It is all because of oil that certain arguments about the peace, security and even survival of Nigeria are being carried too far. Those who have continued to attribute the country’s survival and development to the presence of oil in some of its parts are not less hardened or aggressive than the others who believe that, though it is an immensely valuable resource, the oil has somehow turned out to be a kind of curse.
Whichever way any particular argument goes, the fact remains that the prestige that comes along with the possession and the resultant exploration of oil deposits is enough reason for the attachment of utmost priority to the resource. A country that is an oil producer and exporter like Nigeria is really a very big one in the world, which is the explanation and not necessarily a validation of the boastfulness of governments and peoples of all those states where oil has long been found.
The oil-rich states, most of which are in the South-South or Niger Delta region, considering the fact that even the country’s annual budget is always designed and implemented on the basis of the price of oil in the world market, have a strong reason to consider themselves as the life wire of the nation. It is because of the oil that they increasingly intimidate the other parts of the country, especially the North, which they irrationally dismiss as parasitically dependent on them.
The North, mainly as a result of the perennial over-reliance on oil as the biggest national economic asset, lost not only its position as the wealthiest of all other sections of the country but also the huge self-esteem that it built in the earlier times. Most of the economic and even political setbacks that the North has continued to suffer were and are still being caused by the over-dependence on a resource that, prior to some recent discoveries, were widely believed to be the exclusive endowment of some other places.
Therefore, the discovery of oil in the Kolmani area of Gombe and Bauchi States as announced by the Nigeria National Petroleum Company (NNPC) Limited in 2019 was received with tremendous enthusiasm as it fully served as a confirmation of the speculation or even belief that the North, just like some parts of the South, is also oil-rich. Most of those people, Northerners or not, who had never believed that the region is so endowed or that the endowment is not colossal enough to warrant exploration must have now rested their argument.
It is a development that has, of course, come with valid answers to most of the questions about the presence of oil in the North that were thrown up by various categories of Nigerians. The huge fear over the possibility of the continuous economic growth of the North without oil must have now been substantially allayed.
Already the NNPC revealed that one billion barrels of oil reserves and 500 cubit feet of gas as well as enormous potentials of a lot more deposits exist in the area, which is therefore a clear answer to all the questions about its quantity. There, certainly, could not have been a greater justification for the commencement of the exploration than the determination of the quantity as has been competently done by the apex oil company in the country.
Expectedly, the take-off of the Kolmani Project has now generated enough interest and resultant questions about the places in the North where oil is believed to be in existence. A lot of demand is being made for the commencement of a process for the verification of the claims about the presence of oil in Sokoto Basin, Lake Chad Basin, Bida Basin and Benue Trough so that exploration can start in each of those places.
Having now reached this stage, unless if something ugly happens, the North can be said to have arrived. The inclusion, as a matter of right, of the states where the oil exploration has already commenced in the league of the beneficiaries of the 13 percent derivation will automatically put them amongst the richest as much as the works on the project sites will boost economic activities in the local communities.
All such components of the Kolmani Project as the oil refinery, gas processing plant, 300-megawatt power plant and a fertilizer plant that will be producing 2,500 tonnes per day will surely accelerate economic development in not only Gombe and Bauchi States or just North-East, but in the whole of the North and, by extension, Nigeria. The expectation that the successful execution of the project will, sooner than later, translate into a rapid economic development at both micro and macro levels is, after all, not a misplaced one.
Beyond that and as stated by President Muhammadu Buhari during the flag-off on 22nd November 2022, the project, which was initiated by the NNPC in compliance with his directive for the expansion of the company’s oil and gas exploration footprints to the frontier basins of the North and other parts of the country, is a fundamental achievement of the current government. By all standards, the ability of the government to attract an investment that is worth over three billion American dollars that so far been committed for the execution of the project is a unique success that can not be over-celebrated.
But even as the celebration over the take-off of the project is still going on, certain valid reservations over the readiness of the federal government to ensure the full execution of the project as well as the possibility of the proper utilization of the derivable gains by the benefitting state governments and communities are rapidly thickening. The fear that the project may either be poorly executed or even abandoned is as strong as the pessimism that all those foreseen benefits may be mismanaged by the governments of those states where the exploration activities are taking place.
Energy security, stronger economy, national cohesion, enhanced people’s welfare and crime reduction are all beautiful possibilities that the proper execution of the Kolmani Project in particular and oil exploration in the North can guarantee; that is if the right attitudes towards the work and the management of the derivable benefits are adopted. Anything less or different will yield contrary results.
The other, perhaps, strange expectation is that the Governors of the Northern States will, rather than consider the discovery of oil in the region as only a solution to the prevailing economic problems, duly see it as a fundamental challenge that they must collectively strive hard to surmount. They should accept the blame for the decline of education, agriculture, health-care services and even security in their respective states and immediately begin to work towards the resuscitation of all of them so that oil will be just one of the several bounties in the North, not the only one, in order to avoid the grave danger that mono-economy usually portends for any country that operates it.