When Boko Haram captured territory in Nigeria’s
northeast last year and declared a caliphate, there
were real fears for the sovereignty of Africa’s most
populous nation.
A deadline is looming for the military to end the six
years of violence, with signs that troops have wrested
back control of most of the towns and villages lost to
the Islamists.
But now President Muhammadu Buhari is facing
another potential headache with the revival of
separatist sentiment in the country’s southeast and
renewed debate over the sharing of oil wealth.
Recent weeks have seen a wave of protests calling for
an independent state of Biafra, 45 years after the end
of the brutal civil sparked by a previous declaration
of independence.
Now, campaigners in the oil-producing Niger delta
are demanding total control of resources to develop
the region, which remains under-developed despite
billions of dollars earned from crude.
Last Friday, the Niger Delta Self-Determination
Movement (NDSDM) lobby group, declared the
current agreement, whereby oil revenue is divided
among Nigeria’s 36 states, was unfair.
“The 13 percent (share for the Niger Delta) enshrined
in the 1999 constitution by the military is depriving us
of our God-given resources,” the group’s convener
Annkio Briggs told reporters in Lagos.
“We want 100 percent control and ownership of our
oil so that we can control our future.”
– Northern ‘dominance’ –
Nigeria’s crude-reliant economy has been battered by
the fall in global oil prices, hampering government
spending and even the payment of state-sector
salaries.
Crude accounts for 90 percent of Nigeria’s export
earnings and 70 percent of government overall
revenue.
In 2014, the country earned $77 billion from oil
exports, according to the US Department of Energy,
down from $84 billion in 2013 and $94 billion in 2012.
How much each state in the federation gets from the
sector has long been a thorny issue, exposing barely
concealed regional and ethnic rivalries.
Demands for a greater share of oil revenue were a
factor in the violence that gripped the delta in the
2000s until a government amnesty programme,
which ends this year, bought off militants.
Briggs’ group argues Nigeria’s political architecture,
with 19 states classed as northern and 17 in the
south, unfairly penalises the southern states where
oil is found.
“Of the 774 local government areas (administrative
divisions within each state), the north is given almost
70 percent,” she said, calling it “manipulations for…
socio-economic and political dominance”.
She blamed a succession of northern-dominated
military governments for forcing through the
revenue-sharing agreement down the barrel of a gun
“without our free, prior and informed consent”.
Briggs denied calling for a break away from the
federation but argued every region instead should
use its own natural resources to develop itself.
The NDSDM was founded last year during a national
conference convened by former president Goodluck
Jonathan at which delegates recommended the delta
region received 18 percent of oil revenue.
The recommendation was not implemented before
Jonathan left office.
– ‘Politically motivated’ –
Nigeria is almost evenly split between a Muslim-
majority north and largely Christian south and the
sharp division informs most aspects of political
debate.
But the argument for so-called “fiscal federalism” is
seen by some as unrealistic, with sectors such as
agriculture and manufacturing not sufficiently
developed yet to be sustainable.
Anyakwee Nsirimovu, of the Niger Delta Civil Society
Coalition pressure group, said demands from
southern pressure groups were predictable now
Buhari, a northern Muslim, was in power.
“Why is it after the defeat of Jonathan you see the
likes of Annkio Briggs, MASSOB (Movement for the
Actualisation of the Sovereign State of Biafra) and
IPOB (Indigenous Peoples of Biafra) asking for
resource control and self-determination?” he asked.
The complaints in fact exposed the failure of
Jonathan, from the oil-producing Bayelsa state, to
help his southern kinsmen during his six years in
power, he argued.
“Those who lost out in the power equation are
behind the crisis,” he claimed.
But Tony Nnadi, of the Movement for New Nigeria,
said every ethnic group had the right to either belong
to or pull out of Nigeria, nearly 102 years after the
country was formed.
“In 1914, the so-called Nigeria came into being
through an amalgamation of southern and northern
protectorates by the British colonial power,” he said.
“By the provisions of the amalgamation, we have the
right since 2014 to renegotiate the basis of our
continued existence.
The experiences of various ethnic groups “in the last
100 years have shown we cannot continue in the
marriage”, he added.
Source: Scan News

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