Also See: Sights & Sounds |
Oil fouls everything in southern Nigeria. It spills from the pipelines, poisoning soil and water. It stains the hands of politicians and generals, who siphon off its profits. It taints the ambitions of the young, who will try anything to scoop up a share of the liquid riches—fire a gun, sabotage a pipeline, kidnap a foreigner. ___________ Fighters with MEND (Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta) brandish weapons near their camp. Insurgents vow to shut off the oil if calls for local control of resources aren't met. ____________ Dense, garbage-heaped slums stretch for miles. Choking black smoke from an open-air slaughterhouse rolls over housetops. Streets are cratered with potholes and ruts. Vicious gangs roam school grounds. Peddlers and beggars rush up to vehicles stalled in gas lines. This is Port Harcourt, Nigeria's oil hub, capital of Rivers state, smack-dab in the middle of oil reserves bigger than the United States' and Mexico's combined. Port Harcourt should gleam; instead, it rots. Island Strife Their fishing community once stood on the other side of a small inlet, where fuel storage tanks the size of cathedral domes now loom, and where the superstructure of a liquefied natural gas plant juts higher than any tree in the forest. The relocation of Finima in the early 1990s jarred loose the community's economic moorings. "We can't support our families anymore," Harry said. ________ A scolding remark chalked on a desk reflects the grim condition of a school in Ogulagha. Teachers often don't show up, and pupils are scarce. Though delta states receive millions of dollars a month in oil revenue, little of it reaches rural communities. ________ At the Finima meetinghouse, the men grew restless and, one by one, drifted into the dusk. Before he left, Felix Harry declared that faith in God would reward the community. That belief must be deep on Bonny Island, judging from the barrage of signs for revival meetings and church services along island roads. One church promoted PUSH: Pray Until Something Happens. Christianity has found fertile ground in the delta after Protestant missionaries arrived in force in the mid-1800s, and it is now the dominant faith. The cataclysm is upon the delta. As I write this, 70 militants have just attacked a Shell convoy in the Cawthorne Channel, taking 25 oil workers hostage. Rebels have killed nine Nigerian soldiers in a firefight near Brass Island, the site of a large, vulnerable export terminal. Meanwhile, east of Port Harcourt, gunmen have raided an ExxonMobil residential compound and abducted four Scottish oil workers, demanding ten million dollars each for their release. Heat and smoke force back villagers who have come to check on an oil fire erupting from a leaking wellhead in Ogoniland. The wellhead had been spilling oil for a week, coating the ground around it before catching fire. The fire burned for more than two months before an oil company team could make arrangements to quell it. Fifty years of oil spills have turned the delta into one of the most polluted areas in the world. A woman clutching her melted cell phone moaned, "I have to tell my mother, my brothers and sisters what happened. I don't know where to start and where to end." In front of a collapsed church, the village chief implored a crowd to "Let God fight this case." A lawyer hired by the village provided little comfort when he said that Saipem would meet with the community "maybe in a week" and ask for a list of everything lost.
Nigeria had all the makings of an uplifting tale: poor African nation blessed with enormous sudden wealth. Visions of prosperity rose with the same force as the oil that first gushed from the Niger Delta's marshy ground in 1956. The world market craved delta crude, a "sweet," low-sulfur liquid called Bonny Light, easily refined into gasoline and diesel. By the mid-1970s, Nigeria had joined OPEC (Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries), and the government's budget bulged with petrodollars.
Everything looked possible—but everything went wrong. 
Beyond the city, within the labyrinth of creeks, rivers, and pipeline channels that vein the delta—one of the world's largest wetlands—exists a netherworld. Villages and towns cling to the banks, little more than heaps of mud-walled huts and rusty shacks. Groups of hungry, half-naked children and sullen, idle adults wander dirt paths. There is no electricity, no clean water, no medicine, no schools. Fishing nets hang dry; dugout canoes sit unused on muddy banks. Decades of oil spills, acid rain from gas flares, and the stripping away of mangroves for pipelines have killed off fish.
Nigeria has been subverted by the very thing that gave it promise—oil, which accounts for 95 percent of the country's export earnings and 80 percent of its revenue. In 1960, agricultural products such as palm oil and cacao beans made up nearly all Nigeria's exports; today, they barely register as trade items, and Africa's most populous country, with 130 million people, has gone from being self-sufficient in food to importing more than it produces. Because its refineries are constantly breaking down, oil-rich Nigeria must also import the bulk of its fuel. But even then, gas stations are often closed for want of supply. A recent United Nations report shows that in quality of life, Nigeria rates below all other major oil nations, from Libya to Indonesia. Its annual per capita income of $1,400 is less than that of Senegal, which exports mainly fish and nuts. The World Bank categorizes Nigeria as a "fragile state," beset by risk of armed conflict, epidemic disease, and failed governance.
