For an island that has remained in global focus for centuries and controlled the economic paradigm of West Africa and beyond, there is a broadbased consensus that Bonny Island should have assailed its current development status.

Exploring the issues around this consensus would form the crux of discourse at a One-Day Open Forum and Town Hall Meeting with the theme: “Fast-Tracking the Development of Bonny LGA Through Synergies” being organized by the Bonny Gentlemen’s League (BGL) and billed for Saturday, December 24, 2022 at the Women’s Hall, Bonny, Rivers State.

According to the organizers, the event, which forms part of activities for the 43^rd Annual Convention of the League, will have the Chairman of Bonny Local Government Area, Dame Anengi Barasua as the Keynote Speaker.

Chancellor of the Bonny Gentlemen’s League (BGL), Amaopusenibo Olam Allwell-Brown, a retired Squadron Leader of the Nigerian Air Force (NAF), told Kristina Reports that the event, which is expected to attract Bonny high society and other stakeholders to brainstorm on how Bonny Island can exit its current development paradigm, will also “provide a veritable platform to discuss the development of this island community and do some agenda setting for its progress”.

“You will agree with me that no less a person than the woman in whose hands rests the levers of governance is best suited to lead this discourse. Be assured that this is not one of those talking jamborees, we hope to have actionable deliberations with visible and measurable outcomes as key performance indicators for this Open Forum/Town Hall Meeting.”

Recall that Bonny Kingdom, in conjunction with the Joint Industry Committee (JIC) comprising the Nigeria Liquefied Natural Gas Limited (NLNG), Shell Petroleum Development Company (SPDC) and Mobil Producing Nigeria Limited (MPNU), had developed a Masterplan for Bonny Kingdom, which implementation was captured in the Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) between the two entities.

Sources privy to the Masterplan hint Kristina Reports that the document provides an infrastructural, economic and social development template for the island with its implementation tied to a N3 billion funding arrangement by the JIC which was to be accessed through the Bonny Kingdom Development Foundation (BKDF) annually.  

Sadly, years down the line, take-off of this masterplan has yet to happen given the challenge of stakeholder consensus on the BKDF which a litany of legal tussles and disagreements among stakeholders have succeeded in hampering.  

Another dimension to the development challenge of Bonny Island is the failure of the Niger Delta Development Commission (NDDC) to appropriate development to the area from where it has continued to derive trillions of Naira in statutory funds over the years.

Critical need areas such as roads and bridges linking its over 200 communities and settlements and even fixing those on the mainland as dual carriage and internal roads are lacking. The roads are not only few, they are too small to carry the traffic load of present day Bonny Island.

Knowledgeable sources infer that from Orupiri all the way to Burukiri, Sangama, Arugbana-Ama, Polokiri down to the Manilla Pepple community cluster comprising Ererekiri, Otobie and Inyoba-Ama can be accessed by road when bridges are done to link them together. Same on the Western flank that has seen Ayama (Peterside), Kalaibiama, Kuruma, and the Cawthorne Channel axis cut off by the Bonny River.

They further infer that the Bodo/Bonny Road may turn out a burden when completed as it would unleash traffic beyond the carrying capacity of Bonny Town if deliberate moves are not made ahead of time to activate the Bonny Ring Road that would connect the riverine communities to Bonny Town and thus evacuate the traffic away from the main town which is already a population mess as available amenities are already over stretched.

Aside roads and bridges, save for the JIC, the electricity and water on the island would be a mere dream. Though water reticulation was still a growing concern in the area with available houses already outnumbered by a population that is growing in leaps and bounds owing to the mass influx of job seekers and prospective investors. Even the spike in property rent has not deterred the new arrivals with some even purchasing landed property already. The stretch of Willbros Road to the Waterwells axis is challenged by erratic electricity supply with the Bonny Utility Company (BUC) in reactionary mode to step up and close the power supply gap in the area.

Same BUC is fighting to also meet up with the water supply need as more houses sprout up with both domestic and industrial needs skyrocketing, a situation made worse by acute understaffing, shortage of equipment and revenue shortage on the part of the BUC.

This scenario caused the President of the National Chamber of Commerce, Industry, Mines and Agriculture (NACCIMA), John Udeagbala, at a recent visit to BUC office in Bonny, to call on the JIC to intervene in sync with willing investors to upscale of the capacity of the company to better manage the two critical amenities, electricity and water supply.

Beyond infrastructure, the socio-economic needs of the island have been deemed by development experts to exceed the oil and gas frontier and dwell more on non-oil and gas-based revenue earners. With natural resources and a beautiful topography, several non-oil based economic derivatives can be emplaced such as farming, fisheries, foundries, factories, mining, tourism, water transport, recreation, entertainment, cloth making, glass making, and rubber production, amongst several others.

Checks by Kristina Reports indicate that expectations are high that the Open Forum and Town Hall Meeting would provide the necessary fillip needed to jumpstart action in diverse development need areas and for Bonny Island to rise to its rightful place in the comity of developed communities.