WHY PRESIDENT BUHARI’S NDDC NOMINEES FROM DELTA SHOULD STAY

The nominations from Delta State on the board of the Niger Delta Development Commission, NDDC, have unnecessarily generated largely uninformed and rather infantile opposition from certain quarters with some of the protesters, who happen to be members of the All Progressives Congress, APC, going to the extent of claiming to be speaking on behalf of the entirety of their various ethnic groups as if every member of their tribe is an APC member.

The situation has deteriorated to the point that members of particular tribes who happen to take a pan-Deltan position that actually coincides with the law, have been branded as traitors and subjected to brazenly riotous, criminal and otherwise, equally condemnable unlawful harassment.
Particularly irritating as been the slant given to the section of the governing law of the NDDC, quoted by such persons, which states, inter alia, that where a vacancy occurs on the board, a successor to the relevant position shall be appointed such that such successor shall represent the same interest as was represented by the predecessor. Any lawyer of course realizes that nothing in that section even remotely envisages the promotion of ethnic jingoism, irredentism, parochialism or rent-seeking vide the instrumentality of the law.
In fact, I would submit, without even the slightest fear of contradiction that what is meant by ‘interest’ in the law, above referenced, is that such successor shall represent the interest of the oil-producing state to which his or her predecessor belongs. Since the enabling law equally prescribes that appointees from each state shall come from the oil-producing areas of such state, it therefore means that such appointee, in so far as he hails from an oil-producing part of the state, is representative of that interest as envisaged by the law. That is the law; that is how it is written and that is how it was intended.
The representatives of each and every state in the NDDC is not at all the representative of his particular tribe but the representative of the particular NDDC state for the purpose of the development of absolutely every oil-producing part of that state. He is not there to primitively represent the interest of his particular tribe to the detriment of others in complete and flagrant violation of both the spirit and letter of the enabling law.

An NDDC appointee from any state is therefore not just expected, but, even more importantly, compelled by law to carry along, absolutely every oil-producing part of his state to the best of his ability whether or not such part of that state is where he happens to hail from. In the case of an Executive Director, his constituency is not merely the entirety of the oil-producing parts of his state but in addition, absolutely every oil-producing part of all the NDDC member states combined.
In service to rather greed-inspired ethnic considerations, some of the agitators had prominently projected Tuoyo Omatsuli, the sacked, former Executive Director, Projects, to be returned to that same post. Unfortunately, unless, he is the only clean member of the former board, and given that no member of that board was returned by Mr. President, it cannot possibly make any sense for Omatsuli to be the sole exception.
At any rate, there are very few credible Itsekiris indeed that will point to Omatsuli’s tenure at NDDC as one that brought any meaningful dividend to the generality of Itsekiris to the extent of canvassing his personal cause as approximate to the national interests of the Itsekiris as a people.
In any case, representation on the board of the NDDC from Delta State, has always been equally shared between Delta Central and Delta South. It has never been allotted on grounds of tribal affiliation but always strictly on the basis of one appointment each going to the two major oil-producing zones. Of course there would equitably arise a need to rotate such appointments amongst the various oil-producing components of each Senatorial zone but this has never affected the fact that one goes to Delta Central and the other to Delta South.
Unless those protesting are trying to create the impression that Mr. President does not know what he is doing by appointing a seasoned writer, public affairs commentator, activist and lawyer from Delta South, in the person of Dr. Ogaga Ifowodo, to the post of Commissioner from Delta, and, an eminently qualified, competent and highly experienced technocrat from the oil and gas industry, in the person of Engr. Samuel Adjenakevwe Adjogbe as Executive Director, Projects, then they have no case to make, especially as persons who have always tried to appear to be more loyal to Mr. President, than others in the party.
As to some of the Itsekiri agitators, one wonders if the cause they are canvassing is for the position of Executive Director, Projects, to go to their tribe and for the position of Commissioner to be taken from the Isokos and then allotted to Delta Central, leaving the Isokos with nothing. That is of course, if they are not making the irretrievably insane case that both the Commissionership and the position of Executive Director, Projects, be domiciled in Delta South with Delta Central having absolutely no similar representation in NDDC! One wonders if this could possibly be the official position of the Itsekiri nation, and whether indeed, those canvassing such a position have even bothered to sit back and ask themselves if such an outcome would not catastrophically compromise the healthy peace Urhobos and Itsekiris have been enjoying for quite a while now.