The sense of relentless crisis has deepened since last year, when a secretive group of armed, hooded rebels operating under the name of the Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta, or MEND, intensified attacks on oil platforms and pumping stations, most operated by Shell Nigeria. Militants from MEND and other groups have killed soldiers and security guards, kidnapped foreign oil workers, set off car bombs in the delta city of Warri to protest the visit of Chinese oil executives, and, to show off their reach, overrun an oil rig 40 miles (64 kilometers) offshore in the Gulf of Guinea. The attacks have shut down the daily flow of more than 500,000 barrels of oil, leading the country to tap offshore reserves to make up for lost revenue. With each disruption, the daily price of oil on the world market climbed. According to the Brussels-based International Crisis Group, escalating violence in a region teeming with angry, frustrated people is creating a "militant time bomb."
From a potential model nation, Nigeria has become a dangerous country, addicted to oil money, with people increasingly willing to turn to corruption, sabotage, and murder to get a fix of the wealth. The cruelest twist is that half a century of oil extraction in the delta has failed to make the lives of the people better. Instead, they are poorer still, and hopeless.
Every day at Bonny Island, oceangoing tankers line up in Cawthorne Channel like massive parade floats. They're each waiting to fill up with close to a million barrels of the coveted Bonny Light, drawing the oil from a nearby export terminal. Ships have been gathering at this 15-mile-long (24 kilometers) barrier island since the mid-1500s, when slave trading between West Africa and the New World began. Beneath the contemporary cacophony—the yammer of motorcycle taxis, the call of Christian preachers from the market stalls, the throb of drums and guitars from boomboxes inside shacks—strains of anger and sorrow echo the tragedy of exploitation.
"It's not fair," Felix James Harry muttered in a meetinghouse in the village of Finima on the western end of the island, close to the oil and gas complex. "We can hardly catch fish anymore. Surviving is very hard." Harry, a 30-year-old father of two children, should have been in his canoe this afternoon, throwing out nets to snare crayfish and sardines. But he was sitting in an airless concrete-block shelter with half a dozen other fishermen, none of whom had much to do.
Uprooted to make room for a liquefied natural gas plant, people in the village of Finima on Bonny Island complain that the facility has damaged fishing grounds, with few jobs offered in return.
Houses in the new village are tightly packed, leaving little room for gardens. Windows look out on walls. In this claustrophobic setting, the men talked about nature. "The forest where the gas plant is protected us from the east wind," Solomon David, the community chairman, said. "Now, the rain and wind ruin our thatched roofs every three months. They lasted more than twice as long before." Another fisherman mentioned how construction and increased ship traffic changed local wave patterns, causing shore erosion and forcing fish into deeper water. "We would need a 55-horsepower engine to get to those places." No one in the room could afford such an engine.
The meetinghouse had no electricity, but a battery-powered wall clock, the only decoration, showed that another day was ebbing away. Forced to give up fishing, the young men of the village put their hope in landing a job with the oil industry. But offers are scarce. "People from the outside get all the jobs," Harry said, alluding to members of Nigeria's majority ethnic groups—the Igbo, Yoruba, Hausa, and Fulani—who are the country's political and economic elite. "We have diploma holders, but they have nothing to do."
Grievances crowded the dim room. Bernard Cosmos, a strapping young man in a striped polo shirt, spoke out: "I have a degree in petrochemical engineering from Rivers State University in Port Harcourt. I've applied many times with the oil companies for a good job. It's always no. They tell me that I can work in an oil field as an unskilled laborer but not as an engineer. I have no money to get other training."
Isaac Asume Osuoka, director of Social Action, Nigeria, believes that callousness toward the people of the delta stems from their economic irrelevance. "With all the oil money coming in, the state doesn't need taxes from people. Rather than being a resource for the state, the people are impediments. There is no incentive anymore for the government to build schools or hospitals.
"I can say this," Osuoka said firmly. "Nigeria was a much better place without oil."
Such a stark indictment would surely draw reaction from the government and oil companies. But repeated efforts to arrange on-the-record interviews with officialdom—oil company executives, the governor of Rivers state, the commander of the Joint Task Force, which is the military arm responsible for security in the delta—were foiled. Shell and Total, a French company, had offered tours of their facilities, but soon after I arrived in the delta, a spate of kidnappings of foreign oil workers, especially around Port Harcourt, prompted the multinationals to restrict the movements of personnel. Amid the violence, the oil companies have hunkered down in silence.
Harry recited Psalm 91, praising God with a flourish: "He is my refuge and my fortress." We walked outside. There, stranded on the shore, were the village fishing boats, several dozen of them. Only a miracle would get them into the water.
