Obasanjo wrong on Niger Delta oil belonging to Nigeria –Ozekhome, NDC

By Sunday Ani

Senior lawyer, Chief Mike Ozekhome and the Niger Delta Congress (NDC) have faulted the position of former president Olusegun Obasanjo that crude oil deposits in the Niger Delta belongs to Federal Government and not the oil-bearing communities.

Obasanjo, in an open letter to Chief Edwin Clark, had argued that it was wrong for Niger Delta to claim sole ownership of oil resources found, saying it belongs to Nigeria just as any mineral resources found in any other region belongs to the country.

But in a statement entitled: “I humbly disagree with Obasanjo’s and his oily these”, Ozekhome accused Obasanjjo of being part of successive military juntas that cleverly and systematically inserted expropriatory and inhuman laws concerning ownership of oil and gas into the Nigerian statute books.

He reminded Obasanjo said Nigeria operates a federal system of government, and that federalism is fiscal and plural.

“One of the major attributes of federalism is that it ensures that regions, sub-national or federating units develop according to their pace and needs, using the God-given resources that are available to such units. They pay tax to the central government,” he said.

Part of the statement read: “Legally speaking, Obasanjo can be said to be correct because he was part and parcel of successive military juntas that cleverly and systematically inserted expropriatory and inhuman laws concerning ownership of oil and gas into our statute books. But, does that make such laws right or justifiable? No. I think not. Ex-president Obasanjo should be told in very clear terms that there is such an overriding principle of law which goes with the maxim of “quic quid plantatatur solo solo credit.” This literally means that whoever owns the land owns everything on top of it.

“Any extant constitutional or statutory provisions ( such as those apparently referred to by Obasanjo) that run contrary to this commonsensical common law principle are therefore nothing but bad, immoral, expropriatory and exploitative laws. Help me inform President Obasanjo that a law that literally steals the resources of a people, punishing them with destruction of their only available aquatic and agrarian life, even though in the statute books, is a bad, aberrant and obnoxious law.

“The Niger Delta region has been repressed, suppressed, marginalised and neglected. Respected Obasanjo, more than any other person,knows this very well, having had the rare privilege of governing Nigeria both in khaki and agbada. The poor people have had to pay with their sweat, sorrow, tears, blood, pains and pangs, over their God-given wealth. The wealth has become a curse rather than a blessing. I wholly disagree with Obasanjo’s thesis. I rather embrace wholly embrace Pa E.K.Clark’s anthesis, which wears a human face.”

Similarly, NDC dismissed Obasanjo’s arguments on the legalities of the expropriation of land and resources of Niger Delta as absurd.

In a statement by its spokesman, Ovunda Eni, yesterday, the group stressed that it was the right of the people of the region to control their resources and determine their socio-political future within or without the Nigerian state.

“The Niger Delta Congress has already begun the process of collating signatures of the representatives of the different ethnic nationalities of the region for the Niger Delta Peoples Charter which asserts the right of the people of the region to control their resources and determine their socio-political future within or without the Nigerian state.

“The NDC would like to use this opportunity to state clearly that it will resist any move to foist any constitution that does not take cognisance of the demands of our people as captured in the Niger Delta Peoples Charter adopted on October 8, 2021, at the Niger Delta Peoples Conference in Yenagoa,” he said.

Eni lamented that despite Obasanjo’s admittance that the land and mineral resources of the region sustained the civil war, he was still taunting the people to be appreciative of the outcome of the war on the premise that their situation would have been worse if Biafra had won.

“We appreciate these revelations, and although they aren’t new to us, in these uncertain times, it is important for the Niger Delta people to take note of this fact that its territory and people are seen by the larger nationalities as war booty won and/or lost and this thinking is what has and continues to influence the relationship between the nationalities of the Niger Delta and the larger nationalities; not neighbours, not brothers, not comrades, not friends, but war booty,” he said.

NDC Obasanjo’s understanding of fairness and equity to mean the suppression of ethnic nationalities, or tribes so the state could emerge.

“What he failed to reveal here but which can be deduced from previous paragraphs is that suppressing ‘tribes’ in a state is in reality nothing more than an attempt to create a state where smaller nationalities are silenced, or annihilated so their lands and resources are annexed and controlled by the larger ethnic nations who also make up the state. We have seen the ruthlessness with which this suppression as a strategy has been applied, most importantly with the genocide in Odi which left over 10 percent of the population dead in 1999; a genocide perpetrated by Nigerian troops when Obasanjo was the commander-in-chief of the Armed Forces.

“Obasanjo stating that he would continue to push for the suppression of ‘tribes’ in the Nigerian state until he ‘breathes’ his ‘last’ is pledging allegiance to a genocidal ideology. Such audacity can only come when a man has successfully carried out a massacre on the scale of Odi,” he said.

The group accused Obasanjo and his collaborators within and outside the Niger Delta of planning to shortchange the people once again as has been done since 1960 through his Committee for Goodness of Nigeria (CGN).

It accused the CGN of planning to recommend 18 percent derivation to those who can take action as part of moves to prepare a new constitution before the 2023 elections.

“This is insulting to the Niger Delta, and at this point, it is important to state clearly that the agitations of the Niger Delta people since time immemorial have revolved around economic and political autonomy or resource control, which is contained in the different declarations and charters that have emanated from the region since the Rumuomasi declaration of 1965,” the statement said.