From his time as the Chief Security Officer to the former Governor of Rivers State, Dr Peter Odili, to being the Technical Assistant to the Special Adviser to President Goodluck Jonathan on Niger Delta Affairs and Coordinator of the Presidential Amnesty Programme (PAP), Kingsley Kuku, to his stint as Executive Director of the Rivers State Sustainable Development Agency (RSSDA) to the present, Larry Pepple, a former Directing Officer at the  Department of State Services owned Institute of Security Studies, has had exposure to the teething issues bedevilling the Nigerian State and undermining its capability to function as a true federation.

He spoke to Kristina Reports Publisher/Editor-in-Chief, Godswill Jumbo on some these issues, preferring ameliorative measures that could assuage them, and also dealt with the issues affecting the boundary disputes between communities on the eastern flank of Bonny Local Government and their neighbours, the people of Andoni LGA. It is insightful and illuminating. Enjoy: 

Kristina Reports has been investigating the issues surrounding the disputes over the boundaries of Bonny LGA on the Western and Eastern flanks. You hail from the cluster of communities that fall under the Manilla Pepple chieftaincy house. We want to know what actually the situation is. What is the problem? We understand that two key geographical components of those areas are under contention: the Cawthorne Channel 2 and the Opobo Channel, also known as Asarama-Toru. There have been insinuations attributing the crisis in those areas to the presence of oil production facilities around these two geographical landmarks. Could this be true and are those places actually Bonny territories? 

Like the name suggests, Asarama-Toru, means channel or sea route to Asarama, a community in Andoni LGA particularly, the parts that I am conversant with, all around those axis, Eferewari axis, and all that axis are purely Bonny territories where Bonny people, predominantly Manilla Pepple and some components of Hart House used to put our neighbours, particularly, from the Andoni extraction and Ogoni as tenants and collect rent from them while they are there to do their fishing occupation. We have had very smooth and lovely relationship before today. But since the discovery or some prospecting of oil, particularly, around the Opobo Channel and the Asarama-Toru axis, there have been frictions leading to Manilla Pepple House and some communities in Andoni, particularly, Asarama axis of Andoni Local Government Area, having some frictions. There are even Supreme Court rulings showing that Bonny people own those axes. But, unfortunately, because Bonny people, currently, attracted by the goods that come from oil prospecting, particularly, as it relates to 24 hours electricity on Bonny Island, have made us abandon our communities that, hitherto, used to be our fishing settlements, used to be our villages, used to be our plantations, used to be where we gather oysters, periwinkles, etc, like the Inyoba-Ama Community used to be the exclusive preserve of the founder of the Fubara Manilla Pepple House for his cocoa farming. Cocoa is scattered around about that area. So, also some other people, the Banigos, the Hart House, the Allisons, have either rubber plantations, palm plantation, all scattered around that axis but because of the attraction of safety and security that seems to be seemingly on the Bonny Island and the pull that comes with 24 hours electricity, all those axes and communities have been abandoned. And with the advent of people leaving rural communities to go and look for white collar jobs in the cities, only the aged and the vulnerable women are staying there. Young men and women of Bonny are either in Bonny Island or they have gone to seek greener pastures in many other places leaving these frail people to the whims and caprices of people who used to be our tenants to come, terrorize, maim, kill and sack communities around there.

Like you already know, on the 17th May of 2017, I became a victim. My dear father, in the sleepy town of Ererekiri, where he has his country home, had just gone to bed and the community was raided by unidentified gunmen suspected to come from  neighbouring communities around Asarama-Toru, ravaged the community. In the wake, before the gun sounds could settle, four people were cut down, two of them are senior citizens.  My father was one of them, and another senior citizen of Manilla Pepple and two others who were tenants within our territory were gunned down. And like you know, nothing had come out of it. And because Bonny people are known to be peace-loving, we promote peace around that axis, and because you know Bonny is flourishing that is why stones are being hurled at us. Nobody throws stones at a mango tree or any tree that is not fruit bearing.

