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Floods and erosion have intensified in the Niger Delta region, but no dime has been received from the over N800 billion outstanding in the Ecological Fund for the Niger Delta Development Commission (NDDC) to combat the menace.
The Commission had reported to the Senate six months ago that its share of 3 percent of the Ecological Fund amounting to over N800 billon was yet to be remitted to intervention commission since its inception 15 years ago (2000) during the Olusegun Obasanjo administration.
By middle of June 2016, the Commission was yet to record any change in remittance or any funds from the Ecological Fund to address the myriad of ecological challenges facing the oil region.
A team reviewing the challenges last week in the NDDC office was said to have obtained information showing that the upland section of the region has been beset by push from the coastal areas by surge of the sea eating up the land and push from the north through desert encroachment forcing herdsmen down south for grazing.
The study revealed new pressures on land that have caused floods and landslides threatening the available land spaces in the middle of the country which form the upland section of the oil region.
The management of the NDDC is said to be worried that while these problems abound, the Ecological Fund seemed to be silent. This is said to have raised fears of future disasters if nothing is done now.
The Federal Government established the Ecological Fund through the Federation Account Act, I981, as a pool of funds that would be solely devoted to funding of ecological problems. Decrees 36 of 1984 and 106 of 1992, as well as the Allocation of Federation Account Modification Order of 2002, later modified in 2009, had been regulating the Fund.
The Fund, which originally constituted one per cent of the Federation Account, was reviewed to two per cent in 1992, and later one per cent of the derivation allocation was added, thus bringing the total percentage to three. Of this amount, 48.5 per cent goes to the Federal Government, while 24 per cent are set aside and 20 per cent for states and local governments respectively.
The states of the NDDC were by the Act setting up the fund remit a percentage to the Commission by each state and this ought to be passed directly from the Fund to the NDDC, but nothing was done either by the states or the Fund. The failure of the Nigeria Liquefied Natural Gas (NLNG) Company to also remit three per cent of its annual budget as required of all oil companies operating in the country is said to have also worsened the ecological fund dearth. The NLG had gone to court to obtain a ruling against the demand but the senate said last March that it had obtained the judgment to find if truly it had debarred the company from any form of contribution to the Commission.
The senate committee however said it had obtained the annual budget of the NLNG to determine the true worth of three per cent, an indication that the NDDC may be entitled to some remittances from the NLNG after all. Until these are sorted out, the NDDC may continue to run dry of funds to execute meaningful projects while agitation and violent demands including bombing threaten peace in the region and the oil economy.