Across the delta, people are hoping that someone will pay attention to the region's problems and intervene. The U.S. and western Europe, the major consumers of Nigerian oil, are watching closely. With the U.S. consulate in Lagos warning of a possible rebel attack on Bonny Island, diplomats are urging greater military security. Stockholders of the oil companies are asking why the situation has turned so perilous. Who is to blame? The answers are as complicated and murky as the water trails in the delta.
When the oil curse began with that first great gusher in the creekside village of Oloibiri, 50 miles (80 kilometers) west of Port Harcourt, Nigeria was still a British colony. At independence in 1960, few observers expected that Nigeria would mature into an oil giant. But in subsequent decades, the oil companies, led by five multinational firms—Royal Dutch Shell, Total, Italy's Agip, and ExxonMobil and Chevron from the U.S.—transformed a remote, nearly inaccessible wetland into industrial wilderness. The imprint: 4,500 miles (7,200 kilometers) of pipelines, 159 oil fields, and 275 flow stations, their gas flares visible day and night from miles away.
No one can deny the sheer technological achievement of building an infrastructure to extract oil from a waterlogged equatorial forest. Intense swampy heat, nearly impenetrable mangrove thickets, swarming insects, and torrential downpours bedevil operations to this day. But mastering the physical environment has proved almost simple compared with dealing with the social and cultural landscape. The oil firms entered a region splintered by ethnic rivalries. More than two dozen ethnic groups inhabit the delta, among them the Ijaw, the largest group, and the Igbo, Itsekiri, Ogoni, Isoko, and Urhobo. These groups have a history of fighting over the spoils of the delta, from slaves to palm oil—and now, crude oil. The companies disturbed a fragile landscape that supported fishing and farming. Engineers and project managers constructing pipelines through a mangrove swamp, or laying roads through marshland, could disrupt spawning grounds or change the course of a stream, threatening a village's livelihood.
Recent reports by the United Nations Development Program and the International Crisis Group identify some of the questionable strategies employed by oil companies: paying off village chiefs for drilling rights; building a road or dredging a canal without an adequate environmental impact study; tying up compensation cases—for resource damages or land purchases—for years in court; dispatching security forces to violently break up protests; patching up oil leaks without cleaning up sites.
"After 50 years, the oil companies are still searching for a way to operate successfully with communities," says Antony Goldman, a London-based risk consultant. The delta is littered with failed projects started by oil companies and government agencies—water tanks without operating pumps, clinics with no medicine, schools with no teachers or books, fishponds with no fish.
"The companies didn't consult with villagers," says Michael Watts, director of the African Studies Program at the University of California, Berkeley. "They basically handed out cash to chiefs. It wasn't effective at all."
Last summer, skittish oil prices hit $78 a barrel, partly because of an attack on a Shell flow station. The high prices more than offset production losses caused by the growing instability, helping earn Shell and the other multinationals record profits in 2006. Meanwhile, more oil fields continue to open, many of them offshore where the infrastructure, though far more expensive than on land, is much safer from sabotage and theft. The deepwater fields are attracting aggressive new investors as well. China, India, and South Korea, all energy-hungry, have begun buying stakes in Nigeria's offshore blocks. "Most Western companies in Nigeria will find it difficult to compete, especially with China," Goldman says. That's because oil purchases by the Chinese come with their commitment to finance large infrastructure projects, such as rehabilitating a railroad line.
The largest new petroleum endeavor on the delta is taking shape along the Nun River, a tributary of the Niger. Operated by Shell, the Gbaran Integrated Oil and Gas Project, scheduled to begin producing in 2008, will encompass 15 new oil and gas fields, more than 200 miles (320 kilometers) of pipeline, and a sizable gas-gathering plant. New roads are already gashing the forest. Mounds of long black pipes await burial. Near a bank of the Nun, Nigerian soldiers crouch behind a ring of sandbags, a .60-caliber machine gun facing the road as they guard the entrance to the construction site of the gas plant. Cranes and bulldozers crawl over a cleared space large enough to fit two shopping malls. From the air, it must look as if a patch of skin has been removed from the face of the forest.
Activists with human rights groups are pressuring Shell to learn from past mistakes and treat this high-profile project, which affects 90 villages, as a chance to work better with communities. Michael Watts is advising NGOs on how to educate the local people about their rights. "For Shell to conduct business as usual would be a public relations disaster," Watts says. "Folks say, 'Look, these oil companies are making billions by taking out this black stuff from our territory—they should have some ethical and social responsibilities.'"
A cautionary tale unfolds at Oloibiri, where a wellhead, or "Christmas tree," stands in an overgrown plot. Nothing has flowed from it for years. A weathered sign states the facts: "Oloibiri Well No. 1. Drilled June, 1956. Depth: 12,000 feet (3,700 meters)." Nearby, a plaque dating from 2001 commemorates a presidential visit and the laying of a foundation stone for the Oloibiri Oil and Gas Research Institute, a projected government-funded museum and library. The stone is still there, but nothing else. A few local youths guard the site, not so much to protect it as to demand money from anyone who wants to snap a picture.