Still on the narrative we are exploring, you kind of gave some perspectives on what has been happening on that axis. Now, as a stakeholder, a former security chief, member of the Bonny Kingdom Security Committee, and unfortunately, a victim of this circumstance, what is the government, political class, and the traditional institution doing, maybe, to interface with the neighbouring communities to assuage and diffuse the tension this is already creating?

As you are equally aware, the role of Bonny and the strategic position of Bonny when it comes to the stabilization of the energy needs along the Gulf of Guinea makes Bonny much more vulnerable to all these attacks. I was explaining to you that nobody throws a stick or stone on a tree that is not bearing fruit. With all sense of modesty, I wish to say that Bonny, comparatively with her neighbours, seems to be blessed from all sides. As you know, the three cash cows of the Federal Republic of Nigeria are located in Bonny, which makes travellers along that route or dwellers within that locality to be perpetually under threat. If it is not threat of sea pirates who want to snatch goods and belongings or even maim, rape our women and kill people travelling the route, it will be attack from people who perceive that there will be proceeds to be gained from the exploration and exploitation of oil resources within the community or the worst, people who wish to use the abandoned localities for illicit trade like illegal refining and selling of petroleum products called kpo-fire. So, all these are a combination of what has been worrying and disturbing the Bonny populace. I wish to even note that while population of our neighbours seems to be expanding and are pursuing an expansionist tendency of looking for new conquest, new land and new places to explore, Bonny seems to be shrinking, particularly, for the indigenes. And everybody seems to be clustered in on the island of Bonny because of the basic necessities that are available thereby abandoning or leaving all our plantations, all our lands, all the surrounding Bonny villages and communities, all the fishing settlements, all the aged people to the whim and caprices of those who hitherto used to pay us rent to become, now, so to speak, our own masters. It is the proverbial situation where the leg of the lion now is broken so antelopes can come and demand debt from him; that is the situation that Bonny, as a Kingdom, is facing now. So, what I am saying in essence is that there can be only one, and one approach alone. The approach is that, if we continue to wait for the Federal Republic of Nigeria to finish securing Sambisa Forest and several other places where we have volatile situations, then come to secure Bonny natives, No, we will not get it because the critical security infrastructure put in place by the security of the Nigerian government is targeted to protect their assets. And their assets didn’t include local citizens that these marauders come to attack. If not my father wouldn’t have been killed. The assets they are protecting is the operations of the oil multinationals: NLNG, Exxon Mobil and SPDC, and their workers; their boats are escorted. Goods and services are escorted and the worst, the remaining ones are flown by air.

We are exposed so the best thing we can do for ourselves is to see how all our neighbouring LGAs and us can agree to a common security arrangement where we protect each other from the incessant attacks from a few bad people because we need each other for the survival of that part of the globe that is responsible for safety and security of oil and gas facilities that help to fuel the demand needs of the Gulf of Guinea. So, the local government area, which is the political class now, can rally round with the traditional institution. The Amanyanabo of Bonny and his Chiefs Council have been doing exceedingly very well. He took the initiative to ensure that all that we have, as a result of the relative peace between us and our neighbours, are working. The political class, politicians, the local government administration, and the Chiefs Council of all these, particularly, the Andoni, the Kalabari, and Bonny, and maybe, relatively, the Okrika needs to come together and devise a means of protecting ourselves, devise a means of joint patrol within the area, supporting the regular security forces because in Nigeria now if you leave to protect yourself nobody will protect you. You see what is happening in the land area where local government areas such as Ogba/Egbema/Ndoni Local Government Area have started providing security for themselves leading up to the extent that a neighbouring local government area of Ikwerre had gone to contract the services of ONELGA Security and Peace Advisory Committee (OSPAC) to come and help them. Meaning that it is a complete failure on the part of the regular security forces. So, individual responsibility is to protect ourselves, which even the Nigeria Police is preaching when they say community policing. Community policing means that you should protect your territory using legitimate means of protecting yourself without resorting to the use of arms and ammunition. Gather intelligence and feed the security forces if they will use it timely to achieve the desired purpose of ensuring that lives and properties are protected.

