Why Niger Delta is becoming a trouble spot – Alfred Diete Spiff

How has it been ruling over your subjects since you left office about three decades ago? Its been most rewarding. The position of leadership is a  privilege. The people achieve more than they could, normally without your help. That is what I think  leaders should see themselves as doing, facilitating, adding values to their people’s […]

How has it been ruling over your subjects since you left office about three decades ago?

Its been most rewarding. The position of leadership is a  privilege. The people achieve more than they could, normally without your help. That is what I think  leaders should see themselves as doing, facilitating, adding values to their people’s efforts be it at the national level, state, local government or  down to the community level.

The leader should make himself, his services, knowledge and connections available to his people to improve what they would normally have achieved without him.

What  problems  have you been encountering as your state and the whole of the Niger Delta is replete with lots of problems?

Problems are very peculiar to every African society. You can imagine where a store keeper in a ministry is retired and he goes home and he is given a chieftaincy title while a Permanent  Secretary in the same ministry retires and is not given a title. The store keeper takes  precedence over him and wants to now pontificate and think that the Holy Ghost has now descended on him and he has now got knowledge over  the Permanent Secretary. So, you have this sorts of conflicts of culture. Some of these are a bit old fashioned, so we are trying to modernise some of these things. It’s not been easy because our culture is dying hard. Customs die hard and people’s habit also die hard.

We have to do it by persuasion and in a more scientific manner. You need to understand  the people you are governing  and  try to relate with them and operate on the same frequency, or try to improve their lots to get to your frequency. The lifelong challenge is very exciting.

Militancy is dying down but of course, all these was started and encouraged  by the oil companies who were engaging our young people and just giving them positions as liaison officers  without them doing any work. So, the youth  leadership became a very lucrative position. The youths were now overthrowing each other making sure that they were in control so that they will get all the largesse from the oil companies.

It became clear to them that if they pool their resources together, they could control the entire economy. You can imagine a situation where fishermen can’t go out to fish freely because the young men are in the creeks controlling everybody.

Then politics came in and the various rival political groups owned strong boys around who were there to do their biddings. It got to a stage where you cannot control this evil. Undisciplined groups found themselves with arms. It was the survival of the fittest. Luckily, they have realised this and have embraced amnesty.

The traditional rulers should be allowed to play a major role in rehabilitating the youngsters or else, you will find that you now have a society where young men don’t look up to the older ones. We really must be careful  how we disintegrate our traditions and values because it will only lead to a situation where people have no reference points.

Talking about reference points and the instrumentality of the traditional institution. In Rivers State, it is  a law that the traditional institutions get 5% from the statutory allocations accruing to the state. What is the situation  in Bayelsa State? Is the government encouraging the traditional institution?

Yes. We are virtually operating the same laws of Eastern Nigeria as interpreted under the old Rivers State, now Rivers and Bayelsa. But Gen. Abacha, in his wisdom, approved the 5% of oil revenue to the traditional institution. This should be done. Obviously, there is need also for the interventionary commissions. While you have the NDDC at the national level, other oil producing states should also have their intervention commissions, like ISOPADEC or OSOPADEC. Ours should be BASOPADEC. These things are necessary just like light and water.

With time, I hope government should be able to put these things in place. The host communities of the oil and gas producing areas should do whatever they can by way of self-help. Their monies being paid  by the oil companies is something which has been rightly allocated to them for development.  They should lead to the setting up of small and medium scale industries, things which should enable the host communities to participate in the oil industry. That will give them  a sense of  belonging and nobody will want to kill the goose that lays the golden egg if he is also benefitting directly from it.

Bayelsa has some peculiar problems regarding lack of  infrastructural development. What are the peculiar problems in your own community?