In the town of Oloibiri, whose population has dropped from 10,000 to fewer than 1,000 in the past 30 years, a dirt road passes between rough-hewn houses, some roofed with thatch, others with sheets of corroding metal. A small shop offers a few bananas and yams. Inside the only freshly painted structure, a lemon yellow, two-story house, Chief Osobere Inengite of the Ijaw tribe apologizes for the appearance of his town: "Oloibiri is supposed to be compared to Texas," he said. "I ask you, in Texas have the people in 50 years seen one second of darkness? But look here, we have no light, no water, no food, no jobs."
The chief looked prosperous. He was wearing an ornate black-and-purple robe, a chunky coral necklace, and a black derby, his outfit for a neighboring chief's coronation downriver in Nembe later that day. Like most chiefs, Inengite has a business—dredging sand from the river for roadbuilding. He always keeps an eye out for visitors to Nigeria's historic Well No. 1. He wants them to leave Oloibiri with a message for Shell, which owns the local oil fields. "Tell them to help us. Tell them to train 50 boys and girls from here for jobs," the chief pleaded. Then he sighed, "If we had never seen oil, we would have been better off."
Where does all the oil money go? That question is asked in every village, town, and city in the Niger Delta. The blame spreads, moving from the oil companies to a bigger, more elusive, target: the Nigerian government. Ever since it nationalized the oil industry in 1971, the government has controlled the energy purse. In a joint venture arrangement, the state, in the name of the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation, owns 55 to 60 percent of multinational oil operations onshore. The windfall in revenues from this arrangement has grown in real dollars from 250 million a year to more than 60 billion in 2005. During that time, even though the government has evolved from a military dictatorship to a democracy (the latest attempt at civil governance began in 1999), what has not changed is what an International Crisis Group report calls a "cancer of corruption." A Western diplomat quoted in the report was even more direct, referring to "the institutionalized looting of national wealth." The money involved is staggering. The head of Nigeria's anticorruption agency estimated that in 2003, 70 percent of oil revenues, more than 14 billion dollars, was stolen or wasted.
On paper, a mechanism does exist for distributing oil revenues somewhat fairly. The federal government retains roughly half and gives out the rest each month, on a sliding scale, to the 36 state governments. The core oil producers—Rivers, Delta, Bayelsa, and Akwa Ibom—receive the most. During the month I was in the delta, those four states divided up more than 650 million dollars.
But there is no discernible trickle down.
Newspaper articles and court cases document spectacular misuses of the money by military men and public office holders—such as the now imprisoned former Bayelsa governor Diepreye Alamieyeseigha—who stash hundreds of millions of dollars in foreign bank accounts to buy mansions in the U.S. and send their children to private schools in London. For the delta's 30 million people—most of whom struggle on less than a dollar a day—seeing this kind of money coming into their states with essentially none of it reaching them has created conditions for insurrection.
Nigeria's oil money won't keep coming, of course—perhaps another 40 years, the experts say. Natural gas is a fallback. Nigeria's reserves are estimated at 184 trillion cubic feet (five trillion cubic meters), good for an estimated 240 years of production at current levels. In the meantime, Antony Goldman says, "The government is following a simple plan for oil extraction: We've got to get what we can now, now."
Isaac Osuoka remembers the first time he saw frozen fish. It was the late 1970s, and he was five. A peddler caused a stir as he entered Osuoka's delta town of Oeliabi (now Akinima) with a carton of what he called ice fish. "We never had fish brought in from outside," said Osuoka, who now lives in Port Harcourt. "We had no idea what frozen fish meant. There were rumors that this fish was kept in a mortuary."
Frozen fish was a harbinger of the changes that would traumatize Osuoka's community. "As a boy, I could stroll to the rivers or back swamps with a rod and a net and come back with enough fish to feed my family," he recalled. "There was usually enough left over to sell, providing income for us to go to school." This bounty would not survive the coming of oil. Leaks from pipelines and wells, and the building of roads and canals, have disrupted the wetlands. "The degree and rate of degradation," the UN report warns, "are pushing the delta towards ecological disaster."
In 1996, Osuoka joined Environmental Rights Action, an advocacy group that helps communities defend their resources and learn their legal rights so they can avoid Oeliabi's fate. "We're seeing that environmental damages often happen silently, with their effects not coming out until years later," Osuoka said. "Today, there is not a single person in my community you could describe as a fisherman. We depend almost totally on frozen fish." At market stalls, a piece of frozen croaker or mackerel, most of it imported, goes for almost a dollar, unaffordable for most villagers.