Given certain developments, which is that the local government authorities are all elected which implies they have full executive powers, though still subject to the discretion of the governors; secondly, with the new regulations by the Nigerian Financial Intelligence Unit, funds are coming directly to the local governments. This means that they have more money than before. With these, do you think development can play a key role in addressing these issues you have raised now?

Yes, the guaranteed tenure of local government is one plus because they will have time for budgeting and planning long-term programmes that will affect, particularly, the teeming youths that without jobs within the territory because if you’re talking about insecurity, it doesn’t just happen in the creeks by ghosts. It is the people, young men and women who are of working age or would desire or look for work. Most times, if they do not find legitimate means of livelihood they resort to exploiting illegitimate means of surviving. So, in the course of looking for means of survival they are pushed into all the illegal activities that lead to fight for territories. They are pushed into cults with a view to protecting themselves so that territory and dominant territory control can continue. So, all these frictions are possible because there are willing tools, people who are without jobs, they are strong, they are able-bodied, they are willing but they do not have means of engagement, employment and empowerment. So, they resort to exploitation of their environment which will lead to conflict between them, among themselves and between them and security forces. Local government, which is the closest tier of government to the people, can play a role in reducing insecurity through job creation, skill acquisition, and empowerment programmes. They can convert people who hitherto cannot find regular jobs – white collar job that are no longer available – into farming fishing, processing, packaging and marketing. That would reduce this because the natural resource between these three or four LGAs I just mentioned is the massive ocean which other communities and even people from outside Nigeria come over for fishing within our area. So, if deep sea fishing, lobster and shrimp packaging and marketing is even introduced it can help a long way in ensuring that these willing hands that have been attracted into the life of crime can be reversed. What pushed them into criminality in most cases could be traceable to search for means of survival and livelihood. I think that the local governments, if they come together, they can play very meaningful roles. We thank God for what the Navy is currently doing with attempting to stop the issue of artisanal refining along our area because pollution from Kpo-fire activities has really destroyed aquatic life and our mangrove.  But I am always disagreeing with their approach of burning down the facilities. Burning down the facilities is like using sledgehammer to kill an ant. Why did I say so? Let me even concede without supporting the activities to say, if you allow the illegal refiner who stole the crude to refine it, he may possibly use 60 per cent and pollute the environment with 40 per cent. But if the law enforcement agencies come to destroy the entire refinery – the stolen crude, the ones they have processed, and all his items – by shooting into it and burning it you are polluting 100 per cent plus of the environment you are supposed to be protecting.

It is not only about stopping them from refining we are also attempting to see whether while we are exploiting and living in this time, we can protect our environment to be sustainable for our children yet unborn to also exploit and maximize the environment for their own  benefits in the future. So, since I am an advocate of sustainable development, I am always against the pattern of attempting to stop the illegal refinery by destroying it; thereby turning both the boys and the law enforcers into polluters. That, I do not agree with. I do not subscribe to illegal refining. I subscribe to a meaningful way of attempting to see whether these people who have, from creative ingenuity, converted the means which their fathers before them were using to refine what you call the illicit gin, now called kai-kai, use the same method to start to refine petroleum products. Is there any way that scientists, people with the requisite know-how, policy makers can make available crude to these people at cheaper rate so that they can refine it and don’t pollute the environment by cutting through the oil pipelines and even buy up the waste products that they throw into the environment? This is because more than 90 per cent of the petroleum products used in the riverine parts of Rivers State and a large part of the Niger Delta does not come from Port Harcourt refinery. It comes from the activities of these people. So, if this booming illicit economy, which some research says its valued over two billion US dollars annually is operating within that territory, is exploited, it can help to create jobs and help to reduce the tension, and help to save the environment, even for the future.

