Nigeria’s crude oil tragedy II)

So the story is still about my shock with what is going on in the Niger Delta presently.  I learnt that the people there are angry that the government for slowing down on the amnesty program and have resorted to self-help, devastating increasing areas of the land. This is not good enough and urgent action is required. 

By the way, in many of the areas where crude was first discovered in other parts of the world, the indigenous people were evacuated and relocated. The pollution from those initial technologies was deemed too bad for human existence. The people in those places were also not antagonistic of their governments, and their governments were reasonable, responsible and empathetic, not like the streams of brigands that we have had in Nigeria who believe governance is about acquiring wealth and rubbing it in the faces of the people. As I have stated here before, Nigeria has been over the years, and till date, the most misgoverned country in the world. Not even the governments of Congo has been as reckless as ours have been. QED. Otherwise there is nothing wrong with the lay of the land. Now, ask those poor Niger Deltans we see drinking from the water in which they bathe and defecate to please leave that region to a built up new city and you will see trouble. Don’t even think about it. It’s a double tragedy. Government over the years has lost every iota of trust and so I doubt if the problem will ever be solved due to this distrust. The people themselves have shown that their life view is problematic. 

Back to the VICE documentary. As the boys in the creeks added more fuel into their oven (with one boy pouring the waste from yesterday’s ‘refining’ into the vast blaze at the risk of getting consumed by the fire), my heart sank. To finally shatter my tender little heart, in comes Civil Defense, whose main objective is to ‘destroy’ the final work of these rebels. This they did by using pincers and knives to cut the drums in which the final product of this unprecedented environmental pollution – diesel – which they watch gush into the nearby river. I am talking of tonnes of diesel emptied into the waters! By agents of the government! At that point I almost collapsed. What the heck were these guys smoking, laughing their ways around and believing they had done a good day’s work? Who gave them such a mandate to pour loads of diesel into our waters? One big man in the Civil Defense superintended over this absolutely mindlessness. He felt very proud of himself. Did these guys ever attend any school? What is the Niger Delta doing to itself and what are we doing to that region for crying out loud? 

The other thing that occurred to me is the insincerity of government. We have been talking of bringing ‘foreign investors’ to create refineries. Over 50 licenses have been issued in the past by two governments at least. Only Dangote and one more person are doing anything about theirs. The nation waits for these oligopolists to come on stream and dictate the prices. In the meantime, we import everything we use. What we get in cash terms from our exports is really nothing when we subtract what we spend on import of refined products. A grossly inefficient system is what we operate, yet the guys in our national oil companies spend money like tomorrow will never come. Of course there is absolutely no accountability. They operate as a black hole, with each government using them as cash cows. The Buhari government has made this a particular feeding trough, with the level of nepotism displayed in that sector. It’s a terrible point to make.  

It occurred to me that the Civil Defense guys – or government people in general – are merely protecting the status quo. There is NOTHING wrong with the final products of those boys in the Niger Delta, only that the processes used are most despicable. The only reason why anyone will empty those products into the waters is that they are on the payroll of importers. You can take that to the bank. Government has been unable to build refineries, or cause anyone to do anything on a small scale. But these boys have shown that as primitive as their actions may be, refining is not a big deal at all. If the government wants to help, their products should be seized, tested and sold off at discount. Better still, the government should rally these guys, standardize their operations, set rules for them to follow, and deal strongly with anyone who flouts the rules. Emptying huge amounts of products into the waters is a hellish thing to do!  Standing back to see our own idea of ‘refining’ (crude burning of the soil, no risk management, no controls, unimaginable waste etc) and the way we empty stuff into our waters, compared to what obtains abroad, shows clearly the distance between the quality of our thinking and humanity vis a vis the rest of the world.

Yet, we should remember that even that resource is on its way out. Yes it may be some time in coming. But given that we have no input in the evolution of the technology in this space, how can we set store on such a resource, much less spend the proceeds like drunken sailors and despoil our environment ourselves?  Multiple tragedy. Winter is coming…