The best environmental studies of the delta were done at least 30 years ago, according to Jimmy Adegoke, a Nigerian-born research scientist at the University of Missouri. To help fill the void, he and a team of researchers conducted fieldwork and a satellite-based study of the delta. They found that between 1986 and 2003, more than 50,000 acres (20,000 hectares) of mangroves disappeared from the coast, largely because of land clearing and canal dredging for oil and gas exploration. "That is a significant amount given how valuable the mangrove ecosystem is," Adegoke said, referring to the coastal forest's high productivity for fish populations. "I think the loss of one acre is too much. You're wiping out the means for people to sustain themselves."
Oil companies operated in the delta for years with little environmental oversight. There was no federal environmental protection agency until 1988, and environmental impact assessments weren't mandated until 1992. What pressure the government exerts now is directed mostly at halting gas flares. Delta oil fields contain large amounts of natural gas that companies have traditionally elected to burn off rather than store or reinject into the ground, more costly measures. Hundreds of flares have burned nonstop for decades, releasing greenhouse gases and causing acid rain. Communities complain of corroded roofs, crop failures, and respiratory diseases. After first ordering companies to eliminate flaring by 1984, the government keeps pushing back the deadline. Shell, the main offender, recently announced that despite making considerable progress, it could not meet the latest target date of 2008.
On land, there are oil spills, polluting groundwater and ruining cropland. The government documented 6,817 spills between 1976 and 2001—practically one a day for 25 years—but analysts suspect that the real number may be ten times higher. Old, improperly maintained equipment causes many of the leaks, but oil operators blame sabotage and theft, speculating that disaffected community members deliberately cause oil spills to collect compensation money.
Well 13 in Shell's Yorla field had been leaking for five days when I got there. Members of the nearby Ogoni village of Kpean had assembled around a five-foot-high (1.5 meters) wellhead that stood in the midst of high grass. Puffs of smoke drifted from the iron structure. Oil dripped from its sides into a spreading lake.
"We're expecting Shell, but no one has come yet," a villager said. "Soon the oil will leak into the creek over there and spoil our drinking water."
Shell and Ogoniland share a tragic history. Nigeria's first mass protest against the oil industry emerged in these tribal lands southeast of Port Harcourt. In 1990, the charismatic writer Ken Saro-Wiwa, outraged by oil spills in Ogoniland, founded the Movement for the Survival of Ogoni People. The organization demanded control of the oil on Ogoni lands and an end to environmental damage. A quarter of a million Ogoni, nearly half the population, rallied in early 1993 to support the cause. Later that year, Shell, citing security concerns, halted production from its 96 wells in Ogoniland—though oil from wells outside the area continued to flow in pipelines through Ogoni territory.
Alarmed by Saro-Wiwa's popular support, Nigeria's military government brought charges of murder against him and fellow activists. The government accused them of instigating the mob killings of four Ogoni leaders from a rival faction. At a tribunal widely regarded as a sham, and with the alleged complicity of Shell, Saro-Wiwa and eight others were found guilty and hanged in 1995. Though the world community reacted with outrage, and Saro-Wiwa's son initiated a lawsuit against Shell for human rights abuses (which is ongoing), the situation has not improved. In fact, Isaac Osuoka told me, "things have gotten worse since Ken was murdered."
To this day, safety concerns and lengthy, often hostile negotiations with community leaders over access fees and compensation payments hamper Shell's response to spills. When I heard that the leak at Well 13 had become a fire, I returned to Kpean. Black smoke was flooding the sky above the palm trees. This time I couldn't get close to the well—a group of angry Ogoni youths blocked my vehicle.
"Get out, white man! You work for Shell!" one yelled.
"You want to see it? Give us 100,000 naira," another shouted. He was demanding $800.
A few days later, I asked Patrick Naagbanton, an Ogoni journalist who had marched with Saro-Wiwa, to convince the village chief to let us in. Naagbanton led the way, shoving through the crowd toward the well. A fireball was erupting from the ground. The flames roared. Within the inferno, the iron Christmas tree was melting like an effigy thrown on a funeral pyre. Letam Nwinek, one of the villagers, pulled us away from the heat. "We're afraid that if the fire enters the pipeline, the whole community could go up," he said. "Shell keeps promising to come, but they say they need more foam and special equipment because the fire has grown so large."
Suddenly, the crowd began scattering. A man dressed for the city in a pink shirt and black beret came up to us.
"You'd better leave. Now!"
Our evictor, Marvin Yobana, was president of the Ogoni Youth Council. As he spoke, five men surrounded us in a threatening stance.
"Yobana is what passes as an Ogoni leader today," Naagbanton said as we retreated. "He's a thug. I believe he's negotiating with Shell to gain a lucrative clean-up contract and doesn't want journalists around." Taking a last look at the fire, Naagbanton said with disgust, "He's just part of the predatory, parasitic struggle to get oil money."
