Loomnie

A guest post from Benson Eluma, a NigeriansTalk contributor.

WHAT ARE THE differences between Achebe and Hart? Achebe says we have to go back 500 years to understand the problem of Africa; Hart says no, the required span is ‘the last century’. I feel that by the time we get to the start of Hart’s last century, we might begin to sense that we need to go back another fifty or hundred years in order to understand the processes that led to the most recent hundred, and so on and so forth backwards.

But isn’t it interesting that Hart ignores the fact that, as regards the specific trouble with Nigeria, Acbebe’s triumvirate of ‘slavery, colonialism and the Nigerian civil war’ has two members whose historical relevance fall squarely within the ‘courte durée’ of the last century? And then who says that those two, or even the entire troika, are not part of the story of Nigerian peoples today? The civil war is part of daily discourse in Nigeria. People, many of them not even born at the time, invoke it and keep it fresh in living memory, e.g. Half of a Yellow Sun by Chimamanda Adichie. Many people still refer to the civil war as part of the backdrop to the situation in the southeast today where kidnapping is the reigning topic of trouble in daily conversation. Nigerians invoke the civil war in their stories of ongoing ethno-religious violence in the north. And there is the belief that the insurgency in the Niger Delta has failed to spark a fire across the rest of the country because of the lessons of the civil war. Nobody wants to be told ‘no victor, no vanquished’ again. These are part of the stories of Nigerian peoples today. And colonialism, too, features in many of these stories; ditto slavery. Sometimes the pessimism and despair become too much that some people, not knowing what else to say, declare that they would like to have the British back.

I am alarmed by the impression which Hart gives that we don’t need to have good politics and good laws to make Nigeria better. I would love to be chided that I have somehow misread him on this score. And really, I don’t get what he means by the ‘economic conditions of democracy’ which he says, Achebe only ‘deals with… through their negation as excessive ill-begotten wealth’. Recently, there has been a lot of excitement in Nigeria over allegations by the CBN Governor that one-quarter of government’s annual expenditure is spent on paying the salaries and bonuses of members of the National Assembly, a group made up of about one thousand people. Excessive ill-begotten wealth is a burning issue in the story of Nigeria.

But there are areas of agreement between Achebe and Hart. The one tells us:

During the colonial period, struggles were fought, exhaustingly, on so many fronts — for equality, for justice, for freedom — by politicians, intellectuals and common folk alike. At the end of the day, when the liberty was won, we found that we had not sufficiently reckoned with one incredibly important fact: If you take someone who has not really been in charge of himself for 300 years and tell him, “O.K., you are now free,” he will not know where to begin.

The other concurs:

‘The desire for freedom was the fuel of the anti-colonial revolution; but any conception of the new society was vitiated by a complete failure to take into account the contours of the world that it was being born into.’

Where Achebe speaks with passion, Hart aims for a certain dispassion but, rhetorical strategy apart, they are talking of the same thing. Both of them share a romantic vision of a Nigeria that has the manifest destiny of a big role to play on the African continent. Of that Nigeria, Hart prophesies thus: ‘It will only begin to realise its promise when domestic political projects coalesce into appropriate forms of political and economic leadership at the continental level.’ Political and economic leadership at continental level is as romantic an aspiration as Achebe’s ‘new patriotic consciousness’. In point of fact, Achebe paradoxically diminishes the playing field of this patriotism, making it a burden of accountability to the people on the part of leaders (thus reducing it effectively to a domestic affair). But it used to be that every patriot was accountable to the will of the state as determined by the leaders. Hart, for his own part, doesn’t place any such limitations on the powerful. He is speaking of old-style domination in international affairs, otherwise why would he have no qualms prophesying a ‘sub-imperial role in Africa’ for South Africa ‘under black majority rule’? Imperialism, sub or super, means that some countries exist for the glory and advantage of the imperial power. This is the kind of system Hart coolly envisages for the continent? I would love it to be shown that I have placed a tendentious construction on his words here.

Achebe seems the worse romantic of the two—for instance, when he begins to make it appear as if everything in the precolonial past is what is good for Africa today, especially drawing from the lore of the Igbo to make this point. Yet his actual concerns and suggestions still manage to relate to the present, at least as regards Nigeria, in its own context and conditions. The world may have changed from what it used to be in the 1960s, but Achebe doesn’t sound like a broken record to me. Corruption in politics and in the running of the economy is a perennial problem in Nigeria. It is a question that we must address, whether or not Nollywood takes over from Hollywood next week; whether or not every Nigerian gets connected to the world via Blackberry; whether or not Asa and Naija hip-hop and Rita Dominic are making waves on the continent and beyond; whether or not Shell has replaced the state in the Niger Delta.

