Niger Delta

1/05/2006

Something new and interesting and not related to oil has just taken place in the heart of the Niger Delta, Bayelsa State. The African Movie Awards Academy (AMAA) and the Niger Delta Film Festival - a three day event taking place in the Bayelsa capital, Yenagoa - includes “workshops, lectures and training in all aspects of film making”. Supporting the project are Abiola Abrahms, Cybel Martin and Sonia Malfa and Miram Makeba is also expected to attend. 15 African films have been nominated for this years award,

The first panel screened 150 films from Nigeria alone from where 10 got nominated. Five indigenous films also came from Nigeria while Ghana, Bourkina Faso, Gambia, Cameroun and Zimbabwe had one each nominated. The nominated films from Nigeria are: Rising Moon, directed by Andy Nwakolor; Secret Adventure, directed by Andy Amenechi; Behind Closed Doors, directed by Lancelot Imasuen; Family Battle, directed by Lancelot Imasuen; Widow’s Cot, directed by Dickson Iroegbu;

There are also awards for best actor, best sound, best film and best director.

This is the second year of the AMAA and the first, in what I hope will be a yearly event, of the Niger Delta Film Festival. As far as I know there are no cinemas in Yenagoa so it is not clear if the general public will have the opportunity to view the films. Still this is a start and if successful I am certain that the state government working together with Nigerian and foreign film interests will develop the festival - a festival for the PEOPLE of the Niger Delta.

The festival is taking place during a transitional period in the Niger Delta. Yesterday a second car bomb was exploded near Warri refinery in neighbouring Delta State. MEND, the Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta have claimed responsibility and issued a statement saying the bomb was a “warning against Chinese expansionism in the region”.

This is in response to the recent $4billion agreement with the Chinese which gives them 4 oil drilling licenses in the Niger Delta in exchange for investment in infrastructure projects. It is also a rejection of the latest development plan unveiled by Obasanjo last week. The President in a panic and eager to sell the Niger Delta to the Chinese, felt he had to come up with a quick solution to the growing militancy in the region so in his ignorance of the depth of dissatisfaction and sheer misery of peoples lives, he chose to use leaking buckets to put out a raging forest fire.

The main aspects of the development plan are the recruitment of 12,000 Niger Delta youths into the armed forces and police. This smells of forced conscription. Clearly he thinks that by recruiting them into the military and police and then deploying them to other parts of the country he can remove the militants and increase his security forces at the same time. A further 7,500 teacher posts and 1000 oil industry related jobs for those with qualifications are also on offer. This is so pathetic and actually quite frightening to imagine that the idea was thought up by the President of a country. Writing in Nigeriaworld, Uchenna Odogwo asks

Recruiting illiterate sons and daughters from Delta into the Nigerian military is not an exclusive favor the rest of Nigerian ethnic majority is not getting or has not been getting. What happens to the many that would not join the military? Is Obasanjo planning to send the new recruits to Dafur, the Sudanese ethnic civil war theater? It would not be the first time. Babangida and later Abacha sent innocent Nigerians to Sierra Leone and Liberia to defend and protect democracy that was denied Nigerians at home. It was better to keep them busy and away with life and death exposure than keep them close by to plot military coup. And so rather than having the youths of Delta running around the creeks with AK-47s, kidnapping and disrupting oil operations and revenue flow, why not get them enlisted and find a peace-keeping mission somewhere in Congo or Kosovo?

Not surprisingly MEND and other activists groups have rejected the plan outright.

“We do not need any further mismanagement of the fast diminishing resources of our land by the award of bogus contracts intended to channel the wealth of the Niger Delta back to the hands of those who have looted … all these years,

And SPIN (Sustainable Peace Initiative - Nigeria)

First of all, I would say it is not enough because the problems are enormous. It is beyond repairing the East-West Road, creating employment. Besides, we have heard these things over and again. Until we see those things actually being implemented, I will take whatever they are saying with a pinch of salt.”

Does the President know how many people there are in the Niger Delta? The Ijaws (spread across three states) number at least 12 million plus all the other ethnic nationalities. The people have been calling for resource control; for 25% leading to 50% deviation of oil monies; for compensation for the environmental destruction of land and water; for clean up of oil spillages over the past 40 years; investment in education and training. Obasanjo’s answer? A few thousand jobs, conscription of youths into the army and police and building 12 mega petrol stations.