Well 13 would burn for two more months before a Shell team arrived to extinguish it.
"Is anyone listening?" Ken Saro-Wiwa had asked in his final newspaper column. "The delta people must be allowed to join in the lucrative sale of crude oil," he wrote. "Only in this way can the cataclysm that is building up in the delta be avoided."
Amid twisting waterways, narrow pipeline channels cut paths across the Cawthorne Channel area of the southern Niger Delta. Spills in the Scotland-size delta, many caused by sabotage, have created one of the world's most polluted regions and threaten Africa's largest remaining mangrove forest. The swampy terrain makes roadbuilding difficult in the delta. Villagers mostly travel by ferry or dugout canoe; oil workers usually go by powerboat or helicopter. But rebels use the maze of creeks and channels to avoid capture by the military.
The number and severity of attacks in the delta have been building, led by youth groups demanding access to the oil wealth in their territories. This surge in militancy is emblematic of a continent-wide frustration among the young, says Michael Watts, of the University of California. "Across Africa you have a huge number of alienated youths, politically footloose, who thought they could achieve something with their countries' moves to independence and democracy. Those hopes have been almost everywhere violently snuffed out. The youth are pissed off and willing to up the ante."
In the Niger Delta, escalating violence has undermined the country's financial stability and its ability to supply crude to the Western world. Shipments from new offshore rigs are making up for some of the oil lost to sabotage, but rebels identified with MEND have threatened to shut down everything. The day the U.S. consulate warned of the possible attack on Bonny Island, a spokesman for MEND boasted to the press: "We will wipe out the Nigerian oil export industry in one swipe."
Late one night in a darkened neighborhood in central Port Harcourt (the city was experiencing one of its regular blackouts), an angry young man, who asked for anonymity, explained his outrage. "Nigeria made its greatest mistake taking the life of that man Ken Saro-Wiwa. It will not be forgiven. When the Nigerian state overreacted like that, the thinking became, We have to carry weapons unless we want to die. Violence begets violence. When someone loses hope, he is devastated, and he will say, 'Either I fight, or I leave this world.'"
This young Nigerian is a university lecturer, who says the time for talking has passed. "When the situation in the delta threatens to turn into another Middle East, then the world will finally intervene."
Another night in Port Harcourt, a prolonged gun battle erupted outside my compound. Volleys from AK-47s, answered by the booms of pump-action shotguns, sent me running to barricade my door. The gunmen abducted four expatriates from Goodfellas, a nightclub nearby. (It was this incident that led the oil companies to cancel their tours.) A Dutch oil worker on contract to Shell, who makes $80,000 a year as a pipeline construction supervisor, told me he has to travel everywhere with an armed escort. "You must keep it in your mind that people out there may kill you," he said.
With every assault by the insurgents, the Nigerian military seems to answer with devastation. One evening, a gang of kidnappers dressed in army camouflage came by boat to a waterside neighborhood called Aker Base on the outskirts of Port Harcourt, stormed into a bar, and snatched an Italian construction worker employed by Saipem, an oil-servicing company. During the grab, the assailants killed a soldier. Within hours, troops swept into the shantytown and burned down every structure except a bank. Days later, stunned residents wandered through the charred ruins like ghosts; some 3,000 had lost their homes. 
"I blame the government," said Caroline Mathias, the owner of the bar, staring at a pile of melted bottles and the crumpled metal roof where her business had stood. "The government should help us. I'm begging them. We are not the ones who killed that soldier."
The Italian worker was freed five days after the sack of Aker Base. That month, 18 foreigners were abducted; all were released, reportedly after hefty ransom payments.
No one is sure how many delta people have picked up the gun to fight for their rights. Estimates range from the low hundreds to the low thousands. What is certain is that each time the military reacts with extreme measures, the number rises.
The rebels seem unafraid, as when a hundred or so MEND members and supporters gathered openly at a morgue in the city of Warri for the funeral service of nine militants killed on the water in an ambush by the Nigerian military. Afterward, MEND leaders invited the press to accompany boats taking the caskets to villages for burial. Along the way, men waved guns from jetties, and white flags flew from huts. The men wore conspicuous red-and-white ties knotted around their arms. The ties and flags were symbols of Egbesu, the Ijaw god of war. Warriors wear the knots as protection against death, believing that having taken an oath to Egbesu, nothing metal—neither bullet nor machete—can harm them. Farther on, a rebel camp sat brazenly on a riverbank, the blue roofs of its barracks plainly visible to oil company helicopters.
No solution seems in sight for the Niger Delta. The oil companies are keeping their heads down, desperate to safeguard their employees and the flow of oil. The military, ordered to meet force with force, have stepped up patrols in cities and on waterways. The militants are intensifying a deadly guerrilla offensive, hoping that rising casualties and oil prices will force the government to negotiate. National elections in April could exacerbate the violence, especially if politicians resort to the practice of hiring youth gangs to deliver votes at gunpoint.
