Much Ado About Oil Wells

least seven states are presently battling their neighbours over ownership of oil wells located in contiguous areas.  It shows how unproductive states” administrators have become on wealth creation and a foretaste of the crisis that would come when Nigeria’s oil wells dry up.

The Supreme Court judgement of July 10 was that Cross River should be excluded from the littoral states and therefore not entitled to 76 oil wells which lie offshore as they were no longer in its maritime territory.

The verdict, delivered by the apex court’s seven justices headed by the former chief justice of Nigeria, Dahiru Musdapher, is now being subjected to political interpretation as Akwa Ibom has agreed to give a handout to its neighbour under an arrangement brokered by the presidency this week. But following that judgement, the Revenue Mobilisation, Allocation and Fiscal Commission (RMFAC) has been paying Akwa Ibom for all the 76 oil wells.

The case of Enugu and Kogi laying claim to some oil wells said to belong to Anambra State equally calls to question how the National Boundary Commission (NBC) has fared. President Goodluck Jonathan had, in August, designated Anambra as the 10th oil-producing state in Nigeria.

Both Enugu and Kogi would want to be similarly designated in order for them to benefit from the 13 per cent derivation funds paid to oil-producing states from the federation account. As at Monday, the three states were laying claim to the oil wells located at Aguleri Otu.

The most unedifying of these came up last week with the president’s name given an inglorious mention. Rivers and Bayelsa are in tango over the ownership of five oil wells in Soku and Elem-Sangama communities. The Rivers State government, traditional chiefs, youths, women and men of Kalabari Kingdom took to the streets in protest over the alleged ceding of some parts of Akuku-Toru local government area of the state to Bayelsa State.

They added that President Jonathan aided his native state to corner N17 billion accruable to Rivers from the oil revenue, an allegation described by the RMAFC as baseless. But Governor Seriake Dickson of Bayelsa State seems to be relying on the 11th edition of the (administrative) map (of Nigeria) which gives Bayelsa the oil wells.

As things stand, there is much to be desired about the nation’s geography. The production of several editions of Nigeria’s administrative map was partially responsible for the ceding of the Bakassi peninsula to Cameroun by the International Court of Justice. These inconsistencies portend grave security danger.

We wonder why the NBC cannot be professional and delineate states appropriately. We are equally piqued by the partisanship of the RMAFC in all this. While we enjoin the presidency to adopt a pro-active solution to the disputes, we would want the state governors to devise alternative revenue generation mechanism, as over-reliance on oil revenue only confirms that many of them are not viable.