It is a given that agreements cemented in peace times are enduring, while agreements extracted at gunpoint are ephemeral. This, to a large extent, informed the outpourings of applause over the success of the federal government's offer of amnesty to militants protesting under-development and environmental degradation in the Niger Delta. For now, talk of resolving the resentment in the oil producing areas has apparently been returned to the court of Nigeria's political leadership class.
It is stating the obvious here that the necessary end to the seemingly recurrent uproar in the Niger Delta may eventually rest on a mutually agreed increase, in any form, in the extant formula for compensating the oil producing areas. In the interim, however, post-amnesty programme management needs to comprise recognizing and affronting the urgent needs of the people in the various oil producing areas with the ultimate goal of providing enduring solutions to them. Such solutions are likely to dissuade people from opting for militancy as a form of protest. And their support base also getting attenuated. These measures, however ad hoc, must be designed to lock in to whatever federal or state governments' master plan there is (or may be there in future) for the development of the Niger Delta. Underscoring much of the foregoing in Abuja recently while announcing that the European Union had set aside the sum of 190 million Euro to support the post-amnesty programme was the EU representative, Mr. Stefano Manservisi, when he said: "it is not only a question of implementing the amnesty but preparing an integrated development plan for the Niger Delta".
This write-up was partly inspired by a 14th October 2009 vanguard online news item: Repentant Militants Vow To Take Up Arms Over Rehabilitation In Imo. In the news item, a spokesman for a group of repentant militants from Imo state grieved that since they keyed onto the federal government's amnesty offer and surrendered their arms, no body had called them up again. Whatever gave rise to a situation like that in Imo state, (administrative lapse?) it is too early in the day to believe that any middleman can afford to run the risk of turning the amnesty offer into a selective product. More so, when Nigeria's president has since been seen to be going to any length to embrace whoever presents an olive branch in this process.
That aside, the sorry state of oil producing communities in the Imo West senatorial zone from where these grieving repentant militants come is saddening. Huge flames from gas flares arising from activities of oil production from within this area as well as from its surroundings, and the resultant noxious gases, are negatively impacting on longevity, and perhaps, procreation among people living within and short distances from the flare points. Positive returns from farming are fast becoming a thing of the past. Gully erosion is ravaging most rural and urban centres in this zone. The ugly situation has been so increasingly pre-occupying that senator Osita Izunaso who represents Imo West district, and who is also the chairman of Senate Committee on Gas, has been devoting nearly all his legislative energy to halt the menace of gas flaring in Nigeria. Who wears the shoes knows where they pinch. If eliminating gas flaring in Nigeria were to be achieved through a one-man show, Senator Izunaso could have muscled it out howsoever. So the piercing flames and billows of acrid smoke still prevail.
But, of all the deprivations and tribulations people from Imo West district have had to suffer, the unavailability of a dependable source of running water is heart rending. As the post-independence and latter-day make-shift water bore-holes meant for the rural and urban communities gradually became unsustainable or caved in to population growth, most of the people are left with no choice other than return to the muddy rivers of Njaba, Orashi and Nwangele to source water for domestic use. The nasty state of absence of running water has made life a daily grudge mostly in the principal population centres in the zone. Most of the wealthy from this area had since resorted to sinking private water boreholes in their premises, apparently abandoning the poor ones to arrange for themselves.
But it is not that no government had ever articulated a dependable means to provide the most important of human needs here. The late Samuel Mbakwe who governed Imo state during the early 1980’s made the most wide-ranging proposal for water supply for the area. The administration he led proposed five regional water supply schemes for the then five senatorial zones in the old Imo state, namely: Aba, Okigwe, Orlu, Owerri and Umuahia. Imo being a compactly inhabited state with a comparatively small area, the water schemes when completed and reticulated were each designed to supply water to nearly all the local government areas in the respective five zones of the state. It is worthy to note that four out of those five water supply schemes had since been commissioned for use except that for Orlu zone (Imo West senatorial district) whose foundation stone is yet to be laid.
And with a population approaching two million people clustered in the zone, and left without any dependable source of running water, the federal and Imo state governments are being urged to work in tandem with the managers of the post-amnesty programme to supply people here with life's most basic necessity.
The water supply scheme proposed for this area by the Mbakwe administration was to have been sourced from either the Orashi or Njaba rivers, or both, as the use of public water bore-holes in the zone had, even before then, turned out to be amply ineffective and unsustainable, especially in its urban centres.
For the interest of a curious observer, of the five proposed water supply schemes, the last of the four that were started and nearly completed by the Mbakwe administration - the Okigwe water supply scheme then nearing completion - was abandoned after General Buhari and Co. struck in the 1983 military putsch.
About sixteen years later, the scheme was reactivated under the Udenwa administration followed by its take-over and completion by the federal government. It was commissioned early 2008 in Okigwe by President Umaru Yar'Adua.
However, the last audible pronouncement made by government on the similar Orlu water supply scheme till today was in May 2007, on the occasion of the last Presidential visit of Olusegun Obasanjo to Imo state. Before the incumbent governor of Imo state, Ikedi Ohakim, the outgoing state governor, Achike Udenwa, requested visiting President Obasanjo for federal government's assistance to Imo state government towards the realisation of the Orlu water supply scheme. The costs of executing the respective ambitious water supply schemes, which were projected before the emergence of currency deregulation regimen of the mid 1980’s, must have drastically increased thereafter. And perhaps, it could have amounted to injudicious finance for the Udenwa administration to embark on another of such water supply scheme when the Okigwe project was there uncompleted. Or so it seems.
All said, for decades, revenues from natural resources in this zone have gone to Nigeria's government coffers. Without further delay, the area urgently needs to be provided with the most banal of its citizen's expectations from government. The need, as conceptualized by the late Sam Mbakwe, to have a dependable and articulated water supply system for all in Imo West senatorial district has become more pressing than ever. In the present circumstance, this need presents itself on the priority list of government or any of its agencies. As it ought to have been, long before now.
Benedict Okereke
[email protected]
--
googletag.cmd.push(function() { googletag.display('content1'); });
googletag.cmd.push(function() { googletag.display('comments'); });
googletag.cmd.push(function() { googletag.display('content2'); });