These are perilous times for President Muhamadu Buhari and the 36 state governors of Nigeria. In fact some would argue that this is not a good time to be president or governor in Nigeria. Already, about 27 of the 36 states are said to be so insolvent, that the governor’s are unable to pay civil servants their monthly emoluments without assistance from the federal govt.
The burden is even more severe on the seven, active crude oil producing state governors who are now facing the risk of having oil installations in their domain vandalized by Niger Delta Avengers- an apparent offshoot of the dreaded MEND and such other environment rights or criminal elements now holding sway in the Niger Delta.
For the sake of the clarity of the issues at hand, let’s use Delta state and governor, lfeanyi Okowa, in whose domain, the militants recently attacked oil installations as example. With the resurgent militants destroying oil production and transportation facilities -forcados crude oil pipeline linking export terminal operated by Shell and a rig owned by Chevron- twice in two weeks, Delta state is now groaning in pains and the governor is practically traumatized. This is because owing to the substantial loss of estimated 300,000 barrels of oil per day, due to the damaged oil infrastructure, Delta state will suffer reduced monthly revenue allocation from the Federation Account, FAAC.
Essentially, the amount of money received as Delta state’s portion of the 13% derivation fund, is determined by the volume of oil pumped into the central reserve for export from the facilities located in the domain of the various oil producing states.
Although Delta state is populated by about five, 5 million, people, it has a huge wage bill of about N8b.
l’m told that since the oil price slump, the state govt has been receiving a little more or less than N6b from the federation account, FAAC which is a shortfall of about N2b needed to settle workers salaries monthly. What that means is that workers emoluments are augmented with Internally Generated Revenue, IGR which is also a paltry N2-3b due to slow down in business activities.
The scenario in delta state described above, applies particularly to all the oil/gas producing states and generally to all the states in Nigeria -from Abia to Zamfara because they are all practically sustained by oil revenue which accounts for about 70% of national income and 90% of nation’s fx income.
In a recent interview with the chief executive officer of Shell Petroleum and Development Company, SPDC, in Nigeria, Osagie Osunbor, he revealed that in 2014, theft of crude oil from SPDC pipelines was 37,000 barrel per day. It dropped to 25,000 in 2015, in part due to sale of some of the facilities to indigenous investors and the SPDC boss further disclosed that the number of attacks also dropped from 139 in 2014 to 93 in 2015, but nonetheless, theft and sabotage still constitute about 85% of spills from SPDC pipelines.
Here is the deal: Currently, there are a plethora of youths centric outfits such as the National Youth Service Corp, NYSC set up way back in 1978, as a national integration forum for Nigerian youths. There is also the National Security and Civil Defense Corp, NSCDC, which is an unarmed paramilitary agency set up to ensure public order, just as there is Federal Road Safety Corps, FRSC focused on safety on Nigerian roads.
So there already exists, a blue print for setting up such a youth focused organization and the requisite experience abounds for its operation.
Considering that a recent advertisement for application into the Nigeria Police Force, NPF, attracted about one million youths even though only a few thousands were needed, the importance of creating more platforms to harness the productivity of these apparently idle but virile young men and women in their prime, for the growth and development of Nigeria, cannot be over emphasized.
A couple of years ago, an advertisement by Nigerian immigration service, inviting youths for employment also attracted a record number of them, but due to lack of effective crowd control strategies, a number of youths who turned up in droves ,were unfortunately trampled to death during stampede.
What the two scenarios described above imply, is that, there already exists a workforce with latent energy, waiting to be harnessed as veritable human resources for the proposed Critical National Assets Protection Corp.
Their very robust training in security matters qualifies them as veritable pool of potential human resources developments that could drive the Critical National Assets Protection Corps initiative.
It goes without saying that the Corp members would only supervise licensed private security firms to be sourced from the various communities where the assets are located. That way, there would be a sense of ownership by the community and the current concept of relying on vigilante-rag tag army- would be eliminated.
Ideally, at this level of our development as a nation ,there need not be vigilante groups like civilian, Joint Task Force, JTF in the north, Odua People’s Congress, OPC in the south west and now Bakasi boys who just been resuscitated in the south east, but in the absence of adequate protection by the military and police, citizens are left with no other option than to rely on such ad hoc measures which is reminiscent of what obtained in the USA before it became a confederation.
Allocation of some oil wells to state governments and indigenes of Niger Delta, is for instance, one of the demands, which l believe authorities may not be averse to if properly structured. All the perspectives captured above boil down to govt’s inability to sort out the genuine grievances in a multi ethnic, and multi religious country. This is why we seem to be going round and round in vicious circles trading crime and violence from region to region, based on the cleavages and religious colorations of whoever is president in Nigeria.
Magnus Onyibe , a development strategist and Futurologist is a former commissioner in Delta state govt and an alumnus of the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy, Tufts University, Medford,Massachusetts, USA.
Magnus Onyibe
