| Popis: |
Previous papers have described the process facilitated by Pro-Natura International – Nigeria, an NGO working in the Niger Delta: in 1997 entering the Ijaw swamp community of Akassa, staying to learn from them, befriending them, helping them to understand the problems they described and potential solutions; and, assisting them to build the institutions and grow the capacity they needed to implement their own programmes according to their own perceived priorities. As Lao Tzu predicted, centuries ago, the people then said "We have done this ourselves." Also described is how, 2002-07, elsewhere in this troubled region, other communities have demonstrated that this attractively revolutionary process could be adopted and adapted by communities choosing what a commentator described as "an African solution to an African problem". This paper examines two essentials revealed by our experience: the need for a socially responsible "exit strategy" for the oil industry from the tangled network of community development programmes muddled through with disastrous results over several decades in Nigeria; and, how the process, as it gradually gains wider acceptance, can be made sustainable. It is argued, using field examples, that for the process to work, the oil industry's concept of "host communities" must be abandoned in favor of inclusive, whole communities, less prone to conflict. Such "whole communities" likewise include all ethnicities and clans, thus not pitting one against another with dangerous short and long-term consequences. The paper discusses in detail some of the pitfalls created by utilizing clans as the unit for development; this strategy has unfortunately been adopted by some major oil companies in their community development work in Nigeria. We note that for effective development, three types of funding are required ("seed", "establishment of Community Based Organization" and "development"). While multiple, cross-sectoral stakeholder partnering with communities is highly desirable now, in the long run sustainability can be guaranteed only by government. In Nigeria, where governance has become an extractive industry of a sort, communities and the private sector, including the oil companies, now have to seize the nettle, together, to leverage good governance, development, peace…and a good operating environment. |
