Aware of the immense benefits of regional economic cooperation and integration offer as means for accelerating and consolidating economic and social development, the BRACED states which are all oil producing, had decided to stimulate development in agriculture, environment, infrastructure development, human capacity development and industrialization.
In a bid to attract investment and industrialization in the region which has over 40 million inhabitants beyond her natural resources, the BRACED states had planned to review the policies and regulations on power and gas to enable the states generate, transmit and distribute power. In pursuit of this, they agreed to set a Niger Delta Energy Corridor, a project with potential for connecting the people, industry and natural resources and creating jobs.
In addition to the 2015 politics, the states’ governors were also engaged in sometimes bitter or better still, acrimonious economic wars that triggered suspicion among them. For instance, the Jonathan-controlled Federal Government had ceded Rivers State’s oil wells around the Kalabari area of the state to neighbouring Bayelsa State which is the home state of the former president. This singular action bred bad blood between Amaechi and Governor Dickson.
He, however, said sometimes politics and political considerations affect well-intended programmes everywhere there are such blocs. “On behalf of all our colleagues from the South-South geopolitical zone, we just came together to discuss a few economic issues and how we can revive the BRACED Commission,” he noted. “And also, we looked at how we can try and fortify security network, especially now that the oil prices are a little bit epileptic; we need to make sure that we maintain production.”
According to him: “Right now, there are efforts to hold a meeting. Once that takes place the commission will be revitalised”. “Today, the Niger Delta, if the leaders had listened, it takes about six to seven years for oil palm to grow, the same thing with timber, they would have been exporting more than they had 10 years ago and they would be making more money from it, in addition to the money they are making from crude oil. They will have enough money to spend on education, health and infrastructure.”
“One of the decisions that was taken early which was not implemented, a decision by the governors themselves, that as long as you are from the Niger Delta, you will pay the same school fees in any of the states. So, you don’t go to Delta and say because you are from Rivers you are going to pay a different school fees, or because you are from Cross River and that because you are schooling in Rivers you will pay higher. No. Wherever you are in the Niger Delta, you pay the same school fees.
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