My first encounter with their full page adverts was in the Daily Independent of Wednesday, May 7, 2008. A faceless group, no doubt, but the name they had chosen to call themselves, “Patriotic Niger Delta Mothers,” was very emotive, and not very easy to ignore.
We know it as truth that in Africa, any time mothers decide to cry out on any issue, it is always difficult to deny them an ear. It is even possible that the people behind the group were men, and their intentions less-than noble, but by choosing to pass themselves off as not just women, but “Patriotic Mothers,” they were able to attract to themselves and the message they were propagating large doses of attention.
I only saw a few of their publications, especially, those published on Wednesdays – the day my Wednesday back-page column appears in Daily Independent. I have not even had the time to read everything they had to say. But from the very first publication, it was clear that their target was the Niger Delta Development Commission (NDDC). They were worried that the fire of probes raging across the nation was yet to engulf the rich ambience of the NDDC.
“Why has the National Assembly failed to look [at the NDDC] as they continue to probe the past and present activities of government officials? … We are tempted to break our silence as concerned mothers of the Niger Delta … We challenge them to begin a probe of the NDDC now. We challenge them to call for the records of the NDDC today. We weep everyday [and] groan and mourn that the leaders and operators of the NDDC have been a bundle of disappointment to us all. Let us sound this note of warning, that if in the next 30 days, the National Assembly fails to carry out this probe, we will match to Port Harcourt naked and beat our breasts for them,” the Patriotic Niger Delta Mothers declared on May 7. But on May 19, they changed the venue of their proposed nude protest march and threatened to “to storm Abuja naked to beat our breasts for our sons in the National Assembly, or in the ICPC, and the in the EFCC if they fail to begin the probe before June 6, 2008.” In yet another publication, they announced June 2 as the day they would parade their nakedness in Abuja .
Well, both June 2 and 6 have since passed, and no one saw any ‘patriotic naked mothers’ anywhere near Abuja or even Port Harcourt. Perhaps, they would want us to believe that they were dissuaded by the professor fellow who had in a full page advert on May 8, 2008, appealed to them not to debase “womanhood just because they want(ed) the Federal Government to probe” the NDDC.
The NDDC could not resist the temptation to join the high drama. A certain Chijioke Amu-Nnadi, a staff of the Commission who lays claim to a “21-year experience in journalism and associated media work” also took pages in the newspaper (at whose expense?) to publish the photographs of the “shack somewhere in Warri” which, he claims, the group had passed off as their address and argued that there was no way “the millions” used in funding the campaign for the probe of the NDDC could have flowed from that symbol of abject poverty and criminal underdevelopment in the Niger Delta, that is, the shack at 225 Sapele Road, Warri.
Perhaps, unknown to him, the photographs he published may have achieved only one thing, namely, to once more remind men and women of conscience of the unspeakable penury and deprivation ravaging the majority of Niger Delta people as their land and waters are irremediably ruined in the process of extracting oil from there to enrich other lands and feed the greed of the Nigerian political elite. What an irony! Mr. Amu-Nnadi also accused the group of revealing “in a stupid, almost unintelligent manner that they are after one man only: Mr. Timi Alaibe, the Managing Director/CEO of the NDDC”, whom he described as “one of the kindest and most hardworking persons” he had ever met.
Now, I don’t know Mr. Alaibe beyond the fact that he is NDDC boss who, it would seem, avoids the limelight, until perhaps, lately, when he stepped up his media appearances to show off some projects he claims the NDDC had been embarking upon. But he has a beautiful and fashionable wife, Alaere, who for sometime was the toast of society tabloids and Celebrity/Fashion pages of newspapers.
Mr. Alaibe was at some point touted as a governorship candidate in Bayelsa State, but was, reportedly, asked by his alleged godfather and PDP’s former Emperor, ex-president Obasanjo, to step down for the current governor. You know the PDP way, don’t you? But if we are to accept the suggestions that the current media war is all about politics, then Mr. Alaibe may be oiling his machines and famed formidable war-chest to storm Yenogoa in 2011.
Now, I do not agree with the Patriotic Niger Delta Mothers that the billions of naira owed the NDDC by the Federal Government should not be released to the Commission. Such a call can only reduce the point of their whole advocacy to mere elite squabbles and vain power game. If accepted by the government, such a measure would hurt the people more than even the NDDC Management.
But their demand for a thorough and comprehensive probe of the NDDC is in order, and has my full support.
And for a Commission which we are told conducts its affairs in an open and transparent manner, there should no reason such a call should give anyone the flu. Moreover, Mr. Alaibe is not the only Managing Director that has piloted affairs at the NDDC, nor does he alone constitute the Commission’s Management, so why should such a call by stakeholders (even if faceless) be reduced to an anti-Alaibe campaign?
Now, the claim by this group that the Commission has so far received N3.8 trillion and spent N20 billion just to facilitate “the development of the Master Plan” may not be true, but in a country where people are always ready to believe the worst about their government and its agencies, no amount of explanations by NDDC or even a lawsuit (as was threatened in one of the publications) can convince anyone otherwise. The Federal Government should therefore seek to restore credibility to the Commission by probing its activities and making its findings public. The Management, if at all it cares about its reputation, should even be pushing for the probe.
But beyond the controversy and probe fever is the serious question about the desirability of such bodies like the NDDC, which, if one must say the truth, are mere tokenisms set up by the resilient exploitative and oppressive ruling class to pacify their conscience that they are doing something to alleviate the untold sufferings of the criminally exploited Niger Delta people. Several times during our Editorial Board sessions at The Independent, my colleagues and I have argued that what the Niger Delta needs is not such palliatives and handouts like the NDDC (which could be hijacked and converted to a conduit pipe for siphoning public funds), but a comprehensive Development Plan, in fact, a Marshal Plan we called it (thank God, President Yar’Adua has also picked up the phrase – although one still doubts that he has the slightest idea what it really means), which would not only transform the region and give it a status appropriate to it as the exclusive source of Nigeria’s petro-wealth, but also turn it into a massive industrial hub, where the various gas resources there could be deployed to build petro-chemical and ancillary industries that would not only drive the economy of the entire nation, but the whole West African sub-region, and give Nigeria the status it truly deserves in the comity of nations.
This is the very area that produced the wealth that built virtually all Nigeria’s modern cities, yet it is still dominated by such
squalid shacks as the one the NDDC journalist had bruised our consciences with. Before NDDC, we had OMPADEC which was known for the massive corruption and profligacy that allegedly flourished there. Now, the NDDC is here, and cries of discontent and benumbing allegations of massive graft are still all over the place.
Only recently the Rivers State Governor, Mr. Chibuike Amechi, lamented that his state has yet to benefit anything significant from the operations of the NDDC. And he, certainly, is not the only governor feeling this way. What all these demonstrate is the inadequacy of the NDDC to scratch the Niger Delta problems, but before it is scrapped, the people need to fully know how even the token was managed. And so, the call for its probe must be heeded, and acted upon without further delay.
