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| Former President Olusegun Obasanjo |
A senior lawyer and human rights activist, Chief Mike Ozekhome (SAN), has said former President Olusegun Obasanjo's comment where he claimed resources in the Niger Delta region belongs to Nigeria and not the region, is a sad reminder that Obasanjo was part of the military era "that cleverly and systematically inserted ‘expropriatory’ and inhuman laws concerning ownership of oil and gas into our statute books."
Ozekhome said while Obasanjo is legally correct about his claims, he however, ignored the other aspect which clearly states that whoever owns the land owns everything on top of it.
In a statement personally signed, the lawyer maintained that ordinarily, a major attribute of federalism is that it ensures that regions, sub-nationals or federating units develop according to their pace and needs, using their God-given resources, they should only pay tax to the central government.
He insisted that a law that literally stole the resources of a people, punishing them with destruction of their only available aquatic and agrarian life, even though in the statute books, was a bad, aberrant and obnoxious law.
“Former president Olusegun Obasanjo has theorised that the oil and gas found in the Niger Delta region belong to the federal government, and not to the oil-bearing communities.
“Legally speaking, Obasanjo can be said to be correct, because he was part and parcel of successive military juntas that cleverly and systematically inserted ‘expropriatory’ and inhuman laws concerning ownership of oil and gas into our statute books.
“But, does that make such laws right or justifiable? No. I think not. Ex-president Obasanjo should be told in very clear terms that there is such an overriding principle of law, which goes with the maxim of quic quid plantatatur solo solo cedit. This literally means that whoever owns the land owns everything on top of it.
“Any extant constitutional or statutory provisions (such as those apparently referred to by Obasanjo) that run contrary to this ‘commonsensical’ common law principle are therefore nothing but bad, immoral, ‘expropriatory’ and exploitative,” he argued.
He explained that in the United States, for instance, a country from which Nigeria adopted its system of government, since oil was discovered in 1859, oil and gas have never been owned by the American federal government, but by the surface owners.
Ozekhome pointed out that oil and gas offshore could be owned either by states or federal government in that country.
According to him, before the January 15, 1967 first military putsch led by Maj. Kaduna Nzeogwu , neither the cotton, groundnut and hides and skin obtainable in the north, the cocoa grown in the west, palm produce in the east; nor the rubber and timber that existed in the then mid-west, were said to belong to the federal government.
“They belonged to the regions that took a lion 50 per cent share, while paying tax to the federal government at the centre. What has changed? Nothing, I believe,” he stressed.
Ozekhome attributed the failure of Obasanjo's 2005 political reform conference, to its inability to satisfactorily address issues of resource control.
“He should remember that this led the South-south delegates to stage a walkout from the conference. I was not only a civil society delegate, I was actually the head of the civil society unit that drafted our final committee report and recommendations.
“Obasanjo should, therefore, not have dismissed such a festering thorny issue as oil and gas and bleeding oil-bearing communities with a wave of the hand in a most provocative and cavalier manner,” he argued.
He said more than any leader Nigeria has had since the military era, Obasanjo is better placed to understand the plight of a region he said has suffered neglect, repression, suppression and marginalisation for many years.
“The poor people have had to pay with their sweat, sorrow, tears, blood, pains and pangs, over their God-given wealth. The wealth has become a curse rather than a blessing," he said.
He therefore, called on Obasanjo who he said is a well respected leader and whose public statements and opinions hold weight, to "generously garnish (his statements) with unifying, healing, therapeutic and inclusive flavour, and not with the vinegar of divisive and provocative statements.”