The Paradox of Water Crisis and Rural Poverty
in the Niger Delta of Nigeria:
The Case of Bayelsa State*
Daniel OMOWEH PhD
Senior Research Fellow
Nigerian Institute of International Affairs
13-15, Kofo Abayomi Road
Victoria Island
Lagos, NIGERIA
Email:
1. Introduction: Analysis of the Nature of the Water Crisis and
Its Paradox
In Nigeria, while the Nigerian state is joining its counterparts across Africa in popularizing the African Water Vision on the one hand, its approach to the governance of natural resources and surplus accumulation are precipitating water crisis and rural poverty in Bayelsa State, located in the heart of the third largest wetland in the world after the Amazon. Bayelsa state is 90 percent water, and only 10 percent land; its water crisis therefore, poses a major public policy challenge for policy makers, scholars, development practitioners and non-governmental organizations. With a predominantly rural population, water crisis is linked with land crisis, because the rural livelihoods are tied to land, the ownership of which is also vested in the Nigerian state. The water crisis is historically determined, rooted in the Nigerian state and the colonial legacy. It is the contradiction engendered by state’s capitalist development in natural resources and service delivery. 1
As a natural resource, the state conceptualizes water largely as a resource to be exploited to generate capital and other public goods, with little or no consideration for its sustainability and renewal.2 In fact, scholars like Hardin had contended that, as a common resource, water lacked proprietary character and that accounted for its tragedy.3 Critics of Hardin like Bromley and Cernea had described his metaphor as not only socially and culturally simplistic, but historically false.4 It was Okoth-Ogendo5, who argued that, Hardin was ignorant of the customary laws, customs and traditions of Africa; and that, the real tragedy of the African commons goes beyond its non-proprietary character to include the appropriation, suppression and subversion of the African commons by the colonists. Common resources like water had proprietary character, because there were various traditional institutions, social hierarchies, and indigenous knowledge for the organization, governance, conservation and renewal, according to the needs of the people and the community. It was colonial capitalism and its policy that vested the sole ownership, rights and access to water resource on the state, which has been continued with in the post-colonial period.
Further, water resource is intricately connected with land over which the state also exercises sole ownership and control by virtue of the Land use Decree of 1978, which was extracted from the Mineral Act of 1914. The Land Use Decree of 1978 has turned land inclusive of the swamps, creeks, lakes, and the wetlands in the Niger Delta where oil is being explored, produced, transported and stored into a minefield and the people who live there as squatters in their ancestral land. So, too, has the Water Decree of 1993 vested the sole ownership of water, both primary and secondary water, surface and underground, on the Nigerian state, and empowered it to appropriate waters for hydropower development, and the construction of river basins, but largely did so to benefit private interests.
The water crisis also arises from the poor governance of water as a social infrastructure and sanitation facilities, resulting in its inadequacy and scarcity, and the attendant ill health and other hazards for the rural and urban poor. As a social service, the state has continued with the philosophy of urban-based development of its predecessor, and this accounts for the provision of water schemes mostly within Yenagoa and few semi-urban centers like Imirringi, Kiama, Ogbia, but largely to the neglect of the rural areas of which the Bayelsa state is largely composed. Within the state capital, water consumption per head per day is estimated at 20 liters in the areas reserved for State House of Assembly members, commissioners and top government officials, even against the estimate of 70 liters per head per day. In the rural areas, per capita water consumption is put at 5 liters, with very limited water schemes, as the creeks, rivers and swamps still remain the main sources of water. The contamination of both surface and underground waters by the oil companies as evident in the presence of solubles, iron and manganese in water has the insecurity of water in the state. In fact, water crisis is a national problem in Nigeria, as the national water coverage is about 40 percent for the major cities like Lagos, Ibadan and Abuja, with a miserable 5 percent in few local government areas.
The water crisis in Bayelsa State is a governance crisis. It represents a larger crisis deeply rooted in the kind of capitalist development in natural resources being promoted by the Nigerian state and foreign capital. The state, in practical terms, means the political leadership and this cuts across the oligarchies, the bureaucracy, fronts of local and foreign private capitals, with the government of the day serving as the ground where the politics of the constituents and struggles for advancing parochial interests are played out in concrete terms. The Nigerian state is constituted as an instrument of oppression and violence, and this explains why the state managers and the larger political elites are not well disposed towards the democratization of the governance of natural resources and development matters in general.6 Therefore, democratizing the governance of water resource involves contestations over ownership, rights, power and rationalization of interests, violence, struggles, with very clear implications for political competition, democratization and development. It was for this purpose that, the authority in Spain established the Water Court in Valencia, in 1831 to resolve water disputes and the Water Court still meets in the same place till date. Yet, the Nigerian state refuses to undergo a rethink of its approach to the development of water resources.