Optimism is as scarce as blue sky in the sodden delta. "Everyone was sure they would be blessed with the coming of the black gold and live as well as people in other parts of the world," said Patrick Amaopusanibo, a retired businessman who now farms near the village of Oloama. He had to speak loudly to compete with the "black noise," the hissing and roaring of a gas flare near his cassava field. "But we have nothing. I feel cheated."
In some parts of the Niger Delta, oil still looks like a miracle. In the run-down fishing village of Oweikorogba on the Nun River, where families of ten sleep in a single room under leaky thatch roofs, hope materialized a year ago in the form of Chinese prospectors. They left without finding oil, but the people of Oweikorogba want them back, confident that they'll find a pot of gold. And if a stranger warns these villagers that oil is a curse in Nigeria, they will look at him and say: "We want oil here. It will make everything better."
Also See: Sights & Sounds |
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Comments Page: 1 2  posted on 02-01-2007, 07:37:13 AM Big-k Re: Curse of The Black Gold: Hope and Betrayal in The Niger DeltaFolks,
The more I read of the plight of our brothers in the delta, the more I support MEND in the ongoing WAR there - yes, lets face it, its a war. Their revolution needs to succeed. I think they should start kidnapping anyone who has ever received money on their behalf - including local Chiefs, Local Government Chairmen, State Governors, Senators, House of Reps members, up to the President - in addition to/instead of the harmless expatriate workers. Every South South Governor should cover their faces in shame. Its time like this that one understands the gravity of Alameseigha's, Odili's, and Ibori's looting. A brother was sharing with me that in the whole of Bayelsa State, there is not ONE industry. And do you know what an investor is trying to build there? - a CONDOM factory. How insulting? I'm just too angry to be coherent this morning  posted on 02-01-2007, 07:39:12 AM PhilipikitaRe: Curse of The Black Gold: Hope and Betrayal in The Niger DeltaHmn, Speechless...  posted on 02-01-2007, 07:58:27 AM DanhajiyaRe: Curse of The Black Gold: Hope and Betrayal in The Niger DeltaI have always asked my self how can people die in the means of plenty,not untill I finished the above article.MAY THE LIVING GOD PUNISH ANY LEADER THAT WAS/IS UNJUST. MEND GO AHEAD AND KIDNAPP ANY BODY YOU FIND IN YOUR DORMAIN.Did I hear NO I am wrogn? the expartriet help in no small measure in destroying their land and take them as slaves in their father land.PLEASE MEND IF YOU CATCH THEM KILL THEM MAY THE WHOLE WORLD WILL COME TO YOUR AID.SIMPLISITA posted on 02-01-2007, 08:13:42 AM AbraxasRe: Curse of The Black Gold: Hope and Betrayal in The Niger DeltaHi, folks! It is obvious that the Nigerian media have not done enough to sensitize Nigerians about the dire conditions in the Niger Delta. Particularly depressing is the nauseatingly overt godfather-godson relationship that existed (pre-PDP presidential primaries 2006) between General Olusegun Okikiolakan Obasanjo and Dr. (Sir) Peter Odili (JP; KSJ), more or less substantiating the rank insensitivity and callous indifference of a supposedly anti-corruption centred federal government to the glaring mismanagement of the resources of the oil-producing states of the Niger Delta region. The alternative to utter hopelessness and disillusionment is constructive rebellion. Hence MEND. Muchas gracias. Don Juan Carlos ABRAXAS (III) posted on 02-01-2007, 08:53:11 AM Dr. S AdetunjiRe: Curse of The Black Gold: Hope and Betrayal in The Niger DeltaQUOTE:
Is there also any relationship between the Niger delta shame and James (ex prisoner?) Ibori; Lucky Igbinedion (the Canada house-buying gov); Attah of Akwa Ibom who was reported to have constructed gov. house fencing with 90 million, and Jonathan goodluck who bankrolled the last Thisday Newspaper show with billions of naira (and whose wife was also caught with huge sums of money at the airport on her way out of the country)? Not to forget my own gov. of Ogun state who has recently been involved in rod-contract monkey business. posted on 02-01-2007, 09:14:05 AM EyesWideOpenRe: Curse of The Black Gold: Hope and Betrayal in The Niger DeltaWhy oh why doesnt the nigerian media pay attention to relevant issues. Why do we always have to rely on the west to tell us what is really going on in our own countries? Why is the nigerian so self -centered that you cant trust what comes out of his mouth and what he appends his name to, because there is always a hidden motive behind his discourse.