China has just agreed to invest $400 million in exhange for oil in the Niger Delta. If Obasanjo had offered the region half of that money to build the infrastructure and social services such as eduacation, skills training, health and housing and invest in local business, then that would have been more appropriate - anything less is an insult and daylight robbery.

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There are 10 comments in this article:

  1. 2/05/2006Herbert say:

    The nigerian government recently signed lots of bilateral aggreements with the visiting chinese leader on so many fronts.
    The expansionist china is once again on the rise.
    Today,the communists in china are looking for ways to rule the world again.Their methods to achieve these lofty goals remain crude and inhuman.
    Their aim is oil and to flood this nation with cheap and dangerous chinese products.They bring in fake chinese commodities,including arms and ammunitions in exchange for oil and unrestricted access to the local market.
    This is coming at a time when the political climate in our nation is volatile.It is taking place at a time when our president is re-writing our constitution to perpetuate power.
    There is no gain saying that the primary objective of Obasanjo and his cohort for this marriage of convinience was arms deal.
    What we need in nigeria to lead us out this political wilderness is a statesman and not a palm wine tapper cum military general.We need leaders who are abreast with history(both past and present).We need men and women who are alife to the current socio-economic realities of this century and its historical ties.
    This government has done nothing to improve the standard of education,and inspite of the seven-year oil boom the masses of our people are getting more miserable.All basic infrastructures are in a state of fatal decay.Nothing has been done in the area of funding research.This is a nation richly endowed with both human and material resources.
    For a lame duck economy such as ours the unrestricted influx of the chinese brand signals the end of the few surviving local manufacturers.
    If planned economies are struggling to stop the chinese from flooding their markets,what fate therefore awaits our people?.It is evident that our local products are 70% better than that of china.What a government with good economic initiative would do is to help the local manufacturers to attain full capacity in production and encourage research;But successive governments has turned a blind eye.
    The cheap and unreliable chinese car brand is expecred to flood our market soon;While local automobile manufacturers like Dr.Ezekiel Izuogu of the Radiolab fame are abandoned to their fate.Just recently some heavily armed unknown persons broke into the head office at owerri and stole both important documents and engine blocks,all in bid to make way for the chinese brand and ensure that this nation does not break into the global automobile market(emphasis mine).
    Elsewhere in the world the government would have set up an inquiry to ascertain as to what went wrong and how.No sensible government would take the issue of intellectual propery for granted.But not with these crop of leaders we have today,afterall the oil is still flowing.
    The chinese are known for their ruthless exploits,From Dafur to Iran and today in nigeria they continue to fan the embers of instabilty.
    They are fishing in troubled waters because the people of the niger delta and indeed other concerned groups
    cannot be cheated out of their birth right forever.The chinese are here for reasons of sheer merchantile and this is not healthy for this nation,moreso,considering the political climate in the land.
    Nigerians are today more determined than ever to grab their destiny in their own hands,it is no longer business as usual.
    They must never under-estimate the strenght and courage of a dying mortal.

    Aluta continua.

  2. 3/05/2006charles mba say:

    Sadly, we have been left unprepared for the next phase of the future. Our past and present leaders have been stupid, but the future may still hold a pleasant suprise for us.

    For example, we are blogging about it, that may lead to better education of our people who will in turn do the work that needs to get done.

    Why is anyone afraid of China? It is huge and is kept together by repressive laws. The Hao Wu (Chinese name:“Wu Hao”) case is an example. But like the old mighty USSR, break up is inevitable. The USSR was also in Nigeria and we have not faired too badly. But in a world where everyone wants a cheap “made in China”, how will “made in Nigeria” compete, that is of course, if the infrastructure gets off the groud.

    Until we put our house in order, everyone may come to rape our country as much as they wish while we have selfish bigots for leaders.

    How can we begin to make a difference? Simple, we play what I call “the numbers” game! what is it? We all come together, agree to send an email to The EU, or any org that matters now. It is a start.

  3. 3/05/2006Chippla Vandu say:

    Why should Nigerians be looking to the European Union for redemption against China? What has the EU done for Nigeria or Africa in general, save the dispensing of cash for basic projects, most of which it ends up recouping through debt payments.

