The Secretary General of the United Niger Delta Energy Development Security Strategy, (UNDEDSS) and member of the Niger Delta Technical Committee (NDTC) Tony Uranta, as a member of the delegation of the civil society groups that met with President Goodluck Jonathan on the removal of the fuel subsidy, spoke with Bertram Nwannekanma and Joe Adiorho. Excerpts:HOW would you assess the meeting between the delegation of civil society groups and President Goodluck Jonathan on the removal of fuel subsidy'The President was unequivocally told that it is unrealistic for him to believe that he would withdraw fuel subsidy and not expect negative reactions. He said that he would try to cushion the negative reactions by consulting with the civil society. But it was not much of a consultation because he has already reached a decision. To us, he was only calling us to inform us on his decision. We explained our position to him; the planned removal of fuel subsidy is wrongly timed. Personally, I see the sense in removing the subsidy, and with the programme drawn up by the vice president and his committee, it sounds as if they have good intentions, but the road to the graveyard is groomed with good intentions. We do not want good intentions; we want well-fashioned policies that are sustainable. The small scale Nigerian business runs on petrol, and not diesel. So if subsidy is removed, it will impact on them directly. Once the price of petrol goes up, the cost of other things will go up in a situation where government has not even been able to pay the N18,000 minimum wage. What the government is asking Nigerians to do is to commit suicide.What do you make of the argument then that the negative impact may not be widespread'People in the Niger Delta travel by boat; so they must use fuel to get to the up land. At present, they are paying a crazy price to get to the upland and it will become crazier with the removal. With the removal, they will be stuck in the ocean without access to the outside.The fuel subsidy is the only cushion that the poor man is receiving from this economy and there are poor people everywhere. The common Nigerian should not be made to pay for the inefficiency, mismanagement and corruption in government. What we must all agree to is that there is no way, Nigeria can absorb deregulation now. As good as deregulation might be, there is a time for everything, and this is not the time to sell our people into poverty and suicide. Nigerians were happy when the President came out with the transformation agenda. It is for him to edify Nigerians but he cannot do that with the removal of subsidy, he should look for alternative forms of revenue. The civil society groups suggested ways Nigeria could increase the earnings.Why has militancy persisted in the Niger Delta in spite of the amnesty programme'In reality what we have is not a resurgence of militancy, it is a disguised expression of a willingness to be part of development processes by youths. Amnesty is supposed to take care of armed militants disrupting the operations of oil industries and the possibilities of impacting developmentally on the infrastructure and human capital of the region. However, the programme, as it stands, specifically covers only 26,300 youths.The amnesty programme must not be confused with human capital development in the region. There is need to develop the youths, the unemployed and unemployable as it is in any other region. Unfortunately, in the Niger Delta, it is urgent. There is no similarity between the agitation in the Niger Delta and the Boko Haram uprising. Whilst the Boko Haram had gained attention of Nigerians because of its reckless violence, if there is a resurgence of militancy in Niger Delta, it will mean a crippling of the economy. The youths intercepted at Lokoja en-route Abuja in over 50 buses were not members of any existing camps at the time amnesty was granted, but then everybody wants to fall under the programme. Those young people are expressing the inability of the different tiers of government outside of the amnesty programme to satisfy the yearnings of Nigerians in general, and the Niger Delta in particular.As a member of the technical group that drew up the amnesty programme, did the group envisage the present scenario'Yes, they did. The amnesty programme, at that point was to stop the blood letting and disruptions in the oil industry. When the amnesty came into effect, the official figure of oil output was 700,000 barrels. Two weeks before, it was nearly two million barrels, but during the Gbaramatu crisis, the youths who could not face the soldiers, blew up the oil pipes and kept them inaccessible. The budget of the amnesty programme is only four days' production of crude in the region, that is why some people advocated a setting aside of a special fund like five per cent price of crude production for the development of the region.Is too much attention not been paid to the Niger Delta considering that under-development is not peculiar to the region'Poverty is a national problem. It cuts across board, but the danger is that if the poor man in Lagos reacts, at the worst, he will be a social risk with a minimal economic risk. But if the poor people in the Niger Delta, get angry, the people will become a buffer for the militant groups, and support their destruction of the common wealth, because they are not benefitting from the crude and they don't care about the despoliation of their environment. The danger is that if they get angry, they hold the nation at the jugular.Is the development programmes in the region not sustainable'The Federal Government should not leave all development efforts in the region at the hands of the Ministry of the Niger Delta and the Niger Delta Development Commission (NDDC). Every ministry must be made part of the development efforts. The Ministry of Works for example pulled its hands off the construction of roads in that region, and because of that, the whole of the East, not just the South-South suffer because of the poor state of the Benin-Ore road. The East-West road, which they tout falls under the Ministry of the Niger Delta consumes about N47 billion a year in debt servicing alone, and the ministry has about N56 billion. It means that the ministry effectively had only N9 billion to do recurrent jobs and capital projects. We cannot survive on the template we are presently operating on.What do you expect from the new NDDC board'The last two years of the NDDC has been spent in retrogression. The Orasanye's probe panel indicted all but one person in the last NDDC. They are all supposed to be in jail, we are pressing for it. We are going to ask that those men answer for the monies they stole. Now the new board is in, we expect that the new boss is as sincere as he sounds. We are waiting to see how he will run the place.The fact is that the board has to face up to its responsibilities. At the last meeting of the presidential committee on infrastructural and human capital development in the Niger Delta, it was agreed that this item, infrastructural jobs be handled by the Ministry of the Niger Delta, that human capital development should be done through the NDDC, as well as smaller infrastructural jobs in the region of N1 billion to N2 billion. They should focus mainly on providing water, power, access to transport, land reclamation and shore protection. If they can focus on these things knowing that the Niger Delta master plan is still there and the unfinished products of the last two years are still there, then they would have set the stage for a fresh start for the region.How do you react to the threats by youths in Niger Delta to combat Boko Haram in the region'We recognise that the Joint Revolutionary Council (JRC), which comprises quite a few groups of former militants threw down the gauntlet recently and dared Boko Haram to come into the Niger Delta. Boko Haram is a faceless organisation, a terrorist group using guerrilla tactics. They are probably ordinary people living among the common people. How do you target them' Are we saying that if a Boko Haram bomb explodes in Port Harcourt, the youths in the Niger Delta should go to detonate a bomb in Maiduguri' I dare say that the people that constitute whatever groups including Boko Haram have a right to desire whatever thing they want. It is up to the nation to fashion a way for them to express their needs and interests without recourse to violence.
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