All these cries of pollution of rivers and farmland, particularly where you can say the golden egg is being laid is unjustified. It is criminal not to pay attention to making sure that jobs are created for the youths and the unemployed in the area. It is important that when jobs are to be created in those places, we must ensure that the environment is ripe for the people to work in. Whether they live in the growing savanna areas or in the Niger Delta, a leader must examine what needs to be done, a kind of critical technical analysis, not just an idea about the problem.

He has to get a correct report of the kind of rehabilitation that has to be done, the kind of cleaning up that has to be done. There are accumulated pains, of neglect, of psychological debris. The resources are there. The resources that are there give this country a leverage to mobilise what ever additional resources that we need. It is like someone who has so much collateral, he should never have to complain about what it will take to undertake a viable project, because he has the collateral. The people out there, both foreign and domestic investors and savers when they see a viable project that will give them returns, they will go for it, for as long as there is peace, and stability. Government must improve on the standard of living of such people, invest and reap bountifully. This is why you see investments in the concept of a global village.

The Itsekiris fight the Urhobos, the Ijaws take on the Itsekiris and Urhobos differently at intervals. The Ogoni clash with the Ikweres and so on and so forth. Take Warri as an example and ask yourself, what they are fighting for. Should two brothers continue to fight themselves? Abuja would always set you against one another, you lounge at each others throat and kill yourselves. Abuja benefits and you lose. This is what is happening. Our people must come together, they must bury their arms, form a common front and make common demand from the common enemy.

Community heads and elders should stop accepting money from the oil companies. It is government’s plan to render the communities one against another, so that it (government) can continue to plunder the land, tap the benefits and impoverish our land and people. It is a divide and rule tactics.

If the various communities will not bury their bitterness and form a common front, government will always be willing to use them to destabilise their own cause, it is they that lose, their lands will remain under developed. That is the situation, and under such scenario, there can be no investment of any kind. The various inter tribal fight, 15 years, after what has any tribe achieved? Nothing, except that it has brought death, sickness, poverty, hunger, deprivation.

Look at members of National Assembly from Delta State, what are they able to do there? They could not effect one change. Yet this is a state that accounts for over 76 per cent of oil wealth of the nation. Deltans must sit down and ask themselves questions. What are we doing? Over 22 companies in Warri and Escravos have moved to Port Harcourt.

Controlling the youths

This problem in Warri will crescendo when our children will turn round to abuse us in the future. Suffering is growing. We are building people to face difficulties, we are creating a monster. In years to come, this monster will stalk, like what is happening in Palestine and Israel today, they can not control their youths. At the rate things are going on in the Niger Delta, a time will come that we will not be able to control the youths. And this is not the best for the economy and nation. Now, Warri is almost an economic disaster zone. Warri is empty. Investors have lost confidence doing business there.

I do not think that the impression is correct that government deliberately sets the various ethnic groups on collision course. It is, however, true that the government’s apparent neglect of the people may have resulted into actions that have created mutual distrust and suspicion among the people, which has led to quarrels, clashes and killings. The Federal Government has been too far from these people, and this had made it difficult for government to fully appreciate the problems of the communities in the area. And because of this apparent neglect, poverty has become their badge of destiny. Now, that is a problem, a yoke they seem to be vigorously rejecting. The explanation is simple. Poverty, over time led to grievances, which in turn have led to its being expressed physically, and unfortunately expressed in violence.

I see the Niger Delta problems as foundational problems. Government failed to show interest to complaints from the area at an early stage. Now, that was a major mistake. That was meant to be a psychological defeat tactic, but it is clear now that it failed to work. But that official attitude prevailed for a long time. Within the period, the indigenes saw their wealth being taken away to develop urban centres of far away lands, leaving their own lands impoverished, and their people starving and living in penury. And with government’s failure to attend to their complaints, they felt obliged to act for themselves, to take their destiny in their own hands.

Instances abound. Ken Saro Wiwa, for example snubbed government’s offer of political position and insisted on the legendary Bill of Rights, a bargain assented to by previous administration for the benefit of the masses of the people. Sometime they war amongst themselves on grounds of suspicion of sabotage as well as war against the government. The oil companies too failed at the time it mattered to do what was required to befriend the communities. What percentage of job portfolio, was reserved for indigenes of the host communities? If they ever mean well, they should not be afraid of technology transfer. Retraining and adaptation of the youths of the area to other forms of trade will create opportunities, challenge their potentials. Let the oil companies build cottage industries to absolve school leavers and junior graduates; set up special trade schemes with loan incentives to encourage self employment.