DELTA-NEWSWATCH

The Niger Delta Development Initiative (NDDI) has renewed its call for the Federal Government to ensure the full, lawful, and transparent implementation of the 13% derivation fund, insisting that oil-bearing communities continue to suffer severe neglect despite decades of revenue allocations supposedly meant for their development. This stance follows a formal document issued by several Niger Delta host-community groups, calling for sweeping reforms, including the establishment of a 13% Derivation Board in each oil-producing state and a Presidential Monitoring Committee to enforce accountability in the management of the funds. The NDDI rejects the N141.36 billion being paid as the 13% derivation fund to state government in October 2025 by the Federation Account Allocation Committee (FAAC), describing it as unconstitutional and unjust to the welfare of oil-producing communities. The Coordinator, Comrade Marvelous Doboro, while briefing newsmen today in Abuja, said: “The relea...

Abuja, Nigeria — The Niger Delta Civil Society Forum (NDCSF), Rivers State chapter, has urged the Federal Government of Nigeria to immediately stop channeling the 13 percent derivation fund through state governments.  The group insists that "the existing system is unconstitutional and deprives oil-producing communities of the resources meant to address decades of environmental, economic, and infrastructural neglect". The call was made at a press conference in Asokoro, Abuja, where the Rivers State Coordinator of NDCSF, Comrade Bernice Tamuno-Obukorubo, stoutly condemned what she described as the “illegal and unconstitutional diversion of derivation funds away from the primary resource-bearing communities". According to Tamuno-Obukorubo, the 13 percent derivation fund—designed to compensate oil, gas, and mineral-producing communities—was never intended to be paid to state governments. “The payment of the 13 percent derivation fund through state governments is ...

The alarm raised by the Niger Delta Civil Society Forum (NDCSF) over the payment of N141.36 billion in 13% derivation funds to state governments in the October 2025 FAAC allocation has once again exposed a long-standing structural injustice in Nigeria’s fiscal system.  For more than three decades, a constitutional provision designed to compensate resource-bearing communities has been systematically diverted into state coffers with little or no impact on the people whose lands and waters bear the brunt of extraction. Section 162(2) of the 1999 Constitution is explicit: the 13% derivation exists as a form of compensation for oil-bearing communities.  These are the communities whose environment is polluted, whose farmlands are damaged, and whose rivers and creeks are contaminated by decades of oil and gas activities.  Yet, nowhere does the Constitution state that these funds should be administered by state governments.  Despite this, billions of naira contin...

The Niger Delta Civil Society Forum (NDCSF), a coalition of civil society organisations drawn from Delta, Edo, Akwa Ibom, Rivers, Bayelsa, Cross River, Ondo and other states in the oil-rich region, has stoutly condemned the payment of N141.36 billion being 13% derivation funds to state governments in the October 2025 revenue allocation, describing the practice as "unconstitutional, unjust, and detrimental to the welfare of oil-producing communities". According to the Forum, Section 162(2) of the 1999 Constitution clearly mandates the 13% derivation as compensation for resource-bearing communities that suffer environmental degradation, land depletion, pollution, loss of livelihoods, and other socio-economic hardships resulting from oil, gas, and mineral exploration. The Forum expressed deep dissatisfaction over the continued transfer of derivation funds to state governments despite decades of alleged mismanagement, non-transparency, and failure to deliver meaningfu...