Resolve blockade in Turkana before it undermines oil find

[Courtesy]

Last week, residents broke into the grounds where oil from Ngamia 8 oil well in Turkana are stored and prevented trucks transporting the oil to Mombasa from leaving the site.

They were protesting against renewed hostilities in the area prone to insecurity. Perhaps to catch the eye of top Government officials including President Uhuru Kenyatta, the locals said nothing will persuade them otherwise while promising a long-drawn-out campaign against their security challenges.

Not once, not twice has Mr Kenyatta and other national leaders disabused the locals of the sense of entitlement to what really is a national resource.

Granted, the National Government is to blame for “abandoning” the frontier regions even as it ensured that the rest of the country got modernized with better roads, schools and hospitals. Frankly speaking, many of the residents in Turkana and others in the Northern Frontier regions consider themselves second rate citizens. And not without any reason. Years of neglect compounded by harsh climatic conditions have conspired to keep them poor and unwanted.

Yet that is no reason to engage in acts that border on the criminal.

Though their grievances are genuine, what cannot be tolerated is the urge to break the law to pass a message. Two wrongs never made a right.

Indeed, their acts don’t augur well for private investment. Actually, it erodes the confidence in the country as a great investment destination.

The mistake is to mix different issues; the right to security, private property rights and the right to national mineral wealth. All along and like in many parts of the world, the headache has been the revenue sharing ratio which was announced last month; 75 per cent goes to the National Government; 20 per cent goes to the county government; and 5 per cent goes to the locals. Yet it seems even with that sealed, danger seems to lurk somewhere.

The sentiments of those barricading the Ngamia 8 site call for a rapid sensitization of the locals on what entails their rights, privileges and responsibilities. Experts should dissect the issues for them if only to temper their exaggerated expectations with reality.

They need to be told, for example, about the dangers of turning the Turkana oil fields into another Niger Delta because surely, all parties stand to lose in a big way.