RIASSUNTO
Abstract
In Nigeria, the Niger Delta is on fire, angry communities confrontinggovernment and oil industry. Firefighting has included military suppression andthrowing money at problems, both counter-productive. Akassa has a different,grass-roots approach: interactive participatory development that iscommunity-led, stakeholder-assisted and directly aimed at extinguishing theconflagration at its source. Others can learn to use it too.
Introduction
In the early 1990s the oil industry in Nigeria was warned by traditionalrulers from the Niger Delta region that they were losing control of their youthand that soon, unless steps were taken, the area would explode into anarchy. Bythe end of 1999 that frightening prophecy was well on the way to coming true:the oil producing areas of the Niger Delta were witnessing widespread unrest,mainly involving youths who, denied a voice during the years of harsh militaryrule, were now giving vent to their grievances by direct action. Demanding ashare in the oil wealth of the region, and a say in its development, groups hadtaken to kidnapping oil workers, sabotaging oil installations and forcing theclosure of flow stations, as well as resorting to acts of piracy on the watersof the Delta. Oil production from the area tumbled as Shell and others wereforced to declare force majeure on deliveries, at the same time as theattention of the international community was being drawn to the Delta throughpress coverage and calls for action by environmental and human rightsorganisations. But through all this, one Ijaw community, the 30,000 people ofthe Akassa Clan, remained at peace, quietly working for their own developmentas they have been doing for the last three years. Their southern delta home,sandwiched between the offshore platforms in the Gulf of Guinea and the oilwells, flow stations and gas flares that dot the mangrove swamps, is as oneReuters correspondent put it, ""a haven of sanity in a sea of madness"". Thesecret of the Akassa Clan's success lies in a new approach to developmentthrough interactive participation: the Akassa Community Development Project,facilitated by the NGO Pro-Natura International (PNI), funded by Statoil(Nigeria) Limited, but owned by the Akassa people themselves.
The Akassa Community
Statoil's support, initiated in alliance with BP in 1997, was prompted bythe desire to create value for the society in which Statoil would have tooperate if exploration were successful. The initiative was also aimed atpromoting understanding between the Akassa as primary stakeholders in theprogramme area and Statoil, as newcomers to the Delta and secondarystakeholders. For Statoil it was also important to establish a reputation as agood corporate citizen from the very beginning. These are good reasons forsupporting the Akassa Clan but what has surprised many people, both in thecommunities of the Delta and in the oil industry, is that this support,amounting to hundreds of thousands of dollars, was given long before Statoilcould expect to have produced a single drop of oil.
Why was the Akassa Clan chosen to be the recipient of this unsolicitedsupport? Aware of the worsening conditions in the Niger Delta and rejecting theoil industry's established approach of cynically throwing money at communityproblems in the hope that they would go away, Statoil decided to adopt a newapproach using a participatory development model. This experiment, by thenon-governmental charitable organisation Pro-Natura International, could havebeen carried out almost anywhere along the coast, but a Statoil/BP fundedEnvironmental Impact Assessment identified Akassa as the community most likelyto be impacted by any oil accidentally spilt from exploration wells inStatoil's offshore blocks 217 and 218.