As its primary objective, this paper examines water crisis and its linkage with rural poverty in Bayelsa State within the larger context of the path the Nigerian state took to the governance of natural resources. Within this framework, it critically looks into the governance of water both as a natural resource and as a social service. Paradoxically, Bayelsa State is 90 percent water, and 10 percent land, and the second largest oil-producing state after Delta State in Nigeria. Yet, it remains predominantly rural with the majority of the people poor having no access to portable water. The paper also analyses rural poverty not strictly on the less than US$1.00 threshold, but how the poor governance of waterresource has constrained the social and economic activities of the people through the degradation of their environment and destruction of the biodiversity and conservation of the area by Shell Petroleum Development Company and Texaco. It examines the efforts of the state, the oil companies, the development agencies, the civil society groups and the non-governmental organizations in bringing about water security and the promotion of sustainable local livelihood. Finally, it charts alternative and actionable strategies for redressing water poverty and the worsening trend of rural poverty in the state in particular and Nigeria generally.
2. Political and EconomicGeography
Located within Latitude 5.16o and 5.00 N; and longitude 5.51o and 6.37oE, the topography of Bayelsa State is generally low-lying, with fresh water and salt water, and a typical mangrove trees, which permit the growth of planktons, and with aerial roots, used for the production of native salt, and tropical vegetation supported with raffia palm trees whose wine is used for distilling local gin. It has two major seasons-dry and rainy; and an average rainfall of 350cm with its peak spread across June and July, and an average temperature of 78oF. The state is criss-crossed with numerous rivers, most of which are tributaries of the River Niger. The major rivers are Ekole Dodo, Pennington, Middletown, Sam Bartholomew, Freshtown, Sangana, Nun, Brass, St. Nicholas, Santa Babara, and Rams. The main creeks areKolo, Ikebiri, and Digatoro.There are large inland water bodies, spreading from Oloibiri to Brass, and dotted with few small islands, or fish markets, where fishes caught are preserved through smoking before moving them to the markets in the hinterlands.7
The sources of water are, underground, rain, fresh and coastal/salty, all of which are in abundance in the Bayelsa State. The underground wateris the major source of water in the state and the safest, because the earth crust provides a natural filtration process, making underground water relatively less polluted. However, several incidents of sippages and overflows from uncased waste pits dug by the oil companies showed that underground water still contains solubles, iron and manganese, explaining the brownish sediments in the water about 5 minutes after collection from wells and private boreholes without treatment plants. There is the need to remove these impurities in order to make the water safe for public consumption. Underground water is cheaper to process than de-salinizing the coastal or salt water, or refining the fresh water. There is also the problem of constant pollution of rainwater through gas flaring by the oil companies and the resultant acid rain. No doubt, freshwater remains in abundance across the state, but it is into these sources of water that the oil companies dump untreated water-based drilling wastes thereby turning them into toxic waters.
Indigenous knowledge confirms that, the traditional sanitation facilities of the riparian rural people are restricted to portions of the river, especially the fast flowing sections, which enable the river to renew itself after five kilometers.8 Perhaps, that explains the limited or relative absence of modern sanitation facilities in the rural areas, yet there were no water-borne diseases. But, that is no longer possible since the state and oil companies began operation there and have been constantly polluting the rivers and creeks, killing fishes and other aquatic organisms, disrupting the course of the rivers through dredging and laying of oil pipelines, all of which have left the hydrological regime of the rivers/creeks constantly under threat of uncontrollable pollution.
Created out of then Rivers State in 1991, Bayelsa State is administered from Yenegoa- the state capital, a semi-urban and the largest and coastal city with about 1.500,000 people. Bayelsa state has a population of about 3 million people.9 Of this, 30,000 representing 2 percent are civil servant, while the remainder is rural farmers and self-employed.10 The state is bordered in the south by the Atlantic Ocean, northwest by Delta state, and northeast by Rivers state. It has 8 local government areas and 24 development centers. Chief DSP Alemeseyia is the first elected executive governor of the state. The Peoples Democratic Party [PDP] ruling party at national government, is dominant in the Bayelsa State House of Assembly, and the 3 senatorial districts. The state is the home of the Ijaws, fourth largest ethnic group in the country after Hausa/Fulani, Yorubas and Igbos.