Maybe, Achebe doesn’t give us much to hang our hopes on—I even doubt that giving hope is his main objective in his op-ed. Hart’s main objective seems to be to give hope. But hope in what really? If China, Brazil, India are emerging as economic powers, does that mean that Nigeria is emerging into similar prominence too? Are we following any of these countries in its footsteps to economic stardom?  And as for the ‘second diaspora’ referred to by Hart, I can’t say that it is entirely the outcome of ‘voluntary migration’, at least in the case of many Nigerians. People from all walks of life, from professors to prostitutes, are fleeing Nigeria, or being captured from it. It is not just a rate of emigration; it is more of a spate of escape and capture. And many of those who go out are reluctant to return because the conditions—political, social, economic, legal—are not right yet. Some who return from the diaspora do so only to contribute to the mess, e.g. to ‘chop’ much more money in the Nigerian National Assembly than they would earn as public servants or private sector workers in the West. Some are like Emeagwali—expatriates who make a hit by selling false images to those back home. And because we are so enamoured of ‘Tokunbo’ regardless of the quality of the person or product in question, given the decay of most home-based and home-grown things here, we always fall prey to the cunning of the Emeagwali-type of expatriate.

Yet, I want to agree with Hart that there has to be hope somewhere; for as Achebe says, ‘Nigeria’s story has not been, entirely, one long, unrelieved history of despair’. I see hope in what people are trying to do by themselves and for themselves; but I don’t see much hope because our insupportable system vitiates every genuine effort. Indians are returning in droves; it is the other way round in Nigeria.

I think that Achebe has already started to do what Hart says is needed ‘above all’: ‘ask how multiple forms of political association at more or less inclusive levels might help address the development question’. That takes us back to storming the gates of the political kingdom. If, as Hart says, we must ‘take into account the world we are being born into’, then this world would have to be a place in which we can grow, a place in which we can look forward to some measure of, yes, benevolence. Otherwise we are faced with a future of conflicts and clashes in which things might get much worse for us. Local and foreign malevolence brought us here in the first place. And then, too, the notion of capitalist development simmering within Hart’s commentary requires regulation. Where the authorities that are supposed to provide this regulation and control, i.e. to stand apart from but oversee the running of competition, fail to perform their duties with competence and transparency, but rather become completely embroiled in the dog-eat-dog struggle of private profit-seeking and graft, the capitalist economy Hart has in mind will not take full flight.

We may be getting tired of being told the same thing over and over again by these social critics who do not see that the world is changing. But frankly, the Nigerian system is the broken record, not Achebe. Recently, Wole Soyinka announced that he was going to stop talking about these things, but surely not because they have evaporated in the changed world system. In 2011, yes there is Nollywood, yes there is GSM, yes there is Internet banking, yes there is a growing population—but Nigeria is still a ‘cesspool of corruption and misrule’ with its education, healthcare, infrastructure, agriculture, manufacturing, mining, banking, security, sports and a caravan of other sectors, amounting to a gross shambles. Is this assessment correct or not?

Sola Odunfa, Nigerian journalist, writes in an article on the BBC website:

I often ask myself: Should Nigeria break up, how many countries will it produce?

I am not aware that any three of its more than 200 ethnic groups sincerely agree so much as to come together in a peaceful independent state.

There is so much distrust that any major national crisis can only lead to civil wars here and there but at the end of the day the leaders will contrive a common interest and settle for a truce.

That is what I think. Breaking up is hard to do, especially so in the case of Nigeria.

I’ve met many people who say that Nigeria should break up, and I quickly tell them that the problem with Nigeria is not simply that there are too many and too different ethnic groups in the country. The bad eggs leaders are not going to go away with a breakup; they are actually going to be the ones who take over power in whatever nations are formed after a breakup.

Besides, how many countries would we have after the breakup? Many people argue along the lines of the three biggest ethnic groups. But then, in each of the three regions, there are several minority ethnic groups, and the picture that one sees in the Nigerian nation – of ethnic groups feeling marginalised because they belong in the minority – will be replicated in each of the three new nations that are formed along those large ethnic lines.

And then there is the issue of the Niger Delta…

It seems we are stuck with what we have; thinking about how to make it work is what we should be doing.

