With the administration of President Muhammadu Buhari gradually winding to an inauspicious end, it appears that those who should themselves be blamed for Nigeria’s many woes have themselves swept Nigeria into a season of blame.
In the last couple of days, there have been accusations and counter accusations about who is to blame for the multidimensional, multifaceted and multifactorial poverty confronting millions of Nigerian families and crippling the future of many Nigerian children.
In a stirring demonstration of what data can do, the revelations by the National Bureau of Statistics that about 133 million Nigerians are trapped in debilitating poverty has rattled those who have questions to answer about why Nigerians are so poor.
Failing to cough up any convincing answers, they have instead turned on each other with the presidency first accusing state governors of creating the problem and the state governors wasting no time in returning the favour.
Of course, the sudden and suspect spike of concern for Nigeria’s poorest may have everything to do with the elections coming up next year as Nigerian politicians are champion opportunists who are master artists only when it comes to painting each other black.
An oily derivation.
In 1956,Nigeria struck gold in the fields of Oloibiri, Bayelsa State with the discovery of oil in commercial quantities.
With the country on the cusp of independence, it appeared the gods had themselves let prosperity fall into the laps of Nigeria.
Many years later though, the reception that was at once all raucous and positive has turned riotous and poisonous. For one, the Niger Delta has been torn apart with very little done to ensure that oil exploration is commensurate to the measures taken to ensure that the region and its people are adequately cared for.
Each time the long-suffering people of the Niger Delta turn up the heat of their bitterness on the rest of Nigeria, they are quickly reminded that for all their troubles, thirteen per cent of everything Nigeria makes from its oil resources is given them for their development.
And it appears that for all they have received by way of derivation since 1999,the region remains scandalously underdeveloped.
As part of its subtle attempts to stir the hornet’s nest, the federal government recently revealed that it has so far released about N625.43 billion naira in two years to oil states regarding derivation, subsidy and sure-p refunds with a whopping N1.1 trillion naira still outstanding.
This revelation came just as one of the governors brought up the issue by stating that he was using the funds to provide infrastructure in his state with the necessary implication that the governors in the other states were not just doing enough.
The governors involved have since clapped back at the federal government, releasing statements in their bid to pour cold water on the thorny question of the serial underdevelopment of the Niger-Delta region and what has scandalously remained one of the most embarrassing failures of the modern Nigerian state.
It would appear that for all the good people of the Niger-Delta say about just how much Nigeria has failed to be equitable to them, so much of the problems plaguing them have been created by those who but for atrocious avarice should have been desperately eager to see that a region lain waste by egregious exploitation is repaired as much as it can.
Yet, the question rumbles on about accountability with respect to utilization of the funds so far released as derivation funds, and just how much they have been put to use for the most vulnerable people of the Niger-Delta.
There are also questions about just how much of the funds have ended up in private pockets.
The question whips up the difficult subject of corruption which has been as much a problem in the Niger-Delta as it has been in Nigeria.
Were Nigeria not so poor with data, perhaps the exact amount of money stolen from the country since 1999 would be known, and the knowledge enough to force Nigerians to finally take concrete action to demand change in their desperately ailing country.
By now, Nigerians are familiar with the shenanigans the Niger- Delta Development Commission (NDDC) have come to embody, and how much of those shenanigans are financial.
Beyond the barefaced politics that is afoot between the federal government and the oil states, it is crucial to remember that very vital questions still swirl about how much the funds dubbed ‘Derivation funds’ have been utilized and just how much have been diverted for other purposes.
Kene Obiezu,
keneobiezu@gmail.com
