Contending Issues in the Niger Delta Crisis of Nigeria - Journal of ...

Chapter IV: Fishers of Men: The Political Economy of Kidnapping in the
Niger Delta
economy. From 100 per cent at independence in 1960, it came down
to 50, 45, 20, and as low as 1 per cent in the 1990s. This meant that
less of the oil wealth has been available for the development of the
Niger Delta. Consequently, the region ranks low in Human
Development Index (HDI) with a score of 0.564 especially when
compared with other oil producing regions of the world such as Saudi
Arabia with a score of 0.800 in 2000 or the United Arab Emirates,
Kuwait, Libya, Venezuela and Indonesia which in 2003, achieved
scores of 0.849, 0.844, 0.799, 0.772 and 0.697 respectively. (UNDP,
2006:15). Similarly, there has been a “general neglect of
infrastructure, often rationalized by the difficulty of the delta’s
terrain”. (UNDP, 2006:16).
The ironies of suffering in the midst of plenty as a result of the
use of oil revenues to develop other parts of Nigeria to the neglect of
the region has been well captured by Ibeanu (2008) as “affluence and
affliction”. According to him, oil from the delta:
…. Will pay for the next meal of millions of Nigerians and it will also
orphan hundreds of Nigerian children who will lose their parents in
the inferno taking place in the Niger Delta presently. Many Nigerian
leaders will smile to the bank tomorrow because of their access to the
devil’s excreta, while millions of other ordinary Nigerians in the creeks
of the Niger Delta will drown in it and have their livelihoods wiped out
by oil spillage and reckless discharge of effluents of crude oil mining
and refining into a fragile ecosystem. (Ibeanu, 2008: 16-17)
108