Opinion

Beyond oil: Niger Delta attracts new investments for economic growth and development

Published

7 months ago

April 16, 2026

Chigozin Obinna

Niger Delta Summit in Port Harcourt targets $5bn investment and 500,000 jobs through diversification and innovation

By Ehi Braimah

In the mangrove-fringed creeks and bustling markets of the Niger Delta, the scent of crude oil has long defined daily life.

Also read: Nigerian Banks Drive Strong Growth After Bold Recapitalisation Boost

For decades, the region’s nine states – Akwa Ibom, Bayelsa, Cross River, Delta, Edo, Imo, Ondo, Rivers, and Abia – have powered Nigeria’s economy through vast hydrocarbon reserves.

Yet for many residents, that black gold has delivered more curses than blessings: environmental degradation from oil spills, youth unemployment fueling unrest, and a sense of abandonment amid federal wealth that rarely trickled down.

Families in fishing villages watched their waters turn toxic; young graduates in Port Harcourt scanned job boards dominated by oil multinationals, only to face cycles of militancy and amnesty programmes that offered temporary relief but little lasting dignity.

Now, a quiet but determined shift is underway.

Local business leaders are rewriting the script, betting that the Niger Delta region’s true wealth lies not just in its subsoil but in its people, rivers, farmland, and untapped entrepreneurial spirit.

At the heart of this pivot is the maiden Niger Delta Economic and Investment Summit (NDEIS), scheduled for May 19 – 21, 2026, in Port Harcourt, Rivers State, with the theme: Driving investment, innovation, and industrial growth in the Niger Delta.

Organised by the Niger Delta Chamber of Commerce, Industry, Trade, Mines and Agriculture (NDCCITMA), the event carries an audacious goal: catalysing up to five billion dollars in structured investments over the next five years and creating more than 500,000 direct and indirect jobs.

Ambassador Idaere Gogo-Ogan, NDCCITMA chairman, framed the ambition plainly during a pre-summit media briefing in March 2026. “The region is ready to deliver 500,000 new jobs, inclusive of investment drive and wealth creation,” he said, describing the summit as a platform to deliberate on “investment mobilisation, enterprise growth, industrial expansion, and regional coordination.”

President Bola Tinubu is expected as special guest of honour, with Barbados Prime Minister Mia Amor Mottley delivering the keynote, an intriguing nod to lessons from small-island economies that have thrived through diversification and resilience.

Dr. Solomon Edebiri, NDCCITMA secretary and local organising committee chairman, struck a note of pragmatic optimism. The summit, he explained, is “a strategic initiative designed to reposition the Niger Delta as a competitive hub for investment, enterprise development, and sustainable industrialisation.” While the world knows the Delta for oil and gas, its real legacy, he argued, rests on “a wealth of diverse and largely untapped opportunities” that the gathering aims to unlock.

Those opportunities are starting to crystalise.

Discussions at the summit and related roundtables point to concrete sectors beyond crude: agriculture and agro-processing to leverage the region’s fertile soils and waterways; manufacturing and logistics to turn Port Harcourt and Warri into industrial nerve centers; blue economy initiatives harnessing fisheries, shipping, and coastal tourism; energy transition projects that optimise the existing oil-and-gas value chain (a shift toward renewable energy), and small-and-medium-enterprises (SME) scaling that could empower local entrepreneurs.

Recent analyses echo this vision, highlighting how five billion dollars in inflows could reshape the economy by reducing oil dependency and channeling capital into youth-driven ventures in farming, light manufacturing, and services.

The Niger Delta Development Commission (NDDC) has thrown its weight behind the effort, signaling institutional buy-in for broader regional plans.

Chairman Chiedu Ebie and Managing Director/CEO Samuel Ogbuku have championed infrastructure upgrades, skills programmes, and sustainable projects that align with the summit’s goals – efforts that extend beyond flashy announcements to the gritty work of roads, power, and training centres that make investment viable on the ground.

This local momentum dovetails with a national story of cautious investor re-engagement.

Despite persistent security challenges, rankings on global terrorism indices, sporadic attacks in the northeast, and lingering instability in parts of the north-central zone, foreign and domestic capital is showing renewed interest in Nigeria, and the Niger Delta Chamber of Commerce, Industry, Trade, Mines and Agriculture is poised to announce the region to the world as a land full of opportunities for investors.

