” Kachikwu said.
The Bolowei of Gbara­matu Kingdom, Chief Wel­lington Okirika, who read the position of the mon­archs on the federal govern­ment’s quest for peace, said six conditions are needed for a fruitful dialogue to take place.
The monarchs asked the government to set up a di­alogue team, release 10 stu­dents that were arrested on May 28, 2016, in Oporoza by the Nigerian Army, as well as others in detention for trumped up charges.
They also asked that a golden sword which repre­sents the symbol of author­ity of the Gbaramatu tradi­tional institution, and three speedboats of the tradition­al council in the custody of the Nigerian Army, should be returned to it; that the army stops its military ac­tion in the region, and the government makes a cat­egorical statement on the opening of the Maritime University in Okerenkoko for the 2016/2017 academ­ic activities.