Clinton Ifeanyichukwu Ezekwe (PhD), a native of Omoku in Ogba/Egbema/Ndoni Local Government Area of Rivers State, is a senior lecturer in the Department of Geography and Environmental Studies, University of Port Harcourt. In this exclusive interview with IGNATIUS CHUKWU, Ezekwe, a firebrand, gives reasons why 2016 was a very bad year for Nigerians, lambasts the Muhammadu Buhari-led Federal Government for several policy failures that allegedly brought untold hardship on the citizens, and calls for a change of cabinet, dialogue with ‘real’ Niger Deltans, massive investment in farming, and a thought for legalization of marijuana.
In your view, what were the positive developments of 2016 as it pertains to Nigeria?
There is not much to cheer in 2016, except, perhaps, that we are still alive to discuss it. Amnesty in Rivers is very important too. Despite the weaknesses of this programme, it has helped to reduce tension. In fact, I am from Ogba/Egbema/Ndoni local council area where there is massive violence. Omoku is still very empty. We are internally displaced persons (IDPs) because many of us are on the run. It is not only in the North-East that you have IDPs, but my relations in Akabuka, Egi, Omoku, etc where people fled their homes.
At least right now, you can travel home and come back. We are now visiting indigenes. Security of life is of the most essence; the highest thing one would ask from God. So, the state’s Amnesty programme with all its faults has contributed immensely to security. Let the government fortify the scheme and make it sustainable. You do not pardon a man who lives by the gun and set him back to the community without any training or rehabilitation to lead a normal life. Something could just happen. Probably someone talks to him in a way he was not being talked to when he was a ‘general’, he could stand up and say, ‘When men were men, would you talk to me?’ The government needs to have a long-term programme on that.
And what would you consider the negatives?
It was a very bad year, terribly bad year for Nigerians. Yes, the Federal Government has challenges but the government has been fraught with many policy summersaults that have affected the foreign exchange balance. As a civil servant, I have had my salary cut for flimsy reasons. Now, the Federal Government is to increase taxes. So, I have a fixed salary which has been cut down, inflation has gone up to over 18 percent, meaning I have lost 18 percent of the value of my salary, and then Federal Government taxes me more. So, I am left with about 25 percent of my salary. This makes one think this is an oppressor-government. So, insensitivity of the Federal Government on the plight of the citizenry is the biggest negative of the year 2016.
We cannot ask for salary increase because the Federal Government says it has no money. But they can give us other incentives such as farming scheme. They can give us land and inputs to farm. I want to go into farming because my take-home pay can no longer take me home.
Absence of policy thrust in the diversification scheme and the farm project is another highlight of 2016. There must be a target and objective with specific milestones and feedback mechanism. Development does not grow on trees. The Federal Government is running voodoo economy. Economic policy is supposed to be precise; what to do, what to expect. The president needs to look for men who understand what to do. For now, his team is deficient on ideas. The policy summersault shows this.
What is the policy direction on agriculture? One of the ways to curb youth restiveness in the Niger Delta is farming of paddy rice. Massive rice production is good for Niger Delta. Bayelsa is about 98 percent swamps. We can employ 500,000 youths in rice farming alone. You can start with demonstration farms and supervise them. The type of land that supports rice farming in Thailand is same here, so why are we not net exporters of rice? Why are depending on oil alone? Why not convert the whole of Bayelsa State into a rice farm? We have the ready market with 186 million people, plus the West African sub-region. I don’t think Nigeria has business importing rice. I also think the Federal Government was not right to wake up and ban rice importation instead of graduating the ban. The government should have first encouraged home-grown rice with a study on the statistics such as demand, supply gaps, etc. The policy is good but the timing is wrong. The Federal Government should have first created a local rice production system. Now, a lot of Nigerians depend on rice importation to survive. You have thrown them into the labour market. Some served their masters for years and started with their own capital. They imported rice and while it is still in the high seas, you banned it. These citizens have a right to survive just as the president has a right to survive. It is high-handedness and it is wrong. De-stoning is a key aspect of local rice production. I did a study on rice farming in Ebonyi State where they produce very nutritious rice but the challenge is technology for processing. Nigeria can partner with countries with low-maintenance machines to produce good rice.
What was the state of affair in the Niger Delta in 2016, and what is the situation now?
Speaking specifically about the Niger Delta, the blowing up of pipelines by militants is a big negative. I am an avid supporter of freedom for the Niger Delta people but I think that the pursuit of freedom should be couched within the realm of commonsense. Yes, the policy of government may have triggered the new militancy, such as stopping the Amnesty programme. It is still the same voodoo government. They should have consulted the stakeholders. How many militants are we dealing with? How many have been trained? How many are practising the skills? Etc.
The Rivers State government is about making the same mistake the Federal Government made. For instance, I know of a bus driver who is a militant. He went for amnesty, trained in aeronautical engineering in foreign lands. After two years, he came back home to start driving his bus again. Now, he is a high-tech militant. It is a dangerously wasted investment; from a local militant to an internationally-exposed high-tech militant with wide contacts in the Middle East. You did not know who he was mixing up with: Al-Qaeda, ISIS, etc. Do you know what skills he has acquired? Do you know what he can fly? Now, you do not have any programme to absorb him into the civil society and use his skills. He is loose cannon. That could be why the armed forces seem incapable of containing them. It is because of the skills they have acquired from across the globe.