While speaking on a recent Sunrise Daily broadcast on Channels TV, I pointed to President Tinubu’s UK visit last month and a high-level investment forum hosted by the Central Bank of Nigeria alongside the UK’s Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office.

Reforms such as exchange-rate unification, fuel-subsidy removal, and strengthened banking capital requirements have begun to stabilise macroeconomic indicators and rebuild confidence.

I noted that 28 percent of recent capital inflows came from foreign investors, with 34 banks meeting the new CBN recapitalisation thresholds.

For the Niger Delta, the development agenda feels personal. During the interview, I specifically praised the region’s push to mobilise local capital and foster self-reliant growth, urging the six regional development commissions to adopt their template.

The message is clear: reducing dependence on federal allocations and oil rents is no longer optional, it is the path to dignity and sustainable development.

Yet nuance demands caution. Skeptics will recall past summits, master plans, and billions pledged that evaporated into reports and photo-ops.

Youth unemployment remains painfully high; environmental remediation lags; and trust between communities, government, and investors is still fragile.

Roadshows across the Delta states, Abuja, and Lagos at some point will definitely amplify the mission, thereby turning ideas into bankable projects, but execution will test whether discipline and speed can match the ambition. As Edebiri emphasised, the shift from “ambition to implementation” is everything.

Still, the human stakes are unmistakable.

Picture a young woman in Yenagoa who once saw her family’s fishing nets come up empty because of pollution; today she eyes training in aquaculture under blue-economy initiatives.

Or the engineering graduate in Uyo who once joined restive groups out of frustration but now dreams of a manufacturing startup backed by summit-linked investors.

These are not abstract statistics – they are the 500,000 jobs, lives that could move from survival to aspiration if the pieces align.

As Port Harcourt prepares to host investors, business leaders, CEOs, development finance executives, members of the diplomatic community, heads of MDAs, young innovators, exhibitors, media practitioners, policy analysts, changemakers, and members of business membership organisations, the Niger Delta stands at a crossroad.

The oil rigs will not disappear overnight, but value-chain optimisation remains part of the transition. Indeed, the narrative is broadening.

What was once dismissed as a region of perpetual crisis is quietly positioning itself as a diversified engine of national economic growth, rooted in agriculture, innovation, and human capital rather than a single extractive resource.

The world is watching. The Niger Delta is home to over 30 million people and the economic engine of Nigeria.

It contributes more than 90 percent of Nigeria’s oil revenue, and holds the vast majority of the nation’s gas reserves. Even with the immense natural wealth, the region remains economically underserved.

NDCCITMA was established with a mandate to facilitate rapid, even and sustainable development of the Niger Delta into a region that is economically prosperous, socially stable, ecologically regenerative, and politically peaceful.

The chamber serves as the private sector implementation arm of the region’s development strategy to attract investment, marking a critical pivot from aid-based development to enterprise-driven growth.

If the summit delivers even a fraction of its promise, the creeks that were once a major security flashpoint, may yet sparkle with a new possibility of attracting investors from around the world for the Niger Delta people and Nigeria.

Also read: Nigerian Banks Drive Strong Growth After Bold Recapitalisation Boost

Clearly, the journey beyond oil has begun which marks a new dawn of development for the region.

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Opinion

Our Great Tree of Peace: Keynote Address at All Nigeria Rotary Peace Summit

Published

2 days ago

November 9, 2026

Mariam Balogun

Distinguished leaders of government, members of the diplomatic community, representatives of security and law-enforcement agencies, traditional and religious leaders, distinguished guests, fellow Rotary members, ladies and gentlemen:

It is an honour to welcome you to the “All Nigeria Rotary Peace Summit.”

The question before us is how to come together, work toward a shared national future, and achieve true and lasting peace.

Nigeria has enormous potential. We have contributed to peace and stability across Africa, including through our work with the Economic Community of West African States and United Nations peacekeeping and Peace Support operations.

Our work in Liberia and other parts of Africa shows that we have the experience and ability to help prevent and manage conflict beyond our borders.

Now it is time to turn those energies inward — to bring our commitment to building peace among our neighbors and the world back home.

But we cannot impose peace. We must nurture it from the very roots of our society so it may grow into a great tree that will feed and shelter all of us under its protective embrace.

As a member of Rotary, when I consider this idea, I look to the philosophy of Positive Peace.