People should be careful what they canvass and be extremely circumspect as to the positions they choose to assume. We would all do well to be reminded that whereas in Delta Central, the Urhobos do not share their Senatorial Zone with any indigenous non-Urhobos, the Itsekiris on their part, happen to share their zone, not only with indigenous Ijaws and Isokos but also with some Urhobos who are similarly indigenous to Delta South.
As such, whatever goes to Delta South as a Senatorial Zone, does not necessarily have to go to the Itsekiris if it doesn’t go to the Isokos. It can as well be allotted to either the Ijaws or indeed the Delta South Urhobos who have never been carried along in NDDC in the first place.

The handful of Isokos who have similarly been agitating for the position of EDP to be filled by someone from Delta South, forget that they are only putting any sort of Isoko representation on the board in jeopardy since there is no guarantee that should the Executive Director, Projects be appointed from Delta South Senatorial District, it would necessarily go to an Isoko person, when, as already pointed out above, they share that Senatorial District with indigenous Ijaws, Itsekiris and Urhobos.
Needless to say, there is absolutely no law that says the appointee from Delta South must be an Isoko person and if the so-called tradition they have been recommending to Mr. President is followed to the letter, there would be no Isoko person, be it Commissioner or Executive Director on the NDDC board, since the EDP would be retained in Itsekiri and the Commissionership, in Urhobo!
Thus, as to complaints regarding the swapping of positions or the abridgement of ‘ethnic tenures’ – whatever such parochial ideas could possibly mean – while acknowledging the ethnic particularities of Delta State, we must equally be mindful of the fact that these ethnic differentiations are not at all peculiar to Delta in isolation, for they are to be found in every state in the Niger Delta region and to varying degrees, across the entirety of this country.
It is thus instructive, that it is not just in Delta that positions were swapped, given that the new Managing Director, nominated from Akwa Ibom, is an Ibibio who replaces an Eket man from the former board, just as the new Executive Director from Rivers is an Ogoni who was nominated in replacement of an Ikwere.
As such, unless someone out there envisages a situation in which despite not having either the Governorship, Deputy Governorship or Ministerial position, the Urhobos of Delta Central should get nothing on the NDDC board, then it is time for all of us to close ranks and come together to make the best of what has come to our state. As the elders say, without greed, even the leg of a cricket can be shared.
As for Olorogun O’tega Emerhor, had he really been an ethnic jingoist, as is being unwarrantedly insinuated by some of the protesters, he could well have schemed to have an Urhobo from Delta South represent the zone rather than an Isoko from the same Senatorial Zone. That would be perfectly in tandem with the law. That he chose, rather, to be considerate and pragmatic, while being mindful of the ethnic configuration of Delta, thus displaying due regard for both of the major oil-producing Senatorial Zones of the state, I must admit is a testament to genuine leadership on his part.

Similarly, while I also admit not having necessarily been on the best of terms with Olorogun Emerhor for a while now, I must humble myself and not only applaud, but equally commend, celebrate and acknowledge him for finally bringing the party concrete hope that Delta will not be left behind by the Buhari administration, that Mr. President means well both for the state as a whole and for the state chapter of the APC, and that Delta Central, the most shortchanged part of the state, both at state and federal level in the present dispensation, will be carried along as an important stakeholder in the Nigerian project.
Hitherto, party chieftains had been at pains to explain to the party faithful that Mr. President means well, that he is merely taking his time so as not to repeat the mistakes of the past, and that at the appropriate time he would carry Delta APC along. Whatever differences anyone may or may not have with O’tega, he has certainly proved that he can bring something home to the party for the benefit of the generality of Deltans and that with patience, more will come to us both as a party and even more importantly as a state. I must therefore thank him for that, and indeed, from the very bottom of my heart for removing shame from us as a chapter.
Whereas as far as I am concerned, all tribes are equal and no tribe is, or can even be more equal than any other, it so happens that the only equitable formula for sharing NDDC appointments in Delta State is for the two main oil-producing Senatorial Zones to get one slot each, such that both have a sense of belonging in the NDDC. Thus within the scheme of NDDC appointments, it is not with Delta Central in which only Urhobos are indigenes that our beloved Itsekiri or Isoko brothers and sisters are separately geo-politically equal from the standpoint of representational appointment! It is with their fellow tribes – the Ijaws and indeed those Urhobos from Delta South – that they are equal, as co-owners of the one Senatorial Zone they all happen to share!
Thus, for the purpose of NDDC appointments, one tribe in Delta South Senatorial Zone cannot at all be geo-politically equal to the entirety of a different Senatorial Zone!
It is high time the state chapter of the APC called those protesting in the name of the party to order given that their irritating antics can only serve to cast our state chapter in bad light at a time at which we are beginning to wax stronger with heavyweight decampees into our fold to the dismay of the ruling People’s Democratic Party, PDP, in the state. Above all, it cannot continue to be a few rabblerousing miscreants who opportunistically decamped into our party from the PDP after President Buhari was declared winner that should be allowed to continue to hold the rest of us to ransom.