But isn’t that what PANDEF and the Federal Government is doing with the modular refineries? We understand that there is already one at Ahoada, the Niger Delta Petroleum Resources.

Yes. I have been following the trend about the statements or the narratives about modular refineries. You know, when you mention modular refinery, it is a process plant for refining crude oil that is engineered and constructed on skid-mounted structures. They are usually available in capacities ranging from 1,000 to 30,000 barrels by day; it cost about $240million for 24,000 barrels per day to over $1.5billion for the ones producing up to 100,000 barrels per day capacity. You will agree with me that the boys we are talking about here cannot afford the expertise, technical know-how and the negotiation skills to venture into this nature of business so the persons who will ultimately have the contact, capital outlay and connection with Government at Abuja to win licence to operate these refineries being talked about by the Federal Government will not the boys in the creeks operating rudimentary processing of petroleum products. These boys I just described now are doing stand-alone refinery, they cannot afford the luxuries of modular refinery, except you will also employ them to be workers on it. What I’m saying is the creative innovation, the ingenuity of what they have done; if you visit any of those sites you will be shocked to see the creativity that is at work. Yes, side by side, government can create modular refineries as much as they can to make refined products available. I am saying that these people wishing to be entrepreneurs, and, you know, in some climes, it is easy to gather people into clusters and they work. But these industries are thriving, they are individual entrepreneurs that do not wish to be joined together with anybody, except you want to make them workers. If you understand the industry, the industry is so huge: there are people who tap the pipes, there are people who transport the crude to the various refining points, there are people who cook it, there are people who transport the finished products, there are people who siphon it from the collection points from where it is put into tankers and transported to service every part of the state or wherever it is going to. So, I am pushing that the engineers, scientists should look at this their own crude level of refining and modify it to suit our environment. Meaning these table top refineries will scatter around and about our area. What will be the problem now will be access to crude.

Remember when we were growing up we used to see kerosene dispensing machines nearly in front of nearly every house in cities around the early 1980s. Surface storage tanks and they put transparent measurement bottle on top through which they pump the kerosene from the tanks into it and dispense to people. That was a small level of how kerosene peddling was done in those days. It was a legitimate means of peddling. Sellers of kerosene were developed and it was a booming economy then. But you scrapped it and now wants everybody to be going to filling stations. That middle level of distribution has been killed. Those tanks are fallow now. I think that the ideas of these very creative entrepreneurs, who had used their own hands to concoct and fabricate it, should be given the necessary fillip. Most of them go to Aba to buy the fabricated refinery to come and install them. Meaning that there is another economy booming there, the made-in-Nigeria refinery booming in our neighbouring states. They come and put it on and start to make it work. This is the same way kai-kai was called illicit gin, it’s free sales and distribution was prohibited; dealers were  made them to go underground until I heard one time Military Governor of old Rivers State, now the Amanyanabo of Twon Brass His Royal Highness King Alfred Papapreye Diete Spiff was the one who lifted the ban on calling it illicit because if they had grown with the same capacity and pace like of the Gordon gin of the world, we would have been exporting it by now, with advanced technology. This technology that is rudimentary can be refined to make it safer for the environment and give them crude. And it will impact positively on the economy and they will pay taxes. When you mention modular, it will not be a Niger Delta man that will own it. I stand to be corrected. The people who will go to Brazil to ask for it to be fabricated for them to come and install may not be the people from the area where the oil is gotten from. We should not throw away the creativity of these people. Don’t use people from other parts of the country to replace them by saying you have started it in Ahoada. Check who owns it? You want to make them hewers and fetchers of fire wood again? No.

But don’t you think that the overarching policy of hasty criminalization is the challenge here? For instance, what you have described now, if it were in the US or Europe, the government would have understudied what these young men are doing and then provide them with grants and regularise it. But now, the security agencies come across these boys, they see them as criminals, they are stealing crude oil, they are doing illegal refining; everything is illegal and everything is wrong. What can be done to change this perception that has skewed policy direction in the country? 

