23 Years After, HOPE Finally Meets Niger Delta Youths 

Monday, June 5, 2023, marked the twenty third anniversary of the creation of the Niger Delta Development Commission (NDDC), by the then administration of President Olusegun Obasanjo, with the sole aim of developing the oil-rich Niger Delta region of the country.

One of the core mandates of the commission is to train, educate, and empower the youths of the oil rich region in order to curb restiveness and give succour to the hopeless, and to develop key infrastructure, while promoting diversification and productivity, in order to reduce poverty.

The NDDC, is also mandated to survey the region and carry out needs assessment, in order to determine cogent measures to take in terms of physical and socio-economic development.

However, the past twenty three years have been clouded with a behive of gross mismanagement of unplanned projects and programmes.

In fact, at some point, NDDC was labelled as a "conduit pipe" for wasting the scarce resources meant for the development of the Niger Delta.

Delightfully, all that is now in the past, as the Samuel Ogbuku and Charles Ogunmola-led board of the NDDC, has decided to make a difference by fully adopting the developmental template of Project HOPE, as being driven by Blessing Fubara, the resource person for the scheme.

The scheme known as Holistic Opportunities, Projects and Engagement (Project HOPE) is a platform on which youth of the region would benefit and make unprecedented progress.

Project HOPE was designed to create a comprehensive potential resource database of the youths population of the Niger Delta region, with a focus on their needs, qualifications, skills, passion, interests, and employment status.

The Executive Director in charge of Projects in NDDC, Charles Ogunmola, says the main focus of the new board is to change, to reform, and to do things differently, stating that the commission has set up structures, policies and ideas in place to achieve a smooth and rapid trajectory for the rebirth of the NDDC.

"Our core focus is on the development of the region through innovation. We know that the current traditional sources of revenue for the region through the oil companies and government are no longer sustainable because of the changing dynamics worldwide, so we have taken a different view, to look at the traditional sources as secondary, and to create new sources of sustenance and income," he stressed.

Ogunmola further stated that the rewind to rebirth initiative of the commission would be achieved through Project HOPE by building sustainable international and local partnerships for the development of the region and its youths.

According to Blessing Fubara, "Project HOPE is designed to deploy the first Niger Delta Youth Potential Resources Database System, which will give us the parameter for employment generation, youth empowerment, and capacity development in the region, and we have adopted the government-community-private sector-public sector development (GCPP) model for execution.

Fubara stated that the first strategy of the project, also called Project 9/9/9, was designed to create 9,000 jobs, 1,000 per state, through the development of agro-allied partnered industries in the nine states according to their potential and resources.

“In Abia State, Project HOPE will set up a Textile Village and a commercial vegetable farm plus a processor industry in farm, while a poultry and egg hatchery plus a processor in farm will be set up in Akwa Ibom State.

“Bayelsa State will host a plantain/banana plantation and snail farm for export, plus a processor industry in farm, while Cross River State will house a rice plantation and a processor mill in farm.

“An automobile village and aqua culture and processor in farm will be set up in Delta State, while Edo State will host a cassava plantation, and a processor industry in farm, as well as a furniture village.

“Ondo State will enjoy a livestock and dairy farm plus a processor industry in farm, while Imo State will accommodate a sugarcane plantation and a processor industry in farm, and Rivers State will host the Tech community, onshore and offshore fish farming plus a processor industry in farm," he narrated.

"We also have developed the Niger Delta Music and Arts Project (Niger Delta MAP), to cater for the needs of the creative sector of the region.

"There is also the NDDC internship programme designed to accommodate interns in companies located in the region.

"Project HOPE will also set up chambers of commerce in each of the nine states of the region in order to drive entrepreneurship to an excellent height.

"Niger Delta Youth Solicitors is the fifth project that will engage the services of brilliant but redundant lawyers to rescue our brothers and sisters that are languishing in correctional and detention centers, over bailable offences or no offences at all, in order to reassure a sense of rebirth, extend an “olive branch”, and ignite HOPE, for a better and safer region.

"The youths solicitors idea was conceptualized to give a voice to the hopeless, and to rebuild the culture of law and order, thereby creating confidence in the justice delivery system, to foster productivity, inclusivity, and accountability," Fubara said.

He stated that collation of data which would commence from next month at the various local government areas collation units, would be deactivated after ninety days for the first phase, and would become continuous afterwards.

"The portal will be opened for collation from July 1, 2023, for three months, across the nine states of the region, and will be followed by an aggressive communication campaign for awareness and integration of the rural dwellers."

The resource person for Project HOPE, said a total of five hundred and ninety seven data collation officers would be employed for the first phase of the project, while the second phase would be conducted by five thousand, nine hundred and seventy "hope givers", serving as data analysts, monitoring and implementation officers.

Finally, in the sacred words of Chief Obafemi Awolowo, "I have never regarded myself as having a monopoly of wisdom. The trouble is that when most people in public life and in the position of leadership and rulership are spending whole days and nights carousing in clubs or in the company of men of shady character and women of easy virtue, I, like a few others, am always busy at my post working hard at the country's problems and trying to find solutions to them, only the deep can call to the deep."