North's Fatuous Claim of Ownership and Funding Oil Exploration in Nigeria
The uncontrolled provocative statements by Northern politicians seem to add salt to injury in the Niger-Delta militancy imbroglio. Two spurious arguments commonly bandied about by Northern politicians are that by virtue of 72% Nigerian land mass being in the North, the North rightfully owns the oil wells as far as 200 nautical miles off-shore; and that revenue from North's export of groundnut, cotton and other produce funded oil exploration in Nigeria.
Yet the history of oil exploration in Nigeria is well documented and it is unknown that any government, including the Federal government, invested even a kobo in oil exploration. Developments in oil industry in Nigeria from the beginning in 1908, have been well documented as is shown below.
Major Events in the history of the Nigerian Oil and Gas:
1908: Nigerian Bitumen Co. & British Colonial Petroleum commenced operations around Okitipupa in the South-West. This was before the amalgamation of Southern and Northern Protectorates in 1914. The British Treasury was still lending money from year-to-year to support feudalism – Native Authority Administration in the North.
1938: Shell D’Arcy was granted Exploration license by the Colonial Administration as full concessionaires to prospect for oil throughout Nigeria and they paid all their bills including licensing fees;
1955: Mobil Oil Corporation joined operations in Nigeria.
1956: First successful well drilled at Oloibiri, in present Bayelsa State by Shell D'Arcy which changed its name to Shell-BP Petroleum Development Company of Nigeria Limited.
1958: First shipment of oil from Nigeria took place.
The Poverty of the North from before Amalgamation:
(a) The above statement of facts shows that the first concession to the Nigerian Bitumen Co. & British Colonial Petroleum was granted by the Colonial authorities of the Southern Protectorate of Nigeria, in 1908 - before the amalgamation in 1914 and the North therefore was not involved.
(b) The main reason the North was amalgamated with the South by the British, was because the North was not viable enough to sustain its governance. Consequently the Colonial Administration, annually, had to borrow from the British treasury to sustain governance of the North, which included the expensive feudalism-based Native Authority with very generous salaries for the Emirs.
(c) Whereas the North could not financially sustain its governance, the South was rich enough to defray its cost of governance and in addition, invest in development projects.
The unviability of the North in relation to the South was aptly captured in the following extract from the British Colonial Report No. 878, Nigeria, 1914 below.
"It (the Northern Protectorate) depended at first on a substantial grant-in-aid from the Imperial Exchequer, averaging about £274,000 per annum, and though this was being rapidly replaced by the product of the direct tax, which yielded in 1913 the large sum of £546,000 – about half of which was paid into revenue, the remainder being assigned to the Native Administration – the essential needs of the country could not be met without a considerable additional revenue. . .
Southern Nigeria, on the other hand, presented a picture which was in almost, all points exact converse of that of the North. Here the material prosperity had been extra-ordinary. The revenue had almost doubled itself in a period of five years. The surplus balances exceeded a million and a half. . . And so while Northern Nigeria was devoting itself to building up a system of Native Administration, and laboriously raising revenue by direct taxation, Southern Nigeria had found itself engrossed in material development."
The British Colonial Secretary, Lord Lewis Vernon Harcourt's pre-amalgamation report on the proposal to the British government, openly affirmed the intendment of the amalgamation and the state of finances of the North and South, in his insulting designation of the South as a rich bride about to be given away in marriage, without her consent and/or consultation, in order to sustain a not so well-to-do groom.
"We have released Northern Nigeria from the lending strings of the treasury. The promising and well conducted youth is now on allowance on his own and is about to affect an alliance with a southern lady of means. I have issued the special license and Sir Fredrick Lugard will perform the ceremony . . ."
(d) The North which was found by the British to be unable to fund its development projects, could therefore not have been able to fund oil exploration by 1938 when Shell D' Arcy was granted its exploration license and concession by Colonial Britain. Oil was struck in commercial quantity in 1956 at Oloibiri in Bayelsa State, South-South of Nigeria; and in 1958, the first shipment of crude by Shell-BP out of Nigeria took place.
(e) The North accepted self-government only in 1959, as against 1957 by the South; and from 1914 to date, has maintained the ranking of the poorest region in Nigeria, largely due to the cost and the policy of maintaining feudalism; and a misconception that wealth is predestined by God, therefore man does not need to fight and defeat poverty. Presently there is an unimaginable war in the North-East, with its consequent devastations to the economy of the region in particular, and the country in general, about Western Education being a sin or not.
On the second claim that their 72% ownership of Nigerian land mass entitles the North to ownership of oil wells 200 nautical miles off-shore, one would like to ask following questions:
• Suppose there was no amalgamation of the two protectorates in 1914, could the North have skipped the Southern land mass, however small, to own oil wells off shore?
• Had the premier of the North pulled out the North as he threatened to do in 1959, after the general elections when Chief Awolowo offered to serve as Finance Minister under Dr. Nnamdi Azikiwe as Prime Minister in an alliance government of Azikiwe's party – the National Council of NigerianCitizens (NCNC) and Chief Awolowo's party - the Action Group; and/or as Colonel's Murtala Mohammed and Yakubu Gowon originally planned in their “Araba” counter-coup of 29th July 1966, before the British HighCommissioner and the United States Ambassador intervened to stop them from pulling out and declaring the North an independent Republic, where would the off-shore oil wells have been?
• And finally, if Nigeria disintegrates as predicted and as the North is presently pushing the rest of the country to, would the North over-fly the Southern land mass to own the oil wells beyond 200 nautical miles?
It is important to bear in mind that it is the monopolisation of the oil blocks by Northerners and the judicial murder of Dr. Ken Saro Wiwa, who was, after the civil war, one of the earliest Niger-Deltans to raise a voice of protest against the exploitation of the Niger-Delta by the oligarchy; that stoked the fire of militancy in the Niger-Delta.
Nigeria seems to be conducting its affairs god-like, ignoring all warnings. It was Prometheus in Henry Wadsworth Longfellow's poem, 'The Masque of Pandora' (1875) who initiated the wisecrack -
“Whom the gods would destroy, they first make mad.”
Nigerian leaders have paid no heed to any of the predictions of failure of Nigeria instead, they attack the symptoms of the ailments of the nation with raw brutality, as if brutality would ever heal the contradictions in a multi-ethnic and multi-religious federation, with little or no common shared values. It is sheer commonsense that until the source of an ailment is dealt with, the symptoms are bound to persevere."
Notes:
7 (a) History of Nigerian Petroleum Industry by Garbrich Global Services Ltd, Port Harcourt, Nigeria, May 3, 2015 - www.linkedin.com/.../history-nigerian-petroleum-industry....
7 (b) British Colonial Report no. 878, Wyman and Sons Ltd, London, April 1916, p.38.
7 (c) Harcourt, Lewis Vernon, Lord: Report to the British Parliament on the Amalgamation of Southern and Northern Protectorates of Nigeria, London, 1912.
Culled from:
Prince Chukwuemeka I. Onyesoh: TO THE RESCUE – THE RIGHT TO SELF DETERMINATION, THE PATHWAY TO A GENUINE FEDERATION OF PEOPLES WITH NO SHARED VALUES, BBK Limited, Enugu, Nigeria, 2017, pages 12 to16.
