Interview with BBC World Service’s ‘Network Africa’, with presenter Komla Dumor. Pre-recorded on 3 July - broadcast throughout morning of 4 July 2008.

My name is Komla Dumor, you’re listening to BBC’s ‘Network Africa’.

Armed groups in the Niger Delta make the news on almost a daily basis. Local groups, the most famous being the Movement for Emancipation of the Niger Delta, or MEND, have been attacking local oil installations with increased ferocity and frequency over the last few months.

Nigeria’s oil production depends largely on the security status of the Delta; the federal government has promised a summit for the region; and offers of a ceasefire have come and gone.

Osamede Okhomina knows very well what’s going on – that’s where he’s from. And as Chief Executive of Energy Equity Resources, a London-based Anglo-Norwegian oil and gas exploration company, he operates in the region.

Osamede Okhomina: “It is becoming increasingly difficult. Fortunately for a small company , we’re not the exact target of the so-called militancy. So we manage to get away from the major problems. But it’s more expensive – you have to rent more supply vessels, use more security, work with the local communities as well, and we have to pay more for certain kinds of services, because many of the foreign contractors are more reluctant to go there. So the main effect is increased costs of operation.

Komla Dumor: Is the government actually dealing with the problems of the Niger Delta?

OO: The government is trying to deal with the problems; but I think the government underestimated the escalation of the problem; I think the government have not yet decided on a process or a programme, although there is a lot of consultation within government about the best way to address it.

KD: The government says it is putting more money into the communities there – efforts to provide more public facilities, for example . You don’t think those are working?

OO: Money’s definitely going down into the states, which means that the government pays more of its oil revenues to the state governments. I think the major problem is the use of proceeds … and how effectively it’s been implemented.

KD: Now recently in a newspaper article, you implied that the plight of the Niger Delta is proof of, I quote: “a decline in Nigeria’s moral backbone”. What do you mean by that?

OO: What I was trying to say was that over the years the Nigerian body polity has not been focused on justice. And because of that, people are getting tired of government promises.

KD: Do people in the communities of the Niger Delta who are opposed to the manner in which, you know, resources are being extracted from their community – do they have a point?

OO: Definitely. They do have a point. Like everywhere else, we should have developed more quickly, we should be a more organised society. Just as people in any part of Nigeria would complain about the level of development we’ve attained, I think everybody’s complaint is justified.

KD: Right now, oil is hitting close to $140 and even going higher per barrel, do you think that the situation in the Niger Delta could actually get worse? And as a result, have an impact on the price of oil?

OO: I think it is getting worse. I don’t know if it will get worse than it is now …
KD interrupts: How bad could it get?

OO: We could see more radical decline in production. So it could get worse.

KD: That was Osamede Okhomina, Chief Executive of Energy Equity Resources.