Yes, of course, they will do that and make it to be friendly with the environment. I want to ask you one simple question do you know what is the real problem in Zamfara State leading to the killing of people? Gold Mining by individuals is at the centre of the problem in Zamfara and Katsina States; and it has been going on for as long as Nigeria has existed. It was reported that Nigeria lost over N353billion between 2016 and 2018 alone from illegal mining of over 18 tonnes of gold smuggled out of the country. Now, it is magnified because the operators have drawn themselves into armed gangs and killing themselves over control of mining sites. Have you seen or heard law enforcement agents parading even one person saying this is somebody who created illegal mining site of gold in Zamfara, Katsina or any Northern State for that matter and send the person to EFCC for prosecution? Have you seen? No, you will not see because those ones are being exploited by persons from the majority ethnic group. If this ingenuity of distilling petroleum products was discovered by anybody from a major ethnic group of Nigeria, I stand to be corrected, by now they would have encouraged them. UN, World Bank and other agencies would have invested money in converting this creativity and ingenuity to become a thriving means of livelihood. But it will perpetually be criminalized because it is done by people from the southernmost part of Nigeria. I want you to quote me, it will perpetually be criminalised because it is coming from people who they do not see anything good in. The exploitation going on Zamfara and Katsina States have continued to go on. Governors, ministers and other prominent personalities have been exploiting gold it does not belong to the Federal Republic of Nigeria. But anything below six feet in the southern part belongs to the Federal Republic of Nigeria. This creativity these boys have made, get experts, get technicians, get universities to do research into it, convert it, and let them become private entrepreneurs standing on their own. Supply them crude at an affordable price, then they should pay taxes because the fuel we use in Bonny for example is not from the Port Harcourt refinery. We are running diesel in Bonny for diesel trucks. Different people are doing various activities using diesel in Bonny. They are gotten from these boys in the creeks not from Port Harcourt refinery, meaning that it is servicing us. So, make it viable.

But the question now is: who speaks for the southern part of Nigeria, the Niger Delta? As it is now, PANDEF seems to be the face, the voice of the Niger Delta, but can we say their voice is strong enough to speak for the region because all these issues you raised coming from just an individual and not a region-wide voice…

I acknowledge. You see, at all the fora I have been where I have postulated and pushed forward these arguments, I have heard people come there to say modular refinery will solve the problem. I have debunked it saying that what they meant by modular refinery, particularly, when you hear it coming from the government, it is proposing that immediately that happens they will licence people from those sacred and favoured areas of Nigeria to come and site it within the South-South and claim that it is sited in the South-South but the ownership will go back to the same people who own oil blocks.

Which only complicates the problem more…

Yes, and it has not solved the problem. The boys are telling you that they do not need you to licence them to take what is under their legs to exploit it, refine it, and use it for their good. The worst case scenario, government should stop the criminalization and make it available to them without them cutting the pipes. The pipes that you are using now are obsolete, worldwide. Those pipes are no longer in use. The pipes that are used to transport oil in advanced countries of the world you cannot crack it the way they crack the ones we use here. Let me tell you recently I watched a documentary where a reporter was taken on a tour of Saudi  Aramco Monitoring Room of over 240 digital screens where every oil and gas operations traversing over 746 mile long pipelines in Saudi Arabia was monitored real-time. The man said nobody can touch a drop of crude oil anywhere in Saudi Arabia. That is what advanced technology would do and that if there are allocated crude now going to peasants like the ones that are converting it at this low level it will be noted from that same structure. But the fact that you have been using oil pipelines that were installed in 1962, 1966, 1979 to still carry oil that small pressure will blow it up, it pollutes our environment, people can easily still have access to it to tap and steal from it. Make it impossible, impregnate it in such a way that people can no longer steal from it. That way, anybody who has access to it must pay for it and be able to use it to serve the locality. Since the rudimentary processing may not be able to put the by-product of the level they have reached to productive use, then you take it off them after all crude oil has over 6,000 items are made from petroleum waste by-products including: fertilizer, floor covering, perfume, insecticide, petroleum jelly, soap, vitamins, etc.  What kind of people are we?

