Nigeria Content Online

The special adviser to President Goodluck Jonathan on
Niger Delta affairs, Kingsley Kuku, has praised the federal
government’s amnesty programme for militants in the region, saying this
has helped to improve the country’s economy.

Speaking at a forum for stakeholders of the Niger
Delta held in Lagos over the weekend, Mr. Kuku disclosed that the
amnesty would go down in the history as the “sincerest effort by the
federal government of Nigeria to holistically address the Niger Delta
question”, as he noted that prior to the proclamation of the official
pardon, militancy and general insecurity in the region virtually
crippled Nigeria’s economy.

Mr. Kuku said that investment inflow to the upstream
subsector of the oil industry had dwindled remarkably, threatening the
country’s crude oil reserves.

“Nigeria had targeted 40 billion barrels proven
reserve by the end of 2010 but insecurity in Niger Delta led to the
exodus of investors from our country to more stable business
opportunities in Africa. For example, due to militants’ activities in
the Niger Delta, Shell Petroleum Development Company, by early 2009,
had declared force majeure on its operations, which caused a drop in
its production capacity from one million bpd to about 259,000 bpd.

“Worse still, citing insecurity, union officials all
too often called strikes to protest insecure working environment. It
got to a point where Nigeria’s export dwindled to as low as 700,000
bpd, compared with a targeted 2.2milion bpd for the first quarter of
2009. In 2008 alone, it was estimated that Nigeria lost over N3trillion
as a result of militancy in the Niger Delta,” he said.

The special adviser said that with the proclamation
of amnesty for the militants agitators, reasonable disarmament took
place and relative peace was restored in the Nigeria Delta, adding that
oil companies reopened shut-in wells and under four months, Nigeria’s
oil production increased from 700,000 barrels per day to 2.3milion
barrels per day.

“With cessation of hostilities, government began
giving assurances that Nigeria once again fill its OPEC (Organization
of Petroleum Exporting Countries) quota and be trusted by major
consumer nations to meet its contractual obligations,” he said.

Disappointment from oil companies

Mr. Kuku disclosed that oil companies operating in
the Niger Delta have not being helping the region in terms of enhancing
the lives of residents of the area, adding that the companies have
remained indifferent when it comes to recruiting ex-combatants.

“The oil and gas companies have not done enough and
they must do enough because it is a problem they caused this country.
They said they are putting together $30m and they can only support te
training of 3,000 out of 26,358 ex-combatants. We demanded if they were
going to employ them? But they said they cannot guarantee that.

“We reject that completely, because from that point
of view, the people they want those to be trained by them to be just
artisans, but we are saying that they must train our people in
employable fields that some of them can stand the chance of being
qualified to be chairman in the SPDC (Shell Petroleum Development
Company)one day,” he said.

Sustainable development Dennis Ogwaro, a participant
at the forum called for sustainable developments in the Niger Delta, as
he explained that this could be achieved by the construction and
establishment of institutions and higher education centres in the
region.

“With this kind of development, our youth will have
their minds taken away from the high demand for money and this will
increase the number of increase the number of entrepreneurs in our
Niger Delta,” he said.</