By Bob MajiriOghene Etemiku
[dropcap]I[/dropcap]n 2016 just before the UK Anti-corruption Summit, former British Prime Minister, David Cameron said that Nigeria “is a fantastically corrupt country.”He made the statement on the basis of the fact that in spite of the enormous wealth accruing to Nigeria from crude oil sales, the people are ranked among the poorest in the world. There are no good roads and power is often epileptic.
Health facilities are non-existent to the extent that most public officials with a headache would more often hop on a plane to get treatment abroad. We all know the drill, with respect to the very low quality of life of the average Nigerian and so I am not going to bore you with that gripe.
Now, while it can be said unequivocally that Nigerians across board are like people who live by the banks of a river yet wash their hands with spittle that for the people of the nine Niger Delta states is even worse.
Take a look at it: how do you explain that the region which provides the economic mainstay of Nigeria itself has no good roads, health facilities, good schools and regular electricity?
It was in the light of this (but more to stem the tide of unrest and militancy over the underdevelopment of and in the Niger Delta) that Yar’Adua created the Ministry of the Niger Delta.
Even though the Niger Delta Development Commission (NDDC), together with a plethora of other development commissions were established as well to complement the work/activities of the Ministry of the Niger Delta and bring development closer to the people, there isn’t much to write home about in terms of concrete development.
That is why it is very sad today that very little of the objectives behind the establishment of these development commissions are actually being felt. Apart from government interference in the activities of these development commissions, what has been apparent is the gale of abandoned projects which dot the Niger Delta landscape.
In April of 2017, then Acting President Prof Yemi Osinbajo said that what he felt was responsible for the spectre of abandoned projects in the Niger Delta is the complicity of the elite.
What he was referring to perhaps is the generally held view in the Niger Delta that the development commissions are basically the ATMs of the chief executive officers of the states wherein these development commissions are domiciled.
But I think there is something more than that. There seems to be a pervasive culture of opaqueness surrounding the financial dealings of the development commissions.
Apart from the Ministry of the Niger Delta and the NDDC which have functional websites, and sometimes social media identities for engagement with the public, most of the other development commissions are usually inaccessible to the grassroots.
I remember a certain time I read about a road which the DESOPADEC had constructed in my hometown. To ascertain if this was indeed true, I put a call through to my kinsman to congratulate him. But no road had been constructed.
It is the same thing with the Citizen Report Card – a monitoring and evaluation document which two NGOs in the Niger Delta – the Africa Network for Environment & Economic Justice, ANEEJ and Leadership Initiative for Transformation and Empowerment in Africa (LITE-Africa) carried out.
Its executive summary revealed that there is poor planning and lack of consultation with the communities in the decision-making process.
Therefore after President Buhari signed Nigeria on to the Open Government Partnership, OGP, two years ago, it went on to develop a National Action plan along four thematic areas – fiscal transparency, zero tolerance to corruption, citizen engagement and access to information.
The underlying principle behind these themes is that if a government opens its books to public scrutiny, it engenders citizen participation in the governance process and makes it very hard for snakes to swallow monies.
So far, the federal government of Nigeria has shown a willingness to be transparent and accountable even though there are several instances wherein even its own people have been less than transparent and accountable.
There are already plans by other states in Nigeria to embed the thematic areas of the OGP into their governance processes. October last year, 2017 I was at the OGP/Open Alliance Stakeholders meeting in Kano.
A similar one had already taken place in Kaduna prior to the Kano meet. Part of the discussions involved an outlining of the roles which Civil Society organizations will play in the designing, monitoring and reporting of the OGP process when eventually put in place.
Participants were interested in finding out what key structures they would need to put in place for a successful and strategic engagement. Are there challenges which might work against the execution and delivery of the sub national plan?
From the way things stand now, most states in the Niger Delta are behind those in the North concerning the OGP sub-national plans but this should not be so.
Even though some states in the Niger Delta are run along different political platforms, the need for transparency and accountability in the conduct of government business, and particularly with the development commissions transcend partisan considerations.
Let me be clear. There are already insinuations that most contracts being awarded in most of the Niger Delta states somehow can be traced to companies owned by public officials.
Therefore having the OGP thematic areas of fiscal responsibility, anti-corruption, citizen participation and access to information embedded in the procurement processes in the Niger Delta region, we might begin to checkmate the snakes in the system and thereby see real development in the Niger Delta and its development commissions begin to take place.
Etemiku is communications manager ANEEJ. @bobaneej.
