Britain has given what looks like two tough conditions that must be met before United Kingdom investors would be encouraged to return to the Niger Delta.
The conditions were tabled by the High Commissioner, Paul Arkwright, who visited Port Harcourt, the Rivers State capital, for the premiering of a documentary on the challenges and opportunities in the Niger Delta.
The conditions given by Britain seem close to what the US Consul-General earlier handed down to the Rivers State government in April 2018. This seems to indicate that Europe and America could be working together on the matter of return of multinationals to Port Harcourt.
The US has hinged its return to what it called curbing electoral violence. The US Consul-General, E-John Bray had told the Rivers State government to post a violence-free 2019 election image before the request to set up a Business Liaison Office in Port Harcourt would be considered.
Speaking on a panel of five persons this time around in Port Harcourt, the British High Commissioner made it clear that until the environment was cleaned up and violence reduced or stopped, UK companies would not bow to the pressure for their return to Port Harcourt and the Niger Delta.
Pressed further by business owners from the region at the event, Arkwright said the abduction of five British citizens in the Niger Delta in recent past and the shooting of one of the victims in the presence of the others sent shockwaves back to the UK through media reports. He said the scenario created huge negative impressions in the UK leading to the travel ban and resolve of the private sector to shun Nigeria’s oil region.
As more pressure mounted from the audience, the High Commissioner who said he would be returning to the UK in the next four months said the perception the British people have about the oil region was negative.
This was with the picture of violence and militancy laced with environmental pollution. He said even if the facts were different, the perception must change first.
“If you keep having these things (pollution, pipeline breaking, kidnapping, violence) investors won’t come,” he said.
The participants at the Banquet Hall of the Hotel Presidential made up mostly of business owners from the Port Harcourt Chamber of Commerce led by Emi Membre-Otaji, and the Rivers Entrepreneurs and Investors Forum led by Ibifri Bobmanuel tried to make a positive case for the oil region.
Membre-Otaji reminded the UK that even in Iraq and Libya, oil executives from the oil majors still lived and did business there. Other contributors said youth restiveness was not there in the first place but that it was caused by years of neglect by both the government and oil majors.
The participants seemed worried by the tough conditions, probably aware that it was not going to be easy to clean up the Niger Delta environment and stop violence. The Ogoni clean up alone is expected to gulp $1Bn and it has taken eight years to prepare the grounds to start an exercise that is estimated to last for 30 years.
Yet, more pipes are being broken to spill more crude into the creeks. Heating of crude oil to extract petroleum is adding to soot in the atmosphere. The clean up of the entire Niger Delta is estimated in some quarters to $100 billion.
On violence, most persons in the region say they live at the mercy of kidnappers and sundry gunmen who operated as militants but may have settled in as cultists. The governments look helpless.
Earlier, the Rivers State government represented by the deputy governor, Iplibo Harry Banigo, listed the good works of the governor to attract investments and blamed anything bad on the federal government.
The REIF president, Bobmanuel, on his own, said the documentary produced by Chioma Onyenwe was a reflection of reality. “We are an industrious people but there is no blueprint for the development of the Niger Delta.”
He argued that Port Harcourt was a city established to drive commerce by setting up a port, saying the measures to save PH could only come from the FG. “We lost track with a trapped seaport with 20 per cent capacity performance. There is need for technology to drive entrepreneurship once again”
On his own, Membre-Otaji urged the international community to remember that the Niger Delta people had peacefully traded with the Europeans since the 19th century, saying whatever happened in recent times had causes and could easily be resolved especially if Britain could take up the mantle.