The Twon-Brass kingdom  is one of  the coastal  kingdoms. From the word go, even the time I visited as a military governor  in 1968, this place was eroding very fast. We have lost half  of our communal  lands  to the incursion of the ocean. Various efforts at containing the erosion there have not worked out. We had what they called longer tubes. We had gabions. We had this and that. The last one was the job done by Julius Berger where we had bags of chippings and rocks being used to provide blockage and slow down the erosion. That one too has collapsed because the power of the water, its elevation was overwhelming. We have now come to the painful conclusion that there is only one thing left , paring the waterfront  and  building a marina round like they did in Lagos, something really big and solid. It will cost some money but instead of erosion it will cause sedimentation. We could now even do a break water around like a natural harbour, so that the fishing vessels and so on when they come in can berth there and be protected from the direct flow of the wind. That should be a long time solution to the perennial erosion problem.

Twon-Brass is a wonderful area for tourism. It is thirty minutes to the ocean. Luckily, we have an airstrip already. We have the AGIP station, which prospects oil and has their tank there since 1972. There is the Brass LNG coming up in  the next thirty six months or so. We have the Novena University of  which I am the Chancellor. We will bring in a campus to Brass. We will train pilots and marine navigators, marine engineers and aeronautical engineers in collaboration with American flyers and the University of Antwerp. So, with these things coming up, we need to have a proper force of protection so that we will not lose this small land to the sea.

Going down memory lane, as the traditional and paramount ruler of the kingdom can you tell us a little of the history of the kingdom?

Twon-Brass has been one of the major  stations from the colonial days. You remember that  John  and  Richard Lander facing  the Niger came out to the sea down the Niger through Twon-Brass. Also, the early explorers that came in  and established a viable palm-oil trade through Twon-Brass and Akassa. When slave trade was abolished, Twon-Brass was the station for the Consul-General. The monitoring and control of slaveship raiders were actually from Twon-Brass, which also provided the lowest latitude in the country at Igbabele.

We  had a situation when the franchise given to the United African Company (UAC) authorised them to trade but to use the people of Twon-Brass as their middlemen.They  started venturing in-shore going as far as Oguta, futher in-shore to Onitsha. They  tried to abrogate a standing treaty. As a result, there was the Akassa raid in 1896. The station there was burnt down and the agent and a few others of his staff  were killed.

The British expeditionary forces came in and quelled the whole uprising. But it has been down in history that the need for self-determination and  resource control had been in the forefront all these years even before this  century or the last. So, we have a situation now where there is need for these companies which have a memoranda of  standing with various communities, to stick to them and fulfill the terms of such agreements. These are the things that lead to rifts between the host communities and the companies. We are reminding companies that do not have a memoranda of understanding with the host communities to  go and make one so that we have guidelines binding, guiding and directing us on how there should be peaceful co-existence.

The majority shares of the oil companies are owned by the federal government. President Yar’adua has approved that the federal government should shed 19% of its equity. Modalities are being worked as to how this will be passed on to the host communities and to other Nigerians. This is also a good omen. Once you now make people feel that they belong, history will now be able to smile favourably on this generation.

Some critics say the leaders of the Niger Delta, including traditional rulers  are the ones who are exercerbating the crises in the region because they don’t give  true leadership and good governance. And the youths here are led to believe that most of the woes that befall the coastal communities is as a result of the incursion of strangers, particularly the Hausa people. What is your take on these?

The traditional  rulers have been  the whipping boys. Abacha decided to convert himself from the uniform to agbada. At the end of the day, even the political parties that all adopted him as their candidate  later said it was the traditional rulers who endorsed him. As a result, Gen. Abdulsalami Abubakar  and the rest went and  removed  the names of traditional rulers from the constitution until now. Now they say the traditional rulers have gone and got a cup of tea or a bottle of wine from the oil  companies  that is why the oil companies are doing what they are doing.

No. It is the federal government that owns 55 or 60 per cent of the oil companies. The pressure being put on  the oil companies  should  now go to the federal  government and  they now turn round and nullify everything. Every little gain made  by the communities is frustrated by the federal fiat.

I feel very sorry for the northern states. If there were no oil will they survive? Look at their budgets compared to the ones in the oil producing areas. You can see clearly that the northern states   are dependent on the oil and federal allocations. Without the federal allocation they may not be able to carry out their development.

