Nothing places in additional stark reduction the squandering of Nigeria’s fortunes than the state of growth of different oil-endowed climes just like the Gulf states vis-a-vis the utter despoilation of our oil-rich Niger Delta. Why couldn’t the Niger Delta be developed like Dubai, which within the area of twenty years, and earlier than our very eyes, grew from an unremarkable fishing city to the Center East’s enterprise, tourism and tradition epicentre?
In one in all his many printed articles, Brandon Bekker, whereas on a sabbatical in Dubai wrote a bit he titled ‘A Dream within the Desert: The Man Who Constructed Dubai’, the place he stated, “If ever there was an instance of a excessive development, excessive efficiency metropolis, Dubai would definitely be it.
“What’s much more spectacular concerning the meteoric development of Dubai is the position that one man performed in growing the concepts, methods and groups that fuelled it. I enormously admire Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum, prime minister and constitutional monarch of Dubai, and studying his guide My Imaginative and prescient: Challenges within the Race for Excellence jogged my memory precisely what I really like about his fashion of management.”
The problem of at this time’s Niger Delta, to not discuss of the bigger Nigerian polity is that now we have been bereft of leaders like Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum. Fact is the event or development of any state or nation is a operate of her management.
In accordance with John Maxwell, writer of over 70 management books, every thing rises and falls on management.
The success story of Dubai at this time revolved across the imaginative and prescient and unusual management of Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum. The identical may be stated of Singapore’s Lee Kuan Yew. It was clear that each the Sheikh and Lee Kuan Yew weren’t simply males of huge imaginative and prescient, however they possessed the distinctive potential to be single-minded within the execution of their imaginative and prescient.
To construct the Niger Delta of our dream would require the same single-minded deliberation and energy. The primary place to begin is to determine and be deliberate concerning the alternative of leaders we put in positions of management for if the reality be informed unhealthy and corrupt management is on the coronary heart of our area’s underdevelopment. If the Niger Delta should develop, then it’s crucial that we elect the suitable set of leaders and buck the nationwide predilection to enthrone mediocrity. For too lengthy it appeared as if solely the worst amongst us discovered their strategy to energy one way or the other.
The fitting leaders would of necessity prioritize primary growth, focusing poverty alleviation, major healthcare and schooling. When you transfer across the Niger Delta at this time you can be shocked to seek out out that our folks nonetheless lack the very primary facilities. There are numerous communities nonetheless with out transportable ingesting water or a major well being clinic. While it’s good to construct roads and bridges to hyperlink communities and promote social and financial intercourse, it’s equally essential to take care of the very primary wants of fresh water provide and primary well being services.
Leaders within the Niger Delta ought to be intentional about helping the widespread folks with sources to satisfy their primary wants. Your good roads and bridges imply nothing if the individuals are wallowing in abject poverty, unable to appreciably pursue a method of livelihood that may allow them dwell in dignity.It means nothing if the youngsters are roaming the streets as a substitute of getting them within the college school rooms and studying. It means completely nothing if the majority of your youth inhabitants aren’t gainfully employed or empowered and armed with the requisite abilities to fend for themselves.
Sadly, the derelict scenario of the denizens of the Niger Delta displays the nationwide situation such that Nigeria at this time teeters on a harmful precipice fuelled by widespread discontent and instability.
For us within the Niger Delta, our future and prosperity now lies in our potential to look past oil, a depleting asset that has inflicted extra ache than achieve. The magnitude of the injury to our surroundings and the attendant results on the lives and well being of our folks by oil exploitation continues to be to be totally appreciated.
Slightly than losing time in lamenting this baleful legacy, we should focus our vitality on harnessing out there sources to actualize our targets of create a robust regional economic system by means of financial cooperation and integration. This was the goal that undergirded BRACE ( acronym for the states that make up the Niger Delta) Fee. It’s unhappy to say that the governors of the six South-South states at this time haven’t moved the needle so far as BRACE is worried. What is obvious from the place I stand is that a few of our governors are busy politicking and are extra involved about their maintain on energy than be bothered by any imaginative and prescient to remodel the Niger Delta and positively have an effect on the fabric circumstances of the folks.
With the way forward for oil and even pure fuel quick receding into the previous because of local weather change driving the event of other vitality sources, we can not afford to waste any extra time.
I strongly imagine the Niger Delta can nonetheless be made to emulate Dubai’s growth mannequin if our leaders would embrace the imaginative and prescient of trying past the self and take the required steps. A few years in the past, Qatar sought to emulate the event template of Dubai and at this time that effort has paid off.
Qatar at this time is quick overtaking Dubai because the primary enterprise and tourism vacation spot within the Center East. I imagine If it labored for Qatar, it will probably additionally work for us within the Niger Delta. All that’s required are males of imaginative and prescient to come up, give the folks a brand new hope and supply selfless management and instance.
Reflection on the squandered alternative to develop the area and the crucial to do one thing about it moderately than take pleasure in lamentation and hand-wringing knowledgeable our determination to mark the fourth anniversary of our on-line newspaper, FIRST NEWS, by organizing a public lecture with the theme “Constructing the Niger Delta of Our Dream: With or With out Oil”. It’s scheduled to carry in Port Harcourt on the 4th of October 2024 on the Atlantic Corridor of Lodge Presidential.
Billed to talk on the occasion are among the engaged figures on the problem of growth within the area and past. They are going to interact our viewers in significant dialog and dialogue that may stimulate new concepts and options on the best way ahead to quick observe the area’s growth.
It bears restating:there may be no higher time than now for us to rethink the way forward for the area, casting our minds again to the time after we had been a thriving economic system, lengthy earlier than the invention of oil in Oloibiri in 1956. That was when the white man got here together with his oily enterprise. Then, our folks had been bemused by his preoccupation with the oil and allowed him to use our land moderately mercilessly. Now he has sucked out the black gold and has left our land badly degraded and despoiled, leaving no matter is left to their native interlopers. Now they’ve put a knife (weapons) within the arms of warlords within the title of pipeline surveillance contract, in one other part of exploitation and despoilation of our land and its sources.
Certainly it’s value recalling that earlier than the invention of the oil at Oloibiri the Niger Delta occupied a most fertile land appropriate for the cultivation of crops reminiscent of yam,cassava, palm kernels and rubber whereas the supply of water our bodies made for aquaculture significantly fish farming .
Agriculture was the mainstay of our area’s economic system again then and we grew our crops each for native consumption and exports. The area was a significant exporter of rubber, timber, and palm oil and palm kernels through the Niger delta ports of Burutu, Forcados, Koko, Sapele, and Warri. As we speak, all that has gone with the wind. Warri and different ports within the Niger Delta are actually trying like grave yards. The one gainful ( some would say ungainful) employment within the Niger Delta at this time is both to be a card carrying politician or a quick case toting oil and fuel contractor. Agriculture has been relegated to the background. With the folks economically marginalized little surprise one report signifies that 73% of the inhabitants are multidimensionally poor within the Niger Delta. Some states within the area had the biggest share of individuals within the nation dwelling beneath the poverty line as of that 2023 report.
The scenario calls for readability of imaginative and prescient and spirited engagement by a brand new technology of leaders to show the tide.
The problem is pressing. The time to behave is NOW!
Iworiso-Markson, PhD, is the writer of First Information.
Views expressed by contributors are strictly private and never of TheCable.