Theme song: Neil Sedaka’s Breaking Up Is Hard to Do

1. Unmet promises tied to ebb of truce in Niger Delta – NYTimes

2. No. 1 above has led to attacks, which in turn have led to Shell announcing on Sunday that it had shut down three pumping stations in the region – Reuters

3. Gaddafi goes, Bingu wa Mutharika of Malawi in, as AU chairman – FT

4. No. 3 above makes Gaddafi angry with African leaders – Reuters

5. One major hindrance to trade in West Africa? Road transportation – NEXT

6. Another answer to No. 5 above? Differences in monetary and trade policies – Here

7. Traditional rulers in Ondo State of Nigeria who give land to marijuana farmers will from now on be charged to court – NEXT

I just read from the Financial Times, through the PSD blog, that the Nigerian government is considering giving part of the proceeds of oil exploration to indigenes of the Niger Delta region. The amount is about $20 a year.

According to its architects, the Nigerian scheme could make about $555m annually available – about $20 a year for every man, woman and child of the delta’s 28m people, a significant amount in a region where 70 per cent live on less than $1.50 a day.

They are not going to get the money in cash but as some kind of share in community trust funds. Each person in each community will have a share in the trust fund of their community. This is to sort of bypass the Niger Delta state and local government authorities. (Well, we all know how corrupt those have been.)

The FT report also notes a potential source of tension:

A heated debate one recent morning in the royal hut of the Edagberi clan suggests the tensions that could emerge. “Some communities, they only have a pipeline or access road,” says Anigbo Williams, 52, chief of one of the clan’s six communities. “If you give him with his one well [a payment] and come and give me with 44 wells the same, you have a problem: we will feel we have been cheated.”

I can also see problems of how to decide who an indigene is. Those who still live there, those who were born there or those who can prove that they are from there?

What do readers think of the scheme? Do we treat it with characteristic Nigerian scepticism or perhaps even dismissiveness? Could it work?

WSJ: A Lack of Flare: In the oil-rich Niger Delta region of Nigeria, petroleum companies use giant torches to burn off natural gas found with deposits of crude oil.

The decades-old industry practice, known as flaring, has long been criticized as wasteful and harmful to the environment because of the carbon dioxide it releases into the atmosphere. But more recently, flaring has become a lightning rod for protests and armed attacks by Nigerian locals, many of whom lack reliable access to electricity and the economic opportunities that go along with it.

Amid escalating unrest that has shut down production of more than one million barrels of oil a day at a cost of billions of dollars in lost revenue, interest is growing in a handful of pioneering power plants that use unwanted gas to provide electricity to communities near the oil fields. There is a push on to build more of them in the belief that the way to prevent the violence that has shaken the West African nation is to address underdevelopment in the Delta, where the wealth generated by oil has done little to improve the lives of residents, who subsist on an average of $2 a day.

“Power will be a key issue” if a recent disarmament deal is to be followed by durable peace, says Kennedy West, who mediates between militants and the government as president of the Association for Non-Violence in the Niger Delta. “Everybody is looking at it.”

Some say proposed legislation that would fine oil companies for failing to stop gas flaring by the end of 2010 at twice the burned gas’s international market value is helping to spur action. Previous deadlines to end flaring in Nigeria have come and gone, but the fines proposed in the latest bill are much steeper than what the government has set in the past.

Today, about a third of the natural gas associated with crude-oil extraction in Nigeria is set ablaze in vertical columns. Most of the rest is liquefied and exported abroad.

While that is an improvement from five years ago, Nigeria ranks behind only Russia when it comes to gas flaring, accounting for 10% of flared gas world-wide—and more than 40 million tons of carbon-dioxide emissions annually—according to statistics from the World Bank’s Global Gas Flaring Reduction Partnership.

Flaring has been going on for decades in Nigeria, the fifth-largest supplier of oil to the U.S. The practice took off for a variety of reasons: The value of natural gas was low compared with oil, the oil industry lacked the pipelines and infrastructure to process and export gas, and there was no organized opposition to petroleum companies—armed or peaceful.

But it has become clear that in addition to carbon emissions, flaring takes a toll on the local environment, aggravating respiratory diseases in people living near the wells and generating acid rain that affects agriculture and fishing.

The most privileged communities in Nigeria are powered by generators that, ironically, rely on expensive imported fuel. At that price, “even hairdressers can’t work,” says Westham Adehor, president of Delta-based charity Youth and Development Initiative, or YDI.

The result is a chicken-and-egg situation, where lack of power fuels a seemingly unbreakable cycle of unrest and underdevelopment. Continue reading.

reports the BBC: Nigerian officials are reportedly planning to give 10% of the country’s oil revenues to people in the Niger Delta, an area plagued by insurgencies.