We want even development for  the entire country. Any area which is left behind will become a trouble spot. Why the Niger Delta is becoming a trouble spot is because the cost of development there is much higher. I don’t subscribe to the notion of the north being our problem. The only thing is that the other states  should realise that  the  Niger Delta is the goose that lays the golden egg. We should all share and recognise the efforts.It takes a lot of human milk and kindness to see your thing being taken and shared for everybody.

When it gets to a stage where we are now being denied of our own fundamental human rights we now see that it is our own brothers who are trying to colonies us, we say “oti o”. We no gree. This is the one that causes… I no gree na hin dey tia trousers. The whole thing is that let us appreciate each other   and put ourselves in the shoes of the other person and look at these things dispassionately so that we can now begin to see the other man’s problems and embrace it as our own problem, then we can jointly   come up with a solution that should all be fair to each other.  You should not do unto others what you will not like others do unto

There are insinuations and calls from some quarters that the acting president should run for president. Where does this leave the Niger Delta if he decides to run considering the PDP zoning arrangement?

The political parties have their own agenda. And that is their own agenda not that of  the nation. The national agenda still takes  precedence over  whatever  political party agenda is. Now that there is the thinking that independent candidacy should be encouraged, I think we are getting somewhere.

The north, obviously, will like to continue to govern. I say this strictly as a political observer. Our acting president is in  an acting capacity. If the National Assembly which gave him the powers to act thinks otherwise that he should now be confirmed, good and fair enough. But the constitution  says presently  the president can only be removed by impeachment. Now you can see the sensitive situation where you now want to impeach somebody who is ill. By African parlance this does not taste good. The sound of it leaves a bitter taste in the mouth. The politicians know what is best and if they say Goodluck should continue acting and call for early election so be it. And if at that time he says he wants to run or his party says he should run, then that is the prerogative of his party. If  his party decides that a northerner should run and he feels he should run, he can still go as an independent candidate. 

The nation and the world will remember  that you assumed office as a young man and today, by the Grace of God you are still alive. We have reached a stage where elder statesmen like Gen. Babangida are saying that young men are not fit to be trusted with political positions. What is your view on this?

Time changes. It was Ibrahim Babangida himself who came up with the new breed. If  he is now saying that young men cannot be trusted, that means he is disappointed that his new breed politics did not work. Obviously, he must feel really let down because he was the one who stuck out his neck and said let’s create the newbreed.

I, also was a beneficiary of governance at the age of  twenty four. At that time,  it looked like what we were doing was  not going to work,but over the years, you have now seen that we were very thorough. . A farmer sows his seeds and  it takes time to germinate. Lots of mischief makers can actually , deliberately go and scatter  the farm to see that the well planned and articulate arrangement falls to naught. We need to have a situation where the older and the younger ones blend. There should be continuity and a formal  hand over.

 Your history as governor of Rivers State will not be complete without mentioning even as a footnote, the Amakiri incident. How do you feel about it now that you are in a much more advanced age?

Amakiri is my son-in-law. He is married to one Ms Spiff. The only grouse he had at that time was that , as governor, I attended  the wedding of  my cousin, the director of  sports, Ebent Spiff and I did not attend his wedding in person. So, he ganged up with my colleague, Gen. Samuel Ogbemudia, and was writing all kinds of  thrash against my government.

Today, everybody is still talking about Amakiri. There is no quarrel between us. I didn’t direct anybody to cane Amakiri or shave his head with a bottle.  It was   members of my cabinet and some of my friends who  came and said this was what  had happened.

All I did was to invite Amakiri to Government House for an interview. The soldiers were also human beings and they had been reading all the bad press. So when they saw him they said: so na you be the Amakiri?, they pounced on him.

Was it not an order from you?

No., no, it  wasn’t an order from anybody. It is very sad that they still blog on this everyday. The Observer was there and  everyday it was on Rivers state instigating teachers to go on strike and others. Even at press conferences, Amakiri wanted to put his fingers in my eye. It got to a stage where some of my commissioners were being blackmailed.

So, we got to a situation where you don’t want to re-open open wounds. The judge who took that  judgement  also, may his soul rest in peace, … Let sleeping dogs lie because  after  now,  I will also write to debunk most of these things because it sounds as though others don’t have human rights.