What do you think should be done going forward?
The government needs to reassess to know what has been invested so far, who has benefited so far, what skills have been acquired, and what progress has been made in the chosen fields of training of the beneficiaries of the Amnesty programme. The government is about the people, they should not see themselves as separate from those they are leading. If the president sees the militants as being right to earn their allowances just as he earns his, he has no right to stop their allowances. The rights of these young men were enshrined in the law. The president of Nigeria signed it, so the next one cannot stop it without going through due process and consulting those who set it up. Now you are calling elders to come to Abuja, they gave you some points of agenda. Nobody sent them there. It is a charade. If you want to talk with the Niger Delta, come down here. We have grown beyond that stage in the Niger Delta where a few handpicked people such as traditional rulers talk to you. These are the same people that did not bring change to us and this is why this generation is causing trouble. These troubles will not end with palliatives. Parley with some elders, give them a path on the back, and they come back home and say they have talked with the president. The young men are in the creeks. The Federal Government has to decide what it wants to do with the Niger Delta. Palliatives will not work. If you handle the Amnesty as a developmental programme with checks and feedback, it will work. As long as it is viewed as a palliative measure, you cannot continue to deceive the Niger Delta. The issue here is the issue of human right, political freedom, and respect for human dignity.
Now, look at what we are reaping, environmental disaster. Very soon, many people will begin to die of respiratory disorder. There is soot in Port Harcourt. How did we get there? It is ‘kpo’ fire. That is illegal (artisanal) refining, sending particles into the atmosphere, continuing where the oil companies began 60 years ago. Now, oil companies failed to give us fuel, so we resorted to generators. We put all these things into nature and it multiples it and gives it back to us. You give nature air pollution, nature multiplies it and gives you lung cancer. So, the FG has to come up with developmental policy, not palliative.
But there is the Niger Delta Development Commission. What about that?
NDDC? But we have the Niger Delta Development Plan. What happened to it? Ask yourself, who controls the NDDC? Who approves the operations? If you scratch a bit, you will see that it does not have power to develop the region. I do not want to hand over this type of Nigeria to my children. I’d rather have a banana republic than hand this to my children. You cannot come and take my property and call it federal asset and leave me with nothing but pollution. Some call it the resource curse theory, but it is simply a case of political ecology of oppression. We were not there when the oil was stolen from the Niger Delta. We were under siege during the civil war when the oil mineral law was enacted. Morally speaking, you are not under obligation to obey laws made for you in your absence. That is imposition. The opinion of our people was not sought when our oil was taken. That is my position, because it was imposed on us. In the second phase, in 1978, the Land Use Act came annexing the land totally; they took the oil that was under the soil, and came back to take what is on the land. So, we do not have oil-producing communities but communities squatting in oil land. That is why they could move Finima town (in Bonny) to a new place without environmental impact assessment (EIA), but now, they are building airports there. Is it for whom? You can get permit to build it from the FG with no input from the local people. That is voodoo democracy. The nation has it as a responsibility to protect the citizens.
So, the issues we have here are age-long. They cannot be resolved by palliatives. We need a fundamental restructuring of this entity called Nigeria; otherwise Nigeria remains an oppressive contraption to keep me and my generations enslaved and my human dignity degraded and denied.Everybody shares from oil booty but only me and my brothers in the Niger Delta suffer from the effect of oil production. There is the theory of the tragedy of the commons. Property owned by the whole society normally suffers because few enjoy it but others suffer it. But here, we have a somersaulted tragedy of the commons. Few enjoy, many suffer it. This needs restructuring, and if anyone thinks our people will keep quiet forever, it is daydreaming. It is only a matter of time. We must go back to the drawing board. So, in the past one year, everything that has happened to the Niger Delta is mere palliative, apart from some issues like some measure of security in the local scene.
Over-concentration on oil as a foreign exchange earner has negatively affected the economy. What do you think can be done outside oil?
On a lighter note, we are looking for foreign exchange but we have a product that can earn it. There is marijuana in the Warri zone (I do not know what it looks like). I interacted with some youths there and found out what they feel about it. Why do we play the ostrich? They grow it in that part of Nigeria, from what I heard as rumour. Some countries have actually lifted the ban on the use of marijuana (19 states in the United States) and make much money from taxes on it. Here we have unemployed men all over the Niger Delta, we have countries ready to import this from us. Why not we legalise it and grow it and mop up those boys that know how to grow it and get involved in ways to sell it so that they become legitimate farmers? I am sure thousands of youths will benefit from the business. After all, we hear big people use it, including presidents, medical doctors. We could make plenty of millions of dollars every year exporting this weed. There would be processing and packaging factories. You will reduce the tension in the oil region, the boys will stop blowing up oil pipelines, and we will have electricity, more foreign exchange, and more peace in the oil region.
IGNATIUS CHUKWU
