By Emma Nwosu
Not only is General Buhari’s government increasingly impoverishing the people (by all available parameters, contrary to his drummers) it is also bent on taking away whatever remains of their inheritance and human rights and on stacking up a huge loan overhang against their future.
A good example is the National Water Resources Bill which has, irrepressibly, been re-presented in the National Assembly. The Bill comes under the pretext of better management of water resources. But once passed and signed into law, all ground water, as well as all interstate water bodies, along with their basins into the hinterland, will be taken over by the Federal Government which could re-assign them. You cannot even drill for water without a Federal Government (not state government) licence.
First, the Bill is antithetical (and confirms General Buhari’s obduracy and negative disposition) to the Land Use Act and to the popular demand for the devolution of powers and resources to states.
Everything the Bill seeks to achieve should be the responsibility of state governments and the National Inland Waterways Authority (NIWA) The only sensible component of the Bill is Part II, Sections Four to Nine, dealing with the National Council on Water Resources, which should only coordinate the activities of states and NIWA.
Second, the Federal Government is bloated and has never been a good manager. It has always been interested in simply controlling and redistributing access to resources and not in adding value! After making a mess of the River Basin Authorities of the 1970s, it wants to create another jamboree set!
The Federal Government controls oil and gas resources, but wastes trillions on the importation of all manner of petroleum products while our refineries remain dormant but still run huge expenditures. It has failed to remediate the environmental degradation of the Niger Delta arising from the exploration and production of the crude oil on which the country survives. The cost invoiced by joint venture companies must be the highest among their countries of operation, not to talk of veracity in output and export reporting. It has never been diligent or prudent and is worse, today.
Third, given his government’s record of failed promises, nepotism and apparent commitment to the resettlement of both indigenous and immigrant Fulani and their herdsmen in greener vegetation, it is easy to guess who will dominate the National Water Resources Regulatory Commission, the Nigeria Hydrological Services Agency, the National Water Resources Institute and the River Basin Development Authorities to be created under the Act.
It is also easy to guess where the law would be most applied, who would be licensed and who will populate the confiscated river basins and ancestral lands – notwithstanding the pious letters of the Bill! It is widely speculated that General Buhari is in a hurry to assign those privileges before leaving office in 2023.
Fourth, land and water have been major sources of feud between families, communities and nations, from time immemorial. Access to water – which is next to air for the survival of man – will be the next big issue in Nigeria (after oil) and should not be monopolised by any section of the country through this Federal Government which has never been equitable.
Moreover, going by the experience of indigenous peoples of Northern Nigeria with Fulani settlements (which, in no time, metamorphose into electoral constituencies and emirates) a Water Resources Act would be another pretext for forceful take-over of ancestral lands and accelerated Fulani expansionism.
Fifth, what would be the fate of agriculture and housing, e. t. c, in Southern states with limited land, under the Act, which would further minimise their holding? For example, the whole of the South-East (the dot in a circle) is less than half of Niger State (or any typical Northern state) in land mass. Why marginalise them further – despite all the land in the North and when Kano State alone, for example, could resettle – and has offered to resettle – all itinerant herdsmen? Why is the government still insistent on encroaching on the limited land mass of Southern states, by all means, for the sake of Fulani settlements?
The context of the Water Resources Bill is similar to that of the lingering RUGA, NGO Bill and Media Bills against freedom of speech. It is dispossessing, anti-people and robbing Peter to pay Paul. There is more to the Bill than meets the eye and there is neither track record nor goodwill for entrusting the Federal Government with the National Water Resources Act that would result from the Bill.
Legislators, the media and all well-meaning Nigerians should reject the Bill and all other moves towards dictatorship and disinheritance of the people, before it is too late. There is always a yield point.
*Nwosu wrote from Lekki, Lagos
