Bayelsa first-class monarch fumes: Injustice in N’ Delta fuelling Boko

A first class monarch in Bayelsa State, King Bubaraye Dakolo, Agada IV, Ibenananowei of Ekpetiama Kingdom in Yenagoa Local Government Area, has linked the injustice in the Niger Delta region through oil exploration to the myriad of security challenges including insurgency, banditry and kidnapping confronting the country.

In an interview with FEMI FOLARANMI, King Dakolo, whose new book, The Riddle of The Oil Thief, revealed the grand oil theft going on in the Niger Delta, He insisted that until justice is enthroned in the dealings between the Nigerian Government and oil companies on one hand, and the oil communities on the other hand, peace and stability would be far from the country.

Going through your book, one would go with the impression that oil has brought nothing other than doom to the Niger Delta region

Well I am a scientist. And when you are a scientist, you scale and you weigh. So if you compare, I would tell you that oil has brought doom more than anything else. I can tell you that the Niger Delta person today is more like an apparition. He does not even understand himself properly anymore because the tornado and momentum or the impact that we have gotten from oil exploitation is so devastating that sometimes, you may not even know.

Yes there might be a few roads here and there, but those are insignificant. What you are seeing are dry bones; I don’t know when we will rise again. So even if some of us appear to look good, you cannot compare that looking good to how others live and feed and look good. We are not looking good compared to others. So pinpointing one high way somewhere and one jetty somewhere and one scholarship you gave to someone somewhere, it is nothing compared to all the oil blocs that have been given out to people outside the Niger Delta, and giving out our own kingdoms as other peoples oil blocs. There is nothing compared to that.

The amount of money that has gone to Europe and America in the last seven decades, you can’t compare what has come to the Niger Delta. What has been used to develop cities across the world, the oil and gas has made billionaires out of people across the world. How many billionaires do we have in Ekpetiama Kingdom? How many kings are billionaires in the Niger Delta? Almost negligible. So that is why I said when you compare, it is more of doom and the violence they have brought has become our staple.

You were an indirect victim of the April 22 1990 Gideon Orkar coup, which was interpreted as a liberation coup for the Niger Delta region. Do you envisage a day of liberation for the region going by the account of your book?

Well I think liberation has started because once you have life you must have hope. If there has been justice in oil exploration, there have would be no banditry, there would have been no Boko Haram, no 90 million poorest of the poor in this country because you will tell me that If today you are taught how to fish, you are trained in the vocation, you have been set for life because you will continue to use that vocation to fend for yourself and your offspring.

The political and business elite of the Niger Delta region have been fingered as being part of the grand oil theft going on in the region?

The business and the political elite of the Niger Delta are victims of oil thievery. If you show me how many of them have oil blocs, then I would tell you that maybe you are right. But if the answer is no,, then we are victims. It takes a great understanding of the psychology of the oppressed for you to understand whether these guys are victims or not. If you lock a dog, for example, in a cage for three days without food, if you bring it out it will become very aggressive. The elites of the Niger Delta are victims of the grand oil thievery; they are products of this same contraption that have been unfair to their fathers and their grandfathers. I know the debate; the debate is what about that man who is a Senator, that man who is the governor or that man that is in the Niger Delta Development Commission (NDDC)? Yes you would say so, but I can tell you that until recently, most of those who superintend in the Niger Delta states were handpicked. People hold meetings at some places and handpicked leaders for the Niger Delta people from time immemorial. You can imagine one man they call Metima was made military governor of Rivers State and then in a few weeks he was removed. He never even resumed, because there were a couple of protests and those who rule, those who determine who to handpick changed him. So you can see we have never consciously sat down to say this man, be in charge. So if you have been put in charge by a magician from elsewhere as a superintendent of an enclave, who do you listen to? I have read a lot about black development in America. The trick is when you want to come to power, you are picked from somewhere. Usually, you are picked as a nonentity and put into position. When you are put there by people who had handpicked you, they nurse you and nurture you. When you get to a level where you begin to become conscious, they put you back to where you belong. For example if you are made the Speaker of the House of Assembly, when you become conscious that now, I am speaker, so I should also nominate somebody to become commissioner or nominate somebody to become this or that, the powers that be will now say you are growing wings, and then they would blackmail you. So you either keep quiet and remain the stooge that you are, or you shout and they remove you. They use the press and bring you to the ground.