Presidential adviser Emmanuel Egbogah told the UK’s Financial Times that the money would go directly to communities, bypassing powerful state governors.

Analysts say the government fears local officials would embezzle the money.

The plan is part of the government’s effort to stop militants from attacking oil installations in the delta.

Such attacks have been going on for years, but the government recently held an amnesty and claims to have persuaded a number of leading militants to hand in their arms.

The rebels say they are fighting for a fairer share of oil wealth for delta residents, but frequently resort to killing and kidnapping, and fund their activities by stealing oil.

Mr Egbogah told the FT the idea was for the benefits to “flow directly” to the delta people.

“Every community, whether blind or deaf or dumb, every citizen will say: ‘I own a part of this business.’”

The FT reports that the plans could see more than 50bn naira ($338m; £207m) diverted to the communities in its first year.

But the BBC’s Ahmed Idris in Abuja says the government’s proposals have a long way to go before they see the light of day.

He says it is likely to face stiff opposition from the regions outside the delta, because it would mean less revenue for them.

The allocation of Nigeria’s oil money is strictly governed by the constitution.

See this presentation on CNN. When we think of the Niger-Delta region and the movements we should remember that the region is one of the most environmentally degraded areas in the world, that this degradation happened in the recent past, and that it is still ongoing. We should not lose sight of that when we condemn the movements. Don’t get me wrong, this is not to show my support for the kidnapping of oil workers and their families, it is to provoke you to think about how life might be living under the conditions. Empathy has a serious role to play in understanding, and so proffering solutions to, the situation in Niger-Delta region.

Image via Wikipedia

It is probably obvious, by now, that I like BusinessDay. This is their editorial today:

In what seems to be a major policy thrust in international economic relations and in resolving the festering Niger Delta crisis, President Umaru Yar’Adua on Monday, at the meeting of G8 leaders holding in Japan called for global clampdown on trade in stolen crude oil.
The president emphasised that stolen crude oil deserved the same global treatment as that of stolen diamonds.

Yar’Adua said measures must be taken to “dismantle the criminal dmension” of the problem in the Niger Delta. And for good measure, he said the problem in the region was being aggravated by international cartels.

The Nigerian leader drew attention to another aspect of the Niger Delta challenge, the criminal aspect, in this case “those who use the cover of militancy to steal our crude oil and engage in all forms of violence.”

We commend the president for drawing attention of the international community to this ugly trend. This is an issue that hitherto had been discussed in hushed tones and privately, too. It is an open secret that Nigeria’s crude is stolen daily, that beyond the official production figures given to meet OPEC quota and local consumption, a lot more is produced through illegal bunkering and from offshore rigs.

According to Freedom House, a US-based oil industry analyst, out of the 1.9 million barrels of crude oil Nigeria produces per day, she loses 10 per cent to oil thieves, part of the proceeds of which are spent on criminal activities in the Niger Delta.

We can draw a parallel with the role diamonds played in the civil wars that took place in Liberia and Sierra Leone in the 1990s. The rebels that waged war in Liberia were able to sustain their rebel activities, which ultimately escalated to become a civil war on account of the money they made from illegal mining and sale of diamonds.

A number of questions, naturally, arise from President Yar’Adua’s submission. Who are those involved? Apart from the militants, who hide under the cover of agitation, are there international thieves helping to fuel the theft of Nigeria’s crude oil?

If they exist, is there a nexus between the objective they pursue and the criminalisation of the Niger Delta struggle?

In all of this, what is the role of the multinational oil companies engaged in oil exploration in the country especially in the Niger Delta region?

There is talk about the use of satellite to monitor offshore oil drilling. Is it effective and if yes, are those in charge giving the Nigerian government the true picture of the situatiion? If they are doing that, has the government taken any steps to address it?

More importantly, does Nigeria have the capacity to monitor offshore exploration activities of the oil companies and enforce compliance to production limits?

Answers to these questions are important as they will point the way to dealing with the issue.

President Yar’Adua chose the right platform to raise the issue. The international oil companies are all from the G8 countries. Their governments will need to do internal checks to ascertain the culpability or otherwise of their companies in this criminal behaviour.

We urge him to quickly take the matter to the United Nations as he has promised. Only concerted efforts at the global level can arrest the situation.

The president’s pledge that the much talked about Niger Delta Summit would hold is reassuring. Resolution of the crisis in that region of the country holds the key to Nigeria’s economic and social transformation.

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