Non govermental organisations, Policy Alert in partnership with Publish What You Pay (PWYP) Nigeria have launched a campaign tagged ‘WetinWeGain’ which aimed at empowering communities in the Niger Delta with data for holding government and extractive companies accountable on how they managed their natural resources.
In a statement jointly signed by the executive directors of the organisations, Tijah Bolton and Peter Egbule respectively, the Organisations said the campaign would also serve as eye-opener to people of oil rich communities of Niger Delta to ask right questions and demand full transparency in oil, gas and mining subsectors.
To achieve this aim, Bolton, Director of Policy Alert said, “This campaign will use data analysis and simplification, public sensitization, community capacity building and advocacy to drive home messages that can propel action and help us begin to reverse the resource curse, a phenomenon that sees resource-rich countries trailing behind on most development indicators.
Bolton however expressed worry that irrespective of enormous natural resources in Nigeria, the country is still taking the lead among the poverty stricken countries of the world.
His words, “Rather than Nigeria’s natural resources contributing to prosperity for its citizens, we have witnessed a downward slide on several development indicators, one of the latest being that Nigeria now leads the pack of countries having the highest poverty burden, with an estimated 87 million Nigerians living in extreme poverty, according to a 2018 data by the World Poverty Clock, compiled by Brookings Institute.
On his own, Egbule the National cordinator of Publish What You Pay (PWYP) who attributed the level of poverty and hardship in the country to corruption said:
“Corruption undermines the potential for revenues to be used to improve the economic and social lives of citizens, particularly resource-rich communities who suffer loss of livelihoods, destruction of their environment and other deprivations due to the extraction of these resources.
“Recent developments in the international policy arena have resulted in a lot more extractive data becoming available than was previously possible, but the challenge has been to bridge the gap between extractive data and the utilization of such data by civic actors to demand accountability from governments and companies. The #WetinWeGain Project will help bridge that gap and we are excited to partner with Policy Alert on this campaign.”
Meanwhile, Publish What You Pay UK Coordinator Miles Litvinoff welcomed Policy Alert’s launch of the #WetinWeGain campaign. He said: “PWYP UK is very pleased to be working with Policy Alert and PWYP Nigeria in helping to raise awareness among Nigerian communities about the companies extracting their country’s natural resources and these companies’ payments to Nigerian government entities. Transparency and informed public participation are essential if there is to be full accountability in Nigeria’s oil, gas and mining subsectors.”