If you look at the way President Muhammadu Buhari is going about governance, it appears he is trying to look at a sustainable approaches to issues. If you were to advise him, with respect to this burning issue, what will you advise him to do? What approach would you want him to use to be able to get this right, once and for all, because, obviously, if the issue of the resources of the Niger Delta are properly addressed, the issue of militancy, the issue of restiveness, the issue of crisis in the region would have been assuaged in the long term? So, what advice would you have for the President that this is the way to go, this is how to get it right, once and for all? The issue starts from the legal point of view. The Petroleum Industry Governance Bill has not been assented to by the Federal Government I hear that part of why it has not taking off the ground was that some people consider that it will benefit the people who are currently enjoying 30 per cent derivation more. So, because of that they have split the PIB into various parts. Even the part that they consider straight enough to be passed now has not been addressed. Secondly, you know that every right thinking person knows that the issues of Land Use Act of the Federal Republic of Nigeria needs to be revisited. I was citing it side-by-side with what is happening currently in Zamfara State and other parts of northern Nigeria where exploited resources that are under the earth are not being treated the same way oil resource is been treated. So, we cannot have double standards in the country and expect to have fairness, equity, justice and peace. So, those are the components that have to do with legislation and legal issues. The part that can lead to fairness, justice and equity will not be a one-size-fits-all situation and it will not happen like a magic wand. It will take some kind of planning with some level of sincerity of purpose that will work over a period of time before you start to see the desired results. Why am I saying so? One, if you start with the process about the illegalities around the exploited resource and its distribution, then you have solved one part of it. Then the second part, I am emphasising that the Federal Republic of Nigeria needs to address, critically, the things that brings about friction. The things that brings about friction in our region are basically the fact that the people are still feeling that the resource being exploited from their region is being used to develop more of the areas outside. Do you know that from 2015 till date, even the East-West Road that became the only responsibility of the Ministry of Niger Delta is yet to be completed? Even if that was not what the Ministry of Niger Delta is supposed to be doing. The Ministry of Niger Delta was supposed to be like the Ministry of Lagos State, which led to the creation of what became the infrastructures that made Lagos what it is. Lagos was treated specially. But the Ministry of Niger Delta has been reduced to be the Ministry of East-West Road. About 85 per cent of the budgetary provision for the Niger Delta Ministry is just about East-West Road from 2015 till date. I stand to be corrected. The sections of the road that were bad from 2015 are still bad till now – the Elele axis and, of course, the Mbiama axis. So, if what was making the boys agitate such as the East-West Road has not been addressed then what are we talking about? Let’s start with addressing those critical components. So, all these are issues that we need to address. There is no sincerity of purpose when it comes to addressing Nigeria’s issues. And until there is sincerity of purpose to address Nigeria’s issues, of course, you can notice that what used to hold us closer together is breaking faster than it has ever been. The people in the South-West, who farming have been their main stay – in fact, they were earning more money from exporting farm produce than Nigeria was earning from oil in that their region, them and people of the middle belt that used to called the food basket of the Nation can no longer go to their farms because of incessant violent conflicts between farmers and herdsmen.  This has become another teething problem. So, where are we looking at it from? Until there is a clear sincerity of purpose Nigeria may not be getting it right. What used to hold us together is tearing apart more than ever before. As a nation, we are threatened. As people from Bonny, we are threatened. If any right thinking Nigerian understands what we are talking about, it is time for us to devise ways and means of self-preservation because the Nigerian State will not protect you. I would be sounding very stupid to say I am rendering any advice that would be taken because the Nigerian State does not need that advice because they will not value it, they will not use it to do anything. So, what I am saying is that let fairness, equity, justice be the watchword of the Federal Republic of Nigeria, and through fiscal federalism. That way you will start to have some semblance of peace and security in our area.