How NDDC is Exorcising Ghost of Youth Unemployment in the Niger Delta Region (OPINION)

By Jerome-Mario Utomi

When The Minister of Niger Delta Development (MNDD), Abubakar Momoh, in November 2023, inaugurated the new Governing Board of the Niger Development Commission (NDDC) with a charge that they should have on their fingertips the Eight-point Presidential Priorities that would guide the board in its development strides of the Niger Delta region, the people of the region were thrilled.

Their happiness was informed by the fact that members of the new governing board and management, going by their antecedent will keep the Commission up and running in its bid to “facilitate the rapid, even and sustainable development of the Niger Delta into a region that is economically prosperous, socially stable, ecologically regenerative and politically peaceful.

The euphoria that greeted their coming was further heightened   when the new governing board and management upon assumption of duty, articulated thematic programmes, initiatives and areas that will assist the Commission drive a coordinated and sustainable development of the region.

These policies, programmes and initiatives include; Building Partnerships, Project Hope for Renewed Hope, Lighting up the Niger Delta, Carbon Emission Reduction, Sustainable Livelihoods, Stakeholder Engagement, Improved Youth Capacity and Skills Base, Effective and Professional Workforce, Efficient and Cost-Effective Projects, Improved Peace and Security etc.

These initiatives, going by commentaries, not only meet the developmental needs of the people but stand as a perfect response to the social and economic crisis in the Niger Delta.

Essentially, ‘’With malice to none but charity to all’’, it is not as if past administrations in the country did not, at different times and places make efforts to address the region’s challenges. But noble as those efforts were, considering the level of underdevelopment in the region, such effort appeared too insignificant and short of what is required to care for the region’s development and more particularly, remains a far cry from what was needed to exorcise the ghost of infrastructural shortfalls and youth unemployment in the region.

It is of a fact that if there is any area that Niger Deltans had all these years wished to see improvement in, and if there are areas the present governing board and management have to the admiration of all performed superlatively in the past ten months, it is in the areas of infrastructural provision particularly lighting up of Niger Delta region and human capital development through youth empowerment/job creation.   Empowerment for instance has strategically addressed proliferation of youth restiveness- a threat which was more likely among the large army of professionally trained ex-agitators currently without a job.

This effort in youth empowerment becomes even more evident when one remembers the recent news report that the Commission has registered 3.2 million youths in its Holistic Opportunities Programmes for Engagement, Project HOPE, since the first phase of the programme which was launched on July 4, 2023.

This was announced by the NDDC Managing Director, Dr Samuel Ogbuku, during the launching of the second phase at the Rivers State Information, Communication and Technology, ICT Centre in Port Harcourt.

Ogbuku said that Project HOPE, was conceived out of the necessity to address the pressing challenges facing the youths, especially in the area of employment and the lack of opportunities for meaningful engagement.

He noted that the first phase entailed designing and deploying a digital platform for data collection, analysis and creating a parameter for the programme implementation.

Ogbuku declared: “The second phase is the implementation phase of eight meticulously designed programmes aimed at creating jobs and empowering our youth across various sectors such as agriculture and technology.

This commitment to promoting projects and programmes and sustainable growth in the Niger Delta region is coming weeks after the Commission in a similar vein flagged off a training and empowerment programme for women and youths in livestock farming and agro-processing at Amukpe, in Sapele Local Government Area of Delta State, a training which was described as capable of improving both the socio-economic lives and promoting peace in the region.

The Commission in a statement said; the decision by the NDDC to prioritize training on livestock was also in line with President Ahmed Bola Tinubu’s Renewed Hope Agenda of developing capacity. The Niger Delta Development Commission, as an interventionist body, has a policy thrust of promoting programmes that would guarantee food security and agricultural growth in multi-sectoral areas as a way of improving the living standards of the people. This is because for any socio-economic development to take place, there is a need to develop manpower in the agricultural sector.”

While calling on the various state governments in the region to emulate the Commission in improving the lives of the people, and serve as a panacea to restiveness, the Commission enjoined the participants to take advantage of the training programme and to judiciously utilise the start-up package that would be presented to them to invest in agriculture.

Like the people, particularly youths from the region, this piece also highlights with pride the recently flagged off 12 months youth internship scheme which would prepare 10,000 participants with the training and experience needed for gainful employment and empower the benefitting youths in the areas of technology, music and arts, agriculture and marine, among others. During the duration of the internship, each intern would receive a stipend of N50,000 per month.

Still on training and empowerment, the Commission also inaugurated Livelihood Improvement Family Enterprises – Niger Delta (LIFE-ND) initiative, a scheme that would be funded by NDDC and the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD), with IFAD contributing $60 million (N95.31 billion) and NDDC providing $30 million (N47.65 billion). According to the Commission’s Managing Director, Mr Samuel Ogbuku, the project would not only address unemployment, reduce youth restiveness, and promote agribusiness in the region but transform the lives of over 38,000 direct beneficiaries over six years in the three NDDC-funded states of Akwa Ibom, Imo, and Rivers.

“We are using this launch to reaffirm our commitment to economically empower our youths and women to build businesses that uplift their future, families, and communities. This project is not just ploughing through the fields of agribusiness but will break new ground and cultivate opportunities for wealth and stability. It will create new opportunities, providing fertile soil for growth in areas that were once dry and barren for the region’s youth and women. Agribusiness seemed out of reach for many in the past, but today we are bridging that gap by opening doors to entrepreneurship, financial independence, and sustainable livelihoods,”

In addition to these programmes and initiatives coming at a time when policy makers across the globe are actively integrating sustainable policy frameworks that both protect the rights and opportunities of coming generations and contribute to compatible approaches, one strategic tailored importance of the Commission’s ongoing efforts is that it is principally changing narrative and enthroning reorientation.

Take as an illustration, for many years, there exists a veiled agreement that one of the perverse and unintended consequences of the discovery of oil in Nigeria is that governments have almost completely abandoned agriculture in the mad quest for petrol dollars. The nation is a mono-economy, depending on the volatile fortunes of oil. Added to this governance failure is the further deterioration in agricultural fortunes caused by oil pollution. Thereby, oil pollution becomes an indirect violation of the right to life, even as it is a violation of the right to a safe and habitable environment.

In view of the above ecological challenge, many environmental analysts have in the past argued that it will be futile to hope that investment of inputs and skills into the sector will boost food supply in rural communities without first addressing adverse oil operation activities. Environmental regulations, they added, must be enforced in order to aid rural development. To others, the first step is for the government to recognize that destruction of agricultural prospects in rural communities through irresponsible oil operations is an indirect violation of the right to life and the right to a safe environment, and also a negation of the policy of economic diversification.

But with the ongoing youth empowerment/agricultural programmes by NDDC, it appears Mr. Chiedu Ebie led Governing board and management have finally thrown the above slanted arguments into the dustbin of history!

Jerome-mario Utomi, a media professional writes from Lagos, Nigeria. He could be reached via jeromeutomi@yahoo.com/08032725374.