Peace, through this lens, is so much more than the absence of violence. To achieve true and lasting peace, we must consider the attitudes, institutions, and structures that create and sustain peaceful societies.

Here in Nigeria, meaningful peace cannot rely on our security forces and government institutions alone. It requires every level of society to come together for the betterment of all.

To grow Positive Peace from the ground up, Rotary starts from the very foundation of life, as we have done here.
In 2022, Rotary began a program called, “Together for Healthy Families in Nigeria.”

Members of Rotary here in Nigeria and as far away as Germany partnered with federal and state health ministries to make giving birth safer for both mother and child.

The program has helped expectant mothers across three states and the capital receive better and more frequent prenatal care.

Community health workers made nearly 60,000 visits to homes of expectant mothers and spoke with them and their families. We supplied 158 health facilities with contraceptives, medicine, and equipment.

We have already seen positive outcomes. Maternal deaths were reduced by 77%, and newborn deaths were reduced by 45% at supported facilities.

There is more work to do, but we are making progress. This is one way we plant the seeds of peace in Nigeria and around the world — we listen to the community, work with people so they can make their own lives better, and we stay committed to our goals.

With each child born safely to a healthy mother, we ease the burden carried by the Federal Ministry of Health and Social Welfare. We give families a greater sense of safety and security.

This is the beginning of Positive Peace. But members of Rotary do not stop once the seeds of peace are planted.

Since 2020, Nigeria has been free of the deadly grip of the wild poliovirus, which paralyzed and sometimes killed children when their lives had barely begun. And we continue to work with our friends at the World Health Organization and others to keep it that way and address the more recent outbreaks of variant poliovirus.

Rotary also builds peace directly. Members of Rotary clubs across Nigeria devote themselves to building peace every day.

And the year after Nigeria was declared wild polio-free, Rotary worked with Makerere University in Uganda to open a Peace Center, where students — called Peace Fellows — can learn how to build lasting peace both here in Nigeria and across Africa.

Over the years, more than 75 Rotary Peace Fellows have come from Nigeria. Some of our Peace Fellows are even here with us today.

I tell you this not to advertise Rotary (although we can always use new members). I tell you this because I want you to know that Rotary is already a quiet partner in peacebuilding — not only around the world — but here in our shared home.

As members of Rotary, we are not soldiers, ambassadors, or diplomats. We bring people together to find common purpose through service to others. We are here for Nigeria, and we are here to stay.

This year, I have called on every member of Rotary to Create Lasting Impact, and today, my brothers and sisters of Nigeria, I ask the same of every one of us.

I ask us to look at every level of society in Nigeria and consider how we can make all our lives better — not only today, but far into the future of this great nation. We may not speak the same language, worship the same way, or live the same way, but our nation’s future depends on all of us working together.

This summit is an opportunity to turn our shared commitment to peace into practical action — to take mere words and transform them into a bright future for us and all our children.

To my dear friends and family of Rotary here today, I challenge you to make peacebuilding in Nigeria our legacy of lasting impact.

As I have said to the Rotary world time and time again, we must consider how everything we do contributes to peace and pursue that peace purposefully and deliberately.

Rotary can help build confidence between institutions and communities, strengthen public trust, and ease the burden of everyday life that makes peacebuilding that much harder … but we must do so with purpose.

And before we can Create Lasting Impact in Nigeria, we must first have the courage to change ourselves, whether we are members of Rotary or not.

We cannot continue to do what we have always done and expect our great tree of peace to magically sprout from the ground. We must nurture our country and ourselves with all our being.

Give yourselves permission to be changed by what you see and hear at this summit.

That is how lasting impact is achieved — through people who are willing to change, institutions that are prepared to work for everyone, and communities that have the capacity to sustain progress.

And once we allow ourselves to change, we open ourselves to a new future — a future where the circumstances of someone’s birth do not determine their access to justice, opportunity, or dignity.

A future where differences are respected, where violence is rejected, and where we all come together, not as different groups in competition, but as Nigerians in harmony.

As we begin this summit, let us commit to more than resolutions and declarations. Let us commit to stability through change.

Remember that our true measure of success is not the words we share among ourselves today, but the impact of our actions that lasts generation after generation.

And if our commitment to peace is true — if our capacity for change is enough — our children, and their children after them, will enjoy the fruits of our labor under our great tree of peace — protected, safe, and free.

Thank you.