Uduaghan: How Not To Clean The Mess You Created

Former Governor Emmanuel Uduaghan has no moral justification to pass blame as he did in a recent lecture he presented on the stagnation of Delta state, and indeed Niger Delta currently suffers.  

The former Governor, building on the retrogressive leadership of his younger cousin and ex-convict, James Ibori, set to the tone for the arrested development of Delta state and the grooming of violent youths in the state.  

It is no surprise that Uduaghan in speaking to the lecture topic, “Niger Delta Economy: Building A New Face For The Region”, failed to mention what he achieved with his failed “Delta Beyond Oil” propaganda.  

I am vindicated that the highlights of discussions on the theme, “Niger Delta Economy: Building A New Face For The Region” at the recent Annual Lecture of Delta Online Publishers Forum (DOPF) confirmed my prediction that the insignificant outcome will be mere blame game by same usual suspects who have helped to strangulate the region from maximizing its enviable potentials.

I am however encouraged that among the park of key speakers, Dr. Ignatius Nwanze Ezoem, former Provost, College of Education (Technical), Asaba, stood out to speak truth to power when he ascribed the sufferings of the Niger Delta

people to shenanigans of failed politicians.

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Ezoem said, “The problem of the Niger Delta is not new. There is nothing we will say here that had not been said before, but what has been said we ought to work with it. The Niger Delta region is blessed by God, but today we are still discussing the Niger Delta. I am worried because the region we are talking about has all it takes to be the Los Angeles of Nigeria.”

He went on to note that the Nigeria factor gives emphasis to theory than practicals just as he called on the Niger Delta governors to put on their thinking caps rather than go to Abuja to beg for what rightfully belongs to the region. Nothing could be farther from the truth.

It is laughable that former Delta State Governor, Dr Emmanuel Uduaghan, shamelessly accepted the role of keynote speaker to deliver the lecture on a subject that overwhelms him. Who is Uduaghan to address, “Niger Delta Economy: Building A New Face For The Region”, given all the bad influences he contributed to setting Delta state on the stagnation it currently suffers.

If the oddity of placing a square peg in a round hole in misplaced choice of Uduaghan as keynote speaker was most likely a cheap image laundering bargain, Delta Online Publishers struck with the former Governor, it made non-meaningful sense.

Uduaghan told the gathering that Delta is hostile to investment and investors, blaming violent community youths, the federal government, international oil companies (IOCs) and everyone else while trivializing successive state governments as key actors who instigated the sustained hostile environment in the state.

Chief James Ibori and Uduaghan who succeeded him entrenched the tradition of the insecurity/violence in Delta state. Ibori started it by empowering the violent, criminal-minded and hardly/barely literate youths in the state with juicy undeserving appointments and sundry financial opportunities while alienating the law-abiding sound minds in the state.

Forget that many of them acquired questionable degrees in universities as adults much later, but we have not forgotten that some of those still holding key positions in the Delta government today were miscreants/goons/hoodlums who could hardly express themselves and were only recognised by Ibori and Uduaghan for being useful in highjacking elections and intimidating political opponents of their paymasters.

Sooner, they started imposing these ‘Area Boys’ as Council Chairmen, Councilors, House of Assembly members, DESOPADEC Commissioners, Special Assistants, personal aides, Delta state Security Committee leaders, even Speakers and board members.

Having acquired so much undeserved wealth from the government, they cloned themselves to form gangs of violence across the state and grew even out of control of the government who turned them into instant billionaires/millionaires without lawful means. Gradually they started unleashing their foot soldiers on international oil companies (IOCs), oil servicing companies and individual investors and property developers with unreasonable demands. So, why won’t investors be scared of Delta?

I have not forgotten that under Okowa, he even raised the bar on empowerment of miscreants/goons/hoodlums by releasing suspects in awaiting trial for heinous crime charges to hold public office as Personal Aide/Senior Personal Assistant to Governor Okowa. An apt case was that of “Ngozi” of Uvwie Local government Area who was freed from prison custody and armed to wage terror against perceived enemies of Okowa administration in the Uvwie locality before suffering equally gruesome death, allegedly murdered by his own disgruntled allies.

Uduaghan, without admitting his own failures, and blaming everyone else, tried in his lectures to misinform the audience by accusing IOCs of fueling unrest in the area by not considering the plights and needs of the people, especially in the diversification of the economy of the area. What a contradiction. In one breadth, you say youth unrest scare investors, then IOCs fuel agitations.

Aside from contradicting himself, who has the primary responsibility to provide enabling environment to stimulate diversification of the economy, IOCs who are here to make profit, or the government who shares monthly returns from the IOCs. Uduaghan accuses IOCs of community neglect, how does he correlate that misplaced blame with the hundreds of millions Chevron invested in the Itsekiri Regional Development Commission (IRDC)? Under his watch, the money meant for the development of oil host communities took flight into personal vaults of community leaders who were loyal to Uduaghan, some he appointed into his government. Failure to account for those moneys, resulting in abandonment of development projects they were meant to execute, fueled the protracted Ugborodo crisis that partly destabilised the execution of the Ugborodo Gas City development initiated by Goodluck Jonathan presidency.

It is the leadership failure of Delta state governments that instigated community warlords to start placing demands on IOCs as if they were alternative governments. Uduaghan talked of creating enabling environment and diversifying the Niger Delta economy. In what state did he leave Delta state after eight years reign of governance misfit? He left roads in the state not motorable, those he tarred collapsed before he left office due to shoddy execution.

What moral justification has Uduaghan to pass the blame on failure to diversify the Delta economy? Where is the Delta Beyond Oil propaganda he wasted the state’s oil money on? It ended in one glossy magazine of utopian projects which died with his exit from governorship. The only building in Uduaghan’s Warri Industrial Park literally collapsed to structural defect opposite DBS Warri. The Oleri Pleasure Park initiative, another in Ogwashi-Uku gone with his exit, strange global partners bolting with undisclosed state counterpart funds.

Shell (SPDC) started relocating from Delta under Ibori and finally left under Uduaghan. There has been no proof to justify that Delta youths were more restive than those in Rivers state when Shell exited Delta. Rather than make efforts to stop the exit at the time, Uduaghan was more interested in buying Shell (SPDC) Hospitals in Ogunu Warri and Osubi-Warri Airstrip, unfeeling about the negative consequences of Shell exit at the time.

The exit of a multinational company alone was a bitter discouragement that forced other feeder companies to vacate the Delta space. When people are unemployed and hungry, they become more hostile. Like Ibori, Uduaghan grew wealth from the Delta government. While Ibori starched the bulk of his loot abroad or wasted as much in failed investments, it is alleged that Uduaghan used SHORELINE as a front to buy OSUBI-WARRI Airstrip for himself before the operational licence was revoked due to non-performance of the facility.

Barefaced, to expand his vested interest in a private airstrip bought by a private firm, Uduaghan wasted whooping N11Billion into a failed private OSUBI-WARRI AIRPORT EXPANSION PROJECT in the name of creating enabling environment. The same way he wasted N6Billion in a failed BRT on Effurun Sapele Road.

We can go on and on to highlight why Uduaghan has no moral justification to speak on the stagnation of the Niger Delta in the midst of plenty. He has been instrumental to the despoliation into a failed region.

Zik Gbemre

October 25, 2021