By Madaraka Nyerere.
Daily News (Tanzania); Tuesday,October 09, 2007 @00:05
No sooner had I recovered from the ophidiophobia attack (Letter from Butiama: Snakes Ophidiophobia and Superstition), I suffered another anxiety attack several days ago.
I caught a news report on radio that the Zanzibari Ministry responsible for energy had put up an advertisement for a consultant on oil. Particularly, one who would also advise both governments of the Union how best to divide oil revenues.
My anxiety, hinted some time ago, was the fear of huge sums of money that come from selling oil. And unlike ophidiophobia my petrophobia is grounded on facts.
One of the worst cases of the greatest human carnage in recent history is Iraq. Sometimes it is unusual for a few days to go by without a bomb blast claiming the lives of civilians in a conflict that is largely influenced by Iraq’s huge oil reserves.
Nearer to home, Nigeria’s oil reserves in the Niger Delta have spawned groups of armed gangs that have kidnapped oil workers for ransom. Where oil has not fuelled violence, other problems have arisen, especially in African oil producing countries.
Nigeria’s oil was discovered in 1957 and the country gradually changed from an agriculturally based economy and to an oil-dependent economy that now has to import food, according to a report published in the Boston Globe in 2003.
The same report also estimates that oil worth $US13 million was siphoned off daily by armed gangs intercepting piped supplies destined for tankers off Nigeria’s coast.
It was reported that the intercepted oil is loaded on unmarked barges and loaded on tankers for export to other West African countries. In 2002 the World Bank reported that 80 percent of Nigeria’s oil revenues benefited only 1 percent of Nigerians.
Some of us may fear that oil revenues have the potential to create huge problems; others may see the same problem as an opportunity to earn huge sums of money, legal or illegal. In an interview with Christopher Thompson, author Nicholas Shaxson says, “Oil tends to supercharge corruption.”
And the sums are impressive. I once met an executive in Johannesburg who spoke of unnamed African leaders of unnamed African countries demanding about half a dollar for every barrel of oil pumped out of their countries.
If you look at some of the daily output figures from some of these countries it is easy to accept the estimate that successive military governments in Nigeria have illegally pocketed $US400 billion from oil revenues.
With such astronomical sums, neither an accountant nor an account in a bank would be sufficient to manage that wealth. A bank would be more appropriate. My fear is that if it can happen elsewhere it can happen in Tanzania, unless someone creates an anti-corruption vaccine soon.
We will have a future government issuing impressive statistics of the millions of barrels that have been pumped and exported, and someone else countering with a television advertisement with an image of an old man walking in rural Tanzania with a torn t-shirt donated by an oil company at a launch of another poverty eradication programme.
We will have impressive statistics but nothing else to show, and, I fear, we might walk the same paths of the countries where oil has brought more problems than good. There are good sides to every gloomy prediction. If Tanzania has managed to stay together since 26 April 1964, it is unlikely that it will be torn apart by disagreement over a few billion shillings of oil revenue.
If Zanzibar gets more of the oil pie it will attract an army of Mainland Tanzanians seeking employment in offshoot businesses related to the oil production, including employment that will be created by oil spills.
A reduced number of Tanzanians will be heading abroad to seek employment; at least the brain drain will be to Zanzibar. If the mainland gets more of the oil pie then Zanzibaris can flock to the mainland to feast on the dividends of the Union
It is crucial, however, that both governments employ measures to provide a more open approach in operations that involve the extraction of our natural resources.
Transparency reduces the chances of wrongdoing by public officials and those who manage the operations. Perhaps it is time that the National Security Act of 1970 is reviewed to reflect current conditions and the growing demand for greater accountability.
The National Security Act imposes stringent controls and access to official government documents and defeats any attempts to make government more transparent. The Government should concentrate on governing and spend less time dealing with allegations about actions it should have taken or should have avoided.
Link by http://watanzaniaoslo.blogspot.com
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