As to their threat of destabilizing the APC in Delta on account of the Executive Director, Projects, not being an Itsekiri or an Isoko, for that matter– even though we all know the fight is actually on behalf of particular persons – the truth is that there is far greater danger in the party not merely being destabilized but entirely extinguished in the state, if the grotesque, macabre and utterly morally reprehensible injustice of denying the Urhobos, the fifth largest ethnic group in Nigeria, and the occupiers of an entire Senatorial Zone, the highest position to which any Urhobo has been appointed, thus far in the present dispensation, by the Buhari administration.
It would amount to infernally shortchanging and unconscionably humiliating an entire Senatorial Zone for the purpose of massaging the ethnic egos and rent-seeking interests of a handful of members of one tribe that shares a Senatorial Zone with three other tribes, one of which are also Urhobos.
I would as such urge Mr. President to be mindful of the fact that by this singular appointment, he has for the very first time signaled to the Urhobos that they are indeed stakeholders, not only in the Niger Delta but also in the Nigerian scheme of things, with the collateral hope that more exemplars of the President’s respect, regard and love for the Urhobos are in the offing.
Hitherto, the Urhobos had been seething with anger that just as they were not carried along by the Jonathan administration, they were similarly being left in the lurch by the present government. It was particularly a big crush to the Urhobos who had thought that equitably speaking, since the Governorship of the state is in Delta North and the Deputy Governorship is in Delta South, the Ministerial slot should naturally have come to Delta Central instead of also going to Delta North.

Indeed at a point, even though the Urhobos had realized that President Jonathan was only willing to carry them along in his administration only on the eve of elections, they had begun to openly wonder whether or not they didn’t after all have a better deal under him since they could point to two ministers he had appointed from Delta Central, albeit suspiciously close to elections.

Mr. President cannot therefore begin to imagine the degree of budding confidence in his sense of justice and equity that he has succeeded in engendering in the ancient, noble and illustrious Urhobo people of the Niger Delta, vide the appointment of one of their own, in the person of Engr. Samuel Adjogbe, to the position of Executive Director, Projects.
Whatever anyone now talking jazz about our state party disintegrating, may or may not have been smoking, it cannot possibly make any sense to spite an entire Senatorial Zone – which doubles as the most populous zone of Delta State – simply to please just one of four ethnic components of another Senatorial Zone.

Furthermore, a denial of the position of Executive Director, Projects, NDDC, to the Urhobo ethnic nationality cannot possibly engender any iota of peace in the Niger Delta but would in fact have the potential effect of opening up a brand new theater of discontent and possible agitation in another part of the region that has so far been relatively quite peaceful.
Though I have never met Engr. Adjogbe, I am reliably informed he fits the bill of a round peg in a round hole as Executive Director, Projects, the Niger Delta Development Commission, NDDC.  At any rate, that Mr. President found him qualified for the role is more than enough for me.
Altogether, the protesters have only succeeded in doing their sponsors a world of disservice with their unlawful and unwarrantedly tribalistic posturing. Had they had the good sense of consulting widely with more cosmopolitan, better educated and less irredentist members of their ethnic groups, they could perhaps have come up with a much better case.
Finally, it must be acknowledged that by making the present NDDC appointments, President Buhari has succeeded in strengthening his pan-Nigerian credentials and warming himself into the hearts of scores of his Niger Deltan constituents who have long looked to his direction for some sign of hope. Anyone with a problem with that is only making himself look rather extremely petty, indeed.
Barr. JESUTEGA ONOKPASA,