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PROJECT TOPIC:  DEVELOPMENTAL PROGRAMMES IN THE NIGER DELTA REGION OF NIGERIA AND THE CHALLENGE OF SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT
Department:  Public Administration
AMOUNT:  10,000
FORMAT:   MS WORD
PAGES:  77
 
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1.1 Introduction

 

Until recently, Nigeria was rated as the world’s thirteenth, OPEC’s sixth, and Sub-Saharan Africa’s largest producer of crude oil. ¹ It has also been established that the Niger Delta region produces the bulk of Nigeria’s foreign earnings and that oil mineral revenue constitutes about 85% of Gross Domestic Product (GDP), over 95% of national budget and over 80% of the nation’s wealth.In 2007 alone, Nigeria is reputed to have earned about $55billion from oil exports. ²There is however, a striking unanimity in existing literature on the Niger Delta Region of Nigeria to the effect that in spite of the vast earnings from the region’s oil and gas deposits, the Niger Delta (which is inhabited by approximately 30million people) remains the poorest region in the country. It is perhaps the poorest and most backward region in the Nigerian nation today. While accurate data is scanty, several studies relying on World Bank and the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) records, point to the effect that the Niger Delta region is rated low on every known indicator of well-being including good roads, electricity, potable water, housing, medical care, educational facilities and so on.  In 1994 for example, there is evidence that only 27% and 30% of households in the region had access to safe drinking water and electricity, respectively. This was below the national averages of 32% and 34%. Similarly, in the 1991, there was one doctor per 132,600 inhabitants in the Niger Delta; the national average was one doctor per 39,455 people.  In the year 1999, Human Rights Watch findings noted that the gross national income per capita was below the national average of $260 while education levels were similarly below the national average. In the same vein, primary school attendance was found to be less than a third of the national average while illiteracy rate was found to be higher. There exist recorded high level unemployment among youths in the region with the 2006 UNDP’s Niger Delta Human Development Report concluding that ‘infrastructure and social services are generally deplorable and vastly inadequate….’ A recent study tour of nine oil-bearing communities in three states of the Niger Delta conducted by Kiikpoye and others to (B-Dere, Kpean and Bodo)..(RiversState); Oprouza, Beneku and Okpai-Oluchi (DeltaState) and Imiringi, Gbarantoru and (BayelsaState), discovered more worrisome findings. Kpean in Ogoniland, showed among other things that the affected oil-bearing communities use drinking water in the same streams that also serve as lavatories with life expectancy on the low side

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