Stakeholders from the Niger Delta gathered last month to chart a development path for a region faced with infrastructural, economic and environmental challenges despite its contribution to the national till.
Many knew it in their hearts that the economy of the oil region would never surge forward without a gathering of the various ethnic and interest groups in the Niger Delta. The outcome was expected to boost the confidence of businesses at home and abroad about the likely future of the oil region. This would show investors where the majority of the real people stood.
Also, the federal authorities never seemed to know what the real people actually wanted. This made it impossible to sensitive agencies of Govt especially on environment and agriculture to please the people of the region by providing the accurate facilities needed. It led to disenchantment and petitions against heads of these agencies and frequent removal of their CEOs and leadership teams.
It thus became very imperative that search for peace that would lead to stability and economic development could only emerge when the real people were assisted to come together and decide their destiny and decide what they wanted from the system.
As expected, many expressed doubts about the expected summit and fears of another jamboree were also expressed in some quarters.
When such doubters or critics were asked to mention the last time Niger Deltans across demographic segments and the geographic zones came together to discuss what affects all of them, they rolled their eyes and could hardly come up with an idea of any such meeting in recent times. Many forgot that it was such a gathering under in 1957 under the auspices of Sir Henry Willink that not only resolved the 1953 crisis in the oil region but also laid the foundation of almost everything that the Niger Delta area is enjoying or struggling to consolidate to this day. This shows that after crisis, it takes a get-together of all segments and age brackets of the region to repair it and lay the track for the next decades. If such gathering of all stakeholders are not initiated and properly utilized, the fruits of any struggle would waste in the wilderness.
The present Managing Director/Chief Executive Officer (MD/CEO) of the Niger Delta Development Commission (NDDC), Dr Samuel Ogbuku, was one of the young men that played prominent roles in the agitations that brought about the attention the region is getting today, and having found himself at the helm of affairs of the biggest intervention agency to rebuild the injured region, he saw it as a duty to lead the region to a get-together that would do again what the Sir Willink’s Commission sought to do: to develop a bottom-up package of resolutions that would guide all leaders of the region at different levels (local councils, states, at the centre, and the royal fathers) in their various development activities and in what to demand from the centre.
The World Press Conference mounted on July 5, 2024, as prelude to the Summit came in handy to dispel doubts and align majority thinking in a positive direction. It offered the MD/CEO the great opportunity to personally situate the relevance of the Stakeholders Forum. He went straight to duty and stressed the importance of stakeholders’ engagements in the development of the Niger Delta region.
Ogbuku said it was imperative for Niger Deltans to have a conversation on development issues, warranting the decision to host such a mega event which was to run from July 10 to 13, 2024. He said that the stakeholders’ summit, with the theme: “Renewed Hope for Sustainable Development of the Niger Delta Region,” was to provide a platform for new ideas and strategies to fast-track development in the Niger Delta in line with the Renewed Hope Agenda of President Bola Ahmed Tinubu.
According to the NDDC boss, “The summit will not just be a forum for a few individuals, but will involve major stakeholders, including members of the National Assembly, Ministers from the region, traditional rulers and the private sector experts to discuss the Niger Delta.”
One major point that was stressed at the World Press Conference was that sectional and mini engagements had been taking place over the years, and these engagements were able to hold the region together with sparks and flares here and there. These could be the meetings that confused many persons into thinking that Stakeholders Forums were going on in the recent past. The MD/CEO took time out to show the huge difference between the two. In his words, “Previous engagements with different groups were instrumental to maintaining peace in various communities. Development cannot take place in a crisis-prone environment. One of the cardinal policies of President Bola Ahmed Tinubu’s administration is stakeholders’ engagement and that is one area the NDDC is doing very well and we are getting good results.”
He said that such engagements would help the Commission implement projects that would ensure sustainable development of the Niger Delta region and address the aspirations and needs of the people of the region. He noted that rather than working at cross purposes, the summit was to help the development partners in the region to harmonise their activities.
One major need for such an all-embracing summit was the fact that the region had been governed in such a way that the populace came to believe in transactional leadership and relationship. To get them to buy into the new ideology of transformational leadership, Ogbuku said that the Commission, as path of its rebirth and rewind policy, must first brief the region at such a big forum.
Thus, he said, the NDDC was transiting from transaction to transformation in the process of developing the Niger Delta region; a fact that must be well understood by the stakeholders.
To show the seriousness of the then upcoming get-together, the Commission’s CEO showed what was the driving force behind the new NDDC. He stated that President Tinubu had charged the Commission to complete and commission signature projects that would impact the lives of Niger Deltans.
Ogbuku stated that the Commission would intensify its efforts to light up communities across the nine states of the Niger Delta, with solar-powered street lights, as part of measures to fight criminality and maintain peace in the region. He said that the Commission was also providing portable water in communities across the region, stating that this was critical at this period when cholera epidemic had become a big health challenge.
Giving insight on the youth empowerment programme of the Commission, tagged Holistic Opportunities Programme of Engagement (HOPE), Ogbuku called on the youths to seize the opportunity and be part of the process.
He said: “We encourage more persons to register because we want to ensure that our future engagements with youths will be based only on those who have registered with us in the database. That will enable us to know their areas of competence, because we discovered that our previous trainings were given to friends and family members who are probably not even interested in the training.” Ogbuku mentioned all the areas attracting strategic intervention of the Commission in response to the charge of President Tinubu.
When the summit started proper, the former president, His Excellency, Goodluck Jonathan, seemed to take the words out of the MD/CEO’s mouth by commending the Board and management of the NDDC for thinking it wise to bring everybody together to decide the way forward. The ex-President did not however fail to point out that it was credibility of the chief drivers of the Commission at the moment, and clear evidence of their determination to drive the region forward that convinced people like him to lend their time and personality to the Summit.
When the flak started flying, and when governors began to state their areas of concern, it was clear to everyone that the summit was worth every ounce of energy invested into it. The presence and full participation of the Senate President, Senator Godswill Akpabio, who represented President Bola Ahmed Tinubu; the Minister of Niger Delta Affairs, Engineer Abubakar Momoh, and leaders of the various segments of the region showed that it was serious business on display. The issues they tackled and the areas the leaders pointed to for more attention showed that the meeting could not have come at a better time.
Sen Godswill Akpabio, the Senate President and the highest political officeholder from the Niger Delta underscored the importance of the forum and the mind of the Presidency thus: “You are expected to work towards the fulfilment of the Renewed Hope Agenda of the President Bola Ahmed Tinubu administration.
“The National Assembly is fully represented here and this is to lend support to the present management of the NDDC. This has recorded impressive attendance.”
Dr Samuel Ogbuku is a performing Managing Director, but there are agitations in the Niger Delta requiring you to adopt pragmatic ways and do things differently. That is the expectation of the presidency. All hands must however be on deck to achieve desired change in the oil region.”
Weeks after, the Deputy Speaker of the House of Representatives, Honourable Benjamin Kalu, who could not make it, showed great pain for missing it, and profusely commended those who were able to attend. He testified that he and many others paid rapt attention even from afar to capture every single detail of the proceedings.
At the end, it was a time well spent, and the mobilisation seemed to have helped much when the nationwide protests came roaring. The leaders of the region and the NDDC simply leveraged the platform and rapport already created to engage the people of the region in towing a path of choice on the matter, which was: shun protests, pursue development.