3. Structure of the Economy
The structure of the economy Bayelsa state, like other major oil-producing states, namely Delta, Rivers and Akwa Ibom, can be delineated into two broad categories: the traditional economy, and the oil-induced economy with all its artificialities. The productive system of both economies is not complimentary. The traditional economy still subsists on land and water resources with 80 percent of the population engaged in fishing in the coastal communities like Nembe, Brass and Akassa; and 70 percent involved in farming in the hinterlands like Ogbia, which was once regarded as the ‘food basket’ of the Ijaws before the discovery of oil. About 10 percent of the population is engaged in building canoes, production of native salt, tapping palm trees, raffia palm trees, and petty trade, among others. Oak tree is one of the major forestry resources, used for hand-dug canoes. The major food crops grown in the state include cocoyam, water yam, pepper, sugar cane, swamp rice and plantain. The forest is equally rich in rural resources and food gathering is part of local livelihoods. Traditionally, crops have gender nuances and rights: while coco yam is regarded as women’s crop, can be relatively grown in swamps and other dryland; the yellow or white yam, the ‘king of crops’, men’s crop and grown dry farmlands. The family unit remains the major provider of labour, and the farming implements are still crude, essentially hoes, cutlasses and spades. The growth of these and other food crops is sustained with the application of indigenous knowledge in the governance of water resources and the land. The swamps are traditionally regarded to provide a buffer for the sustenance of the environment of the communities, and they are barely tilled.
As an occupation, fishing is predominant and carried out in the coastal communities of Nembe, Akassa, Brass and Sangana. In between these communities are large inland water bodies and fishing settlements. Fishing is usually carried out on the estuaries, creeks and rivers, using the traditional hand-dug canoes from where the nets are cast. The men dominate the occupation, while the women and children engage in smoking the fishes. Basic types of nets used in fishing include dragnet, subnet, driftnet, and the traditional basket called ‘akapli’. Fishing is practiced sustainably. If the productive forces were allowed to grow without obstructing the development continuum of the area by the forces of western capitalism, they could have sustained the growth and development of its economy.
The oil-induced economy came with the advent of the oil companies, structuring the dependence and underdevelopment of the Bayelsan economy and its re-insertion into the world capitalist system. The activities of the oil companies are not integrated backward into the local economy. Nor do they impact positively on the social lives of the people who live there. Instead, at each stage of oil exploration and production, the oil servicing companies [OSCs] like Euro-American Seismograph Services Limited, Santa Fe and Flopetrol hired by the oil majors like Shell, Agip and Texaco, destroyed the water resources, land and other natural resources attached to it. Socio-culturally, the oil workers lure girls and even wives of the people to their temporary campsites where they sex them, leaving behind bastards, who are forbidden by the custom and norms of the people. With the pollution of the gods of the waters, land and forest, the philosophical and sociological foundations of the economic activities of the people are destroyed, leading to poor harvest, decline in fishing and the practice of traditional health medicine becoming difficult as most of the herbal plants are disappearing. The efforts made by the people to appease the various gods have not yielded positive results, because of the constant assault on the water gods, and other cultures of the people. A greater insight will be gained into the implications of the activities of the state and the oil companies for water crisis and rural poverty as the nature of state-transnational capitalism is looked into
4. State, Capital, Water Resources and Rural Poverty
4.1 State-Transnational Capitalism and Resource Governance:
Explaining the Theoretical Underpinnings11
To start with, the approach the state took to the governance of natural resources is intricately tied to colonial capitalism. The basic interest of British colonialism was economic, because the industrial revolution in European had not only precipitated scarcity in natural resource crisis, but the over concentration of international finance capitals in Europe, increasing labour cost and declining returns on investment compelled capital to seek for more profitable market outlets and cheaper labour outside of Europe. In moving business out of the shores of Europe to Africa, the basic aim of the forces of western imperialism was to extract the raw materials from the colonies for use by the metropolitan countries, processed them into manufactured goods and brought back to the colonies. One of the mechanisms for achieving this goal was to have the colony first, conquered, subjugated and brought under the political control of the British. Then, enacted laws that governed the exploration, production and use of natural resources. This was partly achieved by the extension of the Foreign Jurisdiction Act of 1890, which empowered the imperial power, Britain, to exercise control and administration of the colony [Nigeria] and its natural resources. That Act also empowered the sovereign to control and dispose waste and unoccupied land in the colony. In fact, property rights only derived from the sovereign.