So most times, when you see a Niger Delta person in charge, he is not really in charge. I was exposed to science and academics very early in life because I had brothers who were a little more advanced, and I was exposed to reading their books. So my concern has been for every young person to get out of poverty and to fend for themselves, and my concern is national development. So I have known about the aberration called oil and gas exploitation in Nigeria. How it has not served the Nigeria people, how it has not served the Niger Delta people, how it does not serve the Ekepetiama people.

So the injustice in the Niger Delta is the root cause of Nigeria’s problem?

Let’s see how we can have a better country because a country that spends all of its energy exploiting resources from one little corner, the misapplication, the misinterpretation that led to the complete decimation of agriculture, decimation of factories and the industry that was booming before oil became a major factor and then the complete decimation of culture and tradition of most of the enclaves. If you look at it very well, while we were pioneer major victims of the oil and gas industry because of the way other players in this country responded to the Niger Delta question they have invariably bitten the bug and they are now being eaten up by the voracious consumer. So what everyone needs to do is to return and look at how to justly treat the Niger Delta person with respect to oil and gas and then peace will return to the land. But if that is not done, I see lot of boom and doom. If there was oil and gas justice in the 60s and 80s, there would have been no Boko Haram. There would have been no banditry. Even the kidnapping that was thought to be a Niger Delta thing is now a national problem. So it is just good for people to call a spade a spade and be just to everyone. Whether tall or short, slim or fat, young or old, everyone deserves justice

You also alluded to the international dimension of oil theft

For example in the Gulf of Guinea, I can tell you for sure that there must be one stray ship, an ocean liner off the Gulf of Guinea waiting to collect stolen crude. And they do take it to Europe; they take it to the Americas. So without those ships, perhaps nobody will be stealing oil, because a jerry can of crude oil is meaningless to anybody but a ship load is a darling any day. And these guys need this stolen crude more or less to warm them. So they are the ones encouraging thievery. The worst part is that they have the gadgets to detect oil theft. There is no ocean liner that has the capacity to store 2million barrels that you can’t see in the satellite. You know it has strayed into the Gulf of Guinea and that it is stealing oil, then you pretend not to know. And that pretence is the problem of the Niger Delta.

In the book you painted a picture of conspiracy in oil theft

I hope you know and agree there is oil thievery. So there is no question about oil thievery. So the concern about oil thievery began when Nigerian was losing so much of its resources. And so the government at the time, about 21 years ago, around 1998 brought the contraption, Joint Task Force which was at the time established to take care of the northern part. It has been successful from 1994 in the northern states and so the country’s government body, at a time in 1998, considered that it might just be good enough for that outfit to come to the Niger Delta to see that things were going well and stop oil theft and all that, and perhaps ensure those small disturbances were brought to order. So if in 1998 that was done and then in the year 2019, it was revealed by nobody else other than the Group Managing Director of NNPC that 750 million dollar worth of crude oil was said to have been stolen, then you would see that that outfit has in a way not succeeded in stopping oil thievery. So it means oil thievery is going on. So the question is, if you are asked to watch over this particular item and under your watch, oil thievery continues, it means you are complicit. The oil thieves have properties in Banana Island. That’s how you know them. They have in London, they have in Abuja, in Maitama. They have in Asokoro. But they do not have in Gbanratoru. They have in Frankfurt, they have in Strasbourg. They have yachts. They have private jets and they have super cars. It is easy to know the oil thieves. If we say let’s go to Abuja and let everyone stand by his property, you would know who the oil thieves are.

Elsewhere the oil pipes are buried and they are secured and the proceeds are used for the good of all. But now you take my land for example, you take my oil in the pretext of using it for the common good of the people and then I sit here expecting the good and I do not see any good and I see only the environmental devastation and degradation, the pillaging, the abuse of my children, my daughters and sons, then the question would be, were you honest in trying to centralise this ancestral inheritance of mine? The answer may just be no. You have to search your conscience very well as a journalist and as an academic, as a military man and as a politician. Have you been fair to the communities that host the oil industry? I think that the answer may just be no.