The administration of President Ahmed Tinubu recently scrapped the Ministry of Niger Delta and replaced it with the Ministry of Regional Development to oversee all development commissions; this information was met with mixed reactions from several quarters. Niger Delta human rights activist Ann-Kio Briggs has faulted President Bola Tinubu for scrapping the Ministry of Niger Delta.
The environmentalist was a guest on the Friday edition of Inside Sources with Laolu Akande, a socio-political program aired on Channels Television. She stated, “The Ministry of Niger Delta was created by the late President Umaru Yar’Adua. There was a reason for the creation. So, just removing it because the president was advised. I want to believe that he was advised because if he did it by himself, that would be terribly wrong.”
Recall, in October, Tinubu scrapped the Ministry of Niger Delta and replaced it with the Ministry of Regional Development to oversee all development commissions like the Niger Delta Development Commission (NDDC), North-West Development Commission, South-East Development Commission, and the North-East Development Commission.
She pointed out that the government’s action would not offer any solution because “who is going to fund the commissions? Is it the regions because it is called the Regional Development Ministry? Is it the states in the regions?” She asked curiously. “What are the regions? because we don’t work with regions right now; we are working with geopolitical zones. “So, I was lost when I heard regions. Are we going back to regionalism? If we are, we have to discuss it, the president can’t decide on his own to restructure Nigeria. If we are restructuring Nigeria, the president alone can’t restructure Nigeria; he has to take my opinion and your opinion into consideration,” Briggs stated.
She stated, “Niger Delta has been developing Nigeria since 1958; we want to use our resources to develop our region; let regions use their resources to develop themselves.”.
Briggs lamented that all the bodies set up since independence to address the neglect of the oil-rich Niger Delta area have not assisted in developing the area in any way. She said, “NDDC was created by Olusegun Obasanjo… There was OMPADEC (Oil Mineral Producing Areas Development Commission) before NDDC. OMPADEC was an agency
“Before OMPADEC, there was the Basin Authority that was created for the Niger Delta, which was borne out of the meeting before independence that said, ‘Look, this area called the Niger Delta area is neglected; they bring a lot to the table; they are afraid that a bigger Nigeria, an independent Nigeria, will further neglect them’.
“These authorities were created to help us. Were we helped by those authorities? No, we were not. While we were not, we may not have had time to go into it.
“Every agency that has been created for the Niger Delta, speaking with experience, with the ones I came to meet starting from the Basin Authority, all the way to the NDDC; I look at the NDDC and describe the NDDC as an ATM for failed politicians, disgruntled politicians, and politicians that have had their electoral wins taken away from them and given to somebody else.”
