Opinion
By Ifeanyi Igwebike Mbanefo
WHEN people ask where the idea for the Nigeria Prize for Literature came from, they expect me to begin in London, with the Booker Prize ceremony that kept me awake all night in October 2001.
But the truth is that the story began much earlier.
It began in the creeks and communities of the Niger Delta.
I joined Nigeria LNG Limited in April 1998 after leaving the Federal Civil Service, where I had worked at the National Manpower Board, the agency responsible for manpower planning and human-resource policy.
I arrived at NLNG with a sense of hope and responsibility.
I was married, with three young children aged five, three, and one. Like many young fathers, I longed to give my children the best education I could afford. The oil and gas industry seemed to offer a path toward that dream.
I was posted to Community Relations in Port Harcourt.
At the time, NLNG was still under construction. Our department was responsible for securing the pipeline corridors that would carry gas from production fields across the Niger Delta to the liquefaction plant on Bonny Island.
The assignment sounded straightforward enough.
In practice, it meant travelling through more than one hundred communities across Rivers State and beyond, meeting traditional rulers, youth leaders, women’s groups, landowners, government officials, and ordinary citizens whose lives would be touched by the project.
The company was building one of the largest gas infrastructure systems in Africa. The pipelines would stretch for hundreds of kilometres across forests, farms, rivers, and settlements.
Our duty was to secure the right of way and sustain community support.
Officially, we were the face of the company.
Unofficially, we stood at the meeting point of two very different worlds.
Behind us stood the authority of the Nigerian state, its regulatory institutions, and a major multinational energy investment.
In front of us stood communities whose relationship with the oil and gas industry had been shaped by years of disappointment, environmental strain, and broken promises.
The pipeline was delivered ahead of schedule. By every corporate measure, the project was a success.
Yet something I encountered in those communities remained with me.
The deeper I travelled into the Niger Delta, the more I confronted a reality I had previously known only from reports and books.
The people bore the burdens of development, but saw too little of its rewards.
Many communities lived beside critical national infrastructure while lacking basic amenities. Schools leaked. Health centres struggled. Roads deteriorated. Young people watched wealth move through their land without moving into their lives.
As a community relations officer, I often found myself defending policies that were legally sound but morally unsettling.
In courtrooms, government offices, and community meetings, I affirmed that compensation had been paid according to approved schedules.
Technically, that was true.
The law had been followed. Procedures had been observed.
Yet I knew that many affected landowners had been compensated largely for crops, rather than for the enduring value of the land itself.
“Unexhausted improvements” (structures, crops), not for the land itself said The Land Use Act.
The law said one thing.
Conscience sometimes whispered another.
The tragedy was not cruelty alone, but institutional captivity — a system that justified itself simply because it existed.
Years later, I would learn that political philosophers have a name for this dilemma. Michael Walzer described it as the problem of “dirty hands” — the moral burden carried by those who administer systems they know to be imperfect. Albert Hirschman, in turn, outlined three possible responses: exit, voice, or loyalty.
Leave.
Speak.
Or comply.
Like many others, I chose to stay.
But I also chose to speak.
That decision would shape much of my career.
Most trapped administrators choose loyalty because exit is economically dangerous and voice is politically risky. Often, the result is private sympathy with the people and public compliance with authority.
I have often thought of those administrators who, unable to alter inherited legal structures, enforced them against their own people while quietly expressing concern in private. That was the sad reality in the community relations departments of many oil and gas companies. The tragedy was that this seemingly rational behaviour produced catastrophic outcomes: the system endured precisely because those closest to its injustice were also the ones most invested in its continuation.
The first signs of deeper concern emerged when I began reviewing community development projects.
One programme in particular troubled me.
NLNG was providing grants of about forty thousand naira to communities for small development initiatives — school repairs, desks, roofing sheets, and similar projects.
The intentions were sincere.
The results were often poor.
Many projects remained unfinished. Some had not begun at all. Funds had been released, but little could be seen on the ground.
I began visiting communities one after another — Okrika, Kalabari, Egi, Ogba, Emohua, Abua, Ekpeye.
At first, many traditional rulers and community leaders were surprised by my questions. Some were offended. Others thought the inquiries improper.
But I persisted.
Community grievances against government and oil companies were real. Yet that truth did not excuse local failures of accountability.
One incident remains vivid in my memory.
A highly respected first-class traditional ruler had been awarded a contract worth several million naira to rehabilitate a wooden bridge serving his community. He invited me to certify completion so that final payment could be made.
Before meeting him, I inspected the bridge.
What I found was deeply disappointing.
The structure had not been repaired. It had merely been painted.
Beneath the fresh coat, the bridge remained unsafe and badly worn.
I recorded the condition on video and went to the meeting.
When I informed him that I could not certify completion, he was displeased. He warned that the community might obstruct pipeline operations if payment was withheld.