    At this point in time, the EU is the last place Nigeria should be looking towards to redeem its economy!

  4. 3/05/2006Sokari say:

    Nigeria needs to go where she is a) welcome and b) she can get the best deal for the country and it appears that right now that is China. As we know China is particularly good for Africa when it comes to ignoring human rights/social justice issues but if we are honest Europe and the US only use these as levers when it suits their needs. My aim in this piece was to highlight Obasanjo’s latest “development plan” for the ND and to show that in reality the region has been sold to the Chinese as if we were as Odogwo writes a colonial outpost.

  5. 3/05/2006charles mba say:

    This is not a time for “hope” the Chinese will do better than the Europeans or the Americans. Millions of Africans are in the EU. So are Hundreds of Thousands Chinese. Migration is not towards China, nor India nor Iran. Our country is being sold on ebay! The highest bidder seem to be China but we can leverage what we have for now hence the EU piece. The politics of Planet Earth as it is, is not very nice, and China is not in Nigeria because the Dragon is our friend. Ask Wu Hao!

    “We are the Borg, … Resistance is futile. You will be assimilated.” http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Borg

  6. 3/05/2006Sokari say:

    Assimilated by the Chinese? I think that is a possibility for all the world just as this past 100 years has seen the world devole itself into the image of America - China next:? Definately agree with you that we are being sold to the highest bidder. China is buying up the continent marginally different that when the old colonials bought it - slighter better deal but I am not banking on us coming out with that much of a credit in this deal. The bottom line all the investment and hype that is taking place about Africa booming, the telecoms industry etc my question is: How much is this reaching the man and woman on the street? How is this impacting their lives for the better?

  7. 4/05/2006charles mba say:

    This is where we are, there is no infrastructural evidence to support an economic boom. The telecom sector was quite weak and new technology patched up a part of it. The hype is about covering up the economic mess that is Africa where both the governments and NGOs have failed to complete “better life for the average person type projects”. China did not arrive last week, quietly working on large projects until their newly acquired high profile status brought them to the frontpage.

    My brash and bold “borg” statement is my Nigerian identity, but I would like to be corrected and proved wrong. Locals who complained to the media about the relocation programme for the Three Gorges Dam were jailed in China, where more than half a million people were relocated to make way for it, more than 100 officials working on the project were convicted of embezzlement and other related charges in 2000, after more than $52m in resettlement funds went missing. One was sentenced to death. Hellooo, is anyone awake yet?

  8. 4/05/2006Sokari say:

    I mean “investment hype”. I suspect you are right in that the keyword is “hype” or rather hypereality. With their appalling human rights record and as you point out corruption record - all does not bode well for Nigeria let alone the Niger Delta. We all know what happens to Chinese dissidents! The more I think about it the more disastrous this appears for the ND. As usual people and governments are just blinded by money - puts them to sleep too.

  9. 4/05/2006Black River Eagle say:

    Oooooooh? And I thought that most Africans (excuse the generalization) were just delighted with the upsurge in PR China’s economic investments and development aid programs for sub-Saharan African countries.

    Acutally you can use these foreign investments to your people’s favor by waiting until substantial money starts flowing from Beijing into the Nigerian federal coffers and then reneging on the various “shady” deals that the Chinese have signed with the present Nigerian government. The technique is called “bait and switch” and has worked just great for several developing countries political regimes over the past 4-5 decades. I’m not sure how Beijing would react to a massive economic and political doublecross from African nations though.

    Such a strategy would require a serious political upheaval that places capable and responsible people in charge in Abuja and in the provincial capitals of Nigeria who are prepared to “correct” the Chinese investment and foreign policy strategies while at the same time strengthening economic and diplomatic ties with countries who are serious about a true partnership with Nigeria and a for real “Win-Win” strategy that benefits all sides.

    Perhaps the PRC will do the right thing in Nigeria and help bring prosperity to the country. In the meantime, we (the U.S.A.) will be working on some “alternative Win-Win strategies” of our own for the region. Either way, you’ve got a global power play on your hands and Nigeria and other resource-rich African nations are right in the middle, again.

  10. 3/10/2006San Diego Colocation say:

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