Oil Revenue Sharing Bill Hides the Truth

@ Dennis Morton 2016.

Nothing is much easier for a politician than to capitalize on an enthusiastic public by painting an image of a rosy future even when context and hard facts dictate otherwise.

A cursory look at the so-called resource-rich countries gives us a rather tasteless hope built on politically-powered rhetoric. In this talking game, there is a well-built belief that there is instant wealth in natural resources, and that populations in regions with mineral deposits need not move past “asking for their share of resource dollars from companies and national governments.”

The message hidden in such loaded statements is that opportunities, business ventures, knowledge transfer programs et al that often accompany natural resources exploration and exploitation activities are none of (local) communities’ business. In short, community members should just ‘sleep’ because resource dollars will flow to them.

Unfortunately, this shaky thinking has taken control of Kenyans, and in particular, people in Turkana County.

The other day the National Assembly rubber-stamped an oil revenue sharing bill outlining the percentages that local communities, county governments and the national treasury shall pocket should oil revenues start flowing. While the import of the proposed law seems to be clear, the message reaching people in the hamlets of Turkana is vague and escapist. Its proponents have only been bandying about percentages as though oil cash would be splashed to people on the basis of their closeness to oil wells.

I'm afraid these leaders are blind to the fact that the foundation of collective development is hinged on outlining what touches all and how that can be turned around to create wealth for all. They seem to cling on the gullibility of the people to reason beyond those percentages to mask their own inability to think beyond this distributionist mentality.

It is a dangerous move. Dangerous because it shifts away the cause of entrenched poverty in places like Turkana from leaders’ inefficiencies to resource scarcity.

Coming a few months to national elections, this oil law is a clever gimmick meant to hoodwink pastoralists that there is future in extractives even when a whooping eighty percent of them can neither read nor write!

This oil thing is likely to push the focus away from the need to examine the impact on social development brought by the sedentarization – forced and voluntary – of nomads.

That many towns neighboring oil blocks have grown both in size and in population is a fact. The often ignored question is; where did these new entrants fuelling growth in those oil towns come from?

A majority of these new urbanites are former nomads who trooped to towns either, as a result of that useless belief that oil money is found there, or because nomadism is no longer a viable mode of subsistence.

The suppressed truth, however, is that these former nomads are ill prepared for town life. They simply have no skills to enable them pick new means of subsistence. As a result, they end up swimming in an already overflowing sea of poor urbanites.

Instead of telling the world how this issue will be straightened, all we hear from crusaders of oil dollars’ sharing formula is an indifferent appeal that only serves to introduce a social order split along class lines.

No one is talking about how skills can be drilled into the heads of these new town entrants. No one is ready to move away from the comfort of “dialogues and negotiations” to meeting the people that form the bedrock of the existence of such forums. No politico is willing to lead a crusade of public enlightenment. 

Now that this oil thing has become a national element and virtually everybody is talking about “modernizing” pastoralists neighboring oil wells, it is still largely ignored that modern practices do not just attach themselves on the skins of the people. They must be built into their systems by first respecting the people (in this case, pastoralists), and then ensuring that that respect is translated into tangible enlightenment initiatives. Not simplistic futurism.

A chain of training/skills centers targeting the majority illiterate would definitely have taken the lead if this yet-to-be-adopted enlightenment campaign had materialized.

That is what I expected the oil dollars’ preachers to say – not bellowing vague percentages to a desperate population.

Twitter: @mlemukol.