Nigeria has spent over $40 billion in the Niger Delta region for the past 10 years with nothing to show for it, according to Minister of State for Petroleum Resources Emmanuel Kachikwu. Kachikwu noted this in Abuja during the Seventh Sustainability in the Extractive (SITEI) conference in Abuja.
“The Niger Delta has become a cacophony of voices, but without a purpose. It has also become a region with a cacophony of all kinds of projects,” he said. “If you look closely from the past 10 years, up to $40 billion has been made available for that region and you can never tour the Niger Delta and see a N1 billion or a N500 million investment, but I am telling you, collectively, for the past 10 years, that was what has gone into that region.”
He added that, “The amnesty is very clear, and it cannot be a solution to the state of insecurity in the Niger Delta. Rather, you use the amnesty to create an asymmetrical environment. A fragile environment does not like asymmetry; it likes more of a symmetrical response.
“A situation where you are paying people N65,000 every month to keep quiet, that does not solve the problem. “If you multiply N65,000 by the number of militants and by the number of years the programme had been running, you are looking at close to N50 billion.
“That is a huge amount of money. It is not sustainable and it is not guaranteeing you what you expect in the place.” The minister noted that $40 billion had been invested in 11,000 projects in the region over the last 10 years with nothing to show for it.
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