Running From Areas of Resources

Any serious society that truly desires socio-economic and infrastructural developments will certainly encourage localization of industry, promotion of local content and initiatives that build capacity of indigenous people.


In the context of this brief discourse, resources here means Oil and Gas, Solid Minerals and Agriculturally favourable soil.

Naturally, common sense will make anyone look forward to spontaneous socio- economic and infrastructural development in areas where natural resources like Oil and Gas as well as Solid Minerals are found and exploited. Surprisingly, that is not the story in Nigeria.

Communities that are naturally endowed with crude oil and gas, rich soil for agriculture and solid minerals, serve as solid economic base for the country, but remain grossly under- developed and abandoned in most cases.
 
One is tempted to ask, why do the International Oil Companies, IOCs set up administrative offices and headquarters outside the communities (areas) of their oil and gas exploration activities? Why can’t the companies build staff quarters in their operational areas, instead of using Choppers to carry their staff to the coastal areas/ deep offshore, where they do their exploration activities?

 Why should the Ministries of Petroleum Resources and Solid Minerals establish their headquarters at the Federal Capital Territory, without real infrastructural presence in the Niger Delta and other parts of the country where oil and gas as well as solid minerals are deposited and exploited in commercial quantities?

Another worrisome issue often over- looked in Nigeria is the lifeless and insecure state of the communities where agricultural produce often consumed in the cities and towns come from.

Haven raised these posers, it will not be far-fetched why genuine growth as well as development have eluded Nigeria and may continue to elude the country!

Development like politics, is local and until we make deliberate efforts to get it right at the community level, we will be living in fantasy.

It is often said that identifying a problem is half way of solving it and the import of that statement as it effects the posers raised above need not be over-emphasized.
 

In summary, the International Oil Companies, IOCs, NNPC, Ministry of Petroleum Resources, Ministry of Solid Minerals and agro- allied companies exploiting our natural resources, should be made as a matter of policy to build administrative offices and staff quarters in the communities (areas) where they operate.

 If they build administrative offices and staff quarters in the communities where their business and exploration activities are carried out, the socio-economic growth and infrastructural development of the host communities will receive the needed boost and ultimately transform into a genuine developing country.

   

 

                                            Editor- In - Chief

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