I listened respectfully.
Then I handed him the videotape and explained, gently but firmly, that a public release would bring embarrassment not only to him but also to the institution he represented.
Two weeks later, he invited me back.
This time, his tone had changed.
The bridge had been properly rebuilt — indeed, beyond the original scope. He admitted that the work had cost more than he had first expected.
I thanked him, processed his payment, and over time we developed a cordial relationship.
Not every case ended so constructively.
In response, I adopted a different approach.
I published a simple pamphlet listing community projects, contractors, amounts advanced, and outstanding balances.
The effect was immediate.
Young people began demanding accountability. Contractors who had ignored repeated reminders returned to site. Projects that had stalled began to move forward.
In those battles, I was reminded of Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o’s warning that political independence, without deep structural change, can simply become a new form of captivity. A new class of indigenous elites may replace colonial administrators while leaving the old systems of inequality intact.
Within the office, however, the reaction to my reports was more restrained.
Some colleagues felt I was creating unnecessary tension. Others believed I was disturbing settled arrangements. My reports became subjects of internal debate, and some were revised before reaching senior management.
Yet the more communities I visited, the clearer it became that the underlying problem had not been addressed.
Forty thousand naira here.
A roofing project there.
A few desks somewhere else.
These were not development strategies.
They were gestures.
Modern psychology has a term for another part of this burden: moral injury. Unlike fear or trauma alone, it describes the damage suffered when a person is repeatedly compelled to act against his own conscience.
Around this time, we also began to rethink another important part of our relationship with host communities: the management of Right of Way contracts.
In the oil and gas industry, RoW contracts are a vital part of pipeline integrity and safety management. They are also among the most visible and community-facing engagements a company undertakes.
Traditionally, such contracts — especially for grass cutting and surveillance — were often awarded to influential individuals and handled from a distance, with security agencies sometimes acting on their behalf.
We chose a different course.
Grass cutting and surveillance, though modest in appearance, are essential to pipeline protection. Clearing vegetation allows proper inspection, reduces fire risk, prevents encroachment, and gives emergency teams access when needed. Surveillance helps detect interference, illegal tapping, encroachments, leaks, and other anomalies.
Equally important was the social value of the arrangement.
By structuring these contracts along community lines — dividing them into area-based segments and involving local participants — we created a system in which communities had a direct stake in protecting the infrastructure crossing their land.
Young people who might otherwise have felt excluded became part of the process of safeguarding national assets. Contractors also became informal liaisons, offering operational support and community-level intelligence.
These contracts, usually structured over one to three years with activity-based pricing, became more than routine maintenance arrangements. They became instruments of trust, conflict prevention, and local inclusion.
In many communities, they represented one of the few consistent points of formal engagement with the industry.
Their proper management, therefore, was not only an operational necessity but also a social responsibility.
This experience reinforced a lesson that was becoming increasingly clear to me: sustainable progress required moving beyond token gestures toward structures that created ownership, accountability, and opportunity.
One day, I found myself discussing these concerns with the Production General Manager, Fred Smeenk.
He had read some of my reports and wanted to hear my views directly.
The conversation began well.
Then I made what, for a young officer, was a rather bold observation.
I suggested that our interventions were too small to produce meaningful impact. I noted that some of the grants being distributed were smaller than a month’s salary for certain employees — and that, in some cases, the cost of inspection exceeded the value of the projects themselves.
The room fell silent.
I expected a reprimand.
Instead, I received an assignment.
If the current approach was inadequate, what should replace it?
I was given one month to provide an answer.
What landed on my desk felt like a heavy burden.
It turned out to be one of the greatest opportunities of my career.
I began researching community empowerment models. I consulted widely — with development practitioners, colleagues in other companies, officials at the National Planning Commission, and experts in microfinance.
One of the most generous guides was Gloria Udoh, who was then deeply involved in microcredit initiatives within the oil industry.
For weeks, I worked with unusual intensity.
The result was a proposal for a five-hundred-million-naira microcredit scheme designed to support entrepreneurship and economic self-reliance across host and pipeline communities.
At first, the proposal attracted little attention.
Then events intervened.
Youth unrest on Bonny Island escalated into riots, causing serious damage to company facilities. The crisis forced a broader reassessment of community relations.
The microcredit proposal, once peripheral, became central.
Eventually, the Board approved it.
For me, the lesson was lasting.
Institutions could do more than manage problems.
They could create opportunities.
They could transform lives.
Years later, when I sat in a London hotel room wondering why Nigeria lacked a major literary prize, that lesson returned to me.
Writers, I realised, faced a challenge not unlike the communities I had worked with.
What they needed was not sympathy.
What they needed was opportunity.
To be continued…
A.I
June 8, 2026
Tags: Ifeanyi Igwebike Mbanefo Nigeria Prize for Literature