I dont think there is something wrong with the black man , but sometimes i wonder....All our so called fearless journalists did not think it neccessary to investigate and let the world know what it looks like in the niger delta. The article someone kindly wrote on kalus non effectiveness in his state has largely come to nothing.....it has taken a western agency to let us know that yaradua has really done nothing in his state. Even people like sowore started out okay, but end up turning speculations into a reality which didnt really happen just so they can create sensation. Why cant we do things to our best possible ability?. Why do we ALWAYS compromise quality. All the articles on NVS discussing one presidential aspirant or the other openly show the biased views of the writers without objective evidence to support claims of leadership quality. Thats fine, but why cant some of the journalist do investigative journalism that doesnt smell of malice and vengeance? Atikus actions now appear relatively unnoticed in his attempts to tear down OBJ, thus showing himself up as an evil, self centred man,who doesnt have the interests of anyone else but himself at heart. Rather...we pay attention to silly things and engage in silly chats when we should be coming together as a united front to fight corruption...but i guess we cant do that because people like ***** think its okay to cheat and write publicly about how they have been guilty of cheating in the past. What kind of people are we? whay cant we learn? What is wrong with the black man? what is wrong with us........ posted on 02-01-2007, 10:48:24 AM GodwinRe: Curse of The Black Gold: Hope and Betrayal in The Niger Delta""With all the oil money coming in, the state doesn't need taxes from people. Rather than being a resource for the state, the people are impediments. "
The statement above is the reason of "disconnection" between the government and the people and vice versa. Majority of Nigerians do not pay taxes and the few that do underpay. People who have amassed huge "wealth" refuse to pay commensurate tax unabashedly. Stronger & More Responsible Local Governments may help the current situation. posted on 02-01-2007, 11:19:40 AM AkuluounoRe: Curse of The Black Gold: Hope and Betrayal in The Niger DeltaThis along with Biafra is a serious indictment on Nigeria as we know it. I saw the problems first hand when I did my NYSC in Ogoniland in 83.
Let all villagers with conscience speak out against this huge crime against humanity comparable with Darfur taking place or henceforth hold their peace. All past leaders that presided over this cataclysmal holocaust shall be frog marched to Hague to face the ICC  posted on 02-01-2007, 11:37:51 AM AuspiciousTears of the Niger-Deltans..I expressed the comments below on another thread, in response to a news report published here at NVS a few weeks ago. The report was tittled (click->) "Blood Oil". That piece was just as mind-numbing as this one from National Geographic is.
Auspicious. QUOTE:
posted on 02-01-2007, 12:27:50 PM NkireRe: Curse of The Black Gold: Hope and Betrayal in The Niger DeltaThe more I read of the plight of our brothers in the delta, the more I support MEND in the ongoing WAR there - yes, lets face it, its a war. Their revolution needs to succeed.
______________________________________________________________________ B-K: Most people, including yours truly, share the above sentiment you’ve unambiguously expressed. However, the problem is MEND. MEND reminds me of the question that was posed to the Rev. Jesse Jackson in 1984, when he first ran for president under the banner: what does Jesse Jackson want? What does MEND want? Does MEND want a separate country – breakaway from Nigeria or a confederate Nigerian government structure where the villages and towns in the Delta would control the oil in their land, or a revised revenue allocation where the oil producing areas would be entitled to more percentage of the oil revenue than the current 13% derivation, etc? What does MEND want? Right now, even though I am very very sympathetic to the plight of the people and the environment of the region (let’s face it, I am from Abia, the region is essentially part of my neighborhood) it is very difficult to “support” MEND because I am not sure what the goal is. May be the goal is for the Fed to invest more in the region both in infrastructure and social amenities, how much and how fast before MEND is satisfied. Will this require a formal negotiation between the Nigerian state and MEND? Will the Fed have to “recognize” MEND as the umbrella army and protector of the Delta people? How will this work under the current state structure of government –constitutionality and all? OR should the Fed ignore MEND, continue to see it as a terrorist group and deal instead with the elected governors, etc? Personally, it would have been better if MEND had declared a republic, hoisted its flag, knocked off the pipeline from source and invited individuals and countries that “support self determination, peace and human rights” to recognize their declaration. At least one would know where MEND stands. Right now, it is very difficult to support MEND because their goals and aspirations are not clear. So I call upon those that know to express or publish what MEND wants in the clearest terms possible. Nkire posted on 02-01-2007, 12:27:59 PM ExxcuzmeRe: Curse of The Black Gold: Hope and Betrayal in The Niger Delta______________________________________________________________________
oh why doesnt the nigerian media pay attention to relevant issues. Why do we always have to rely on the west to tell us what is really going on in our own countries? _______________________________________________________________________ Because the news media are owned by thesame people benefitting from the mess. And most of the journalists are lazy to bring out the truth. Why cant the media ask Obasanjo about Andy Uba, buying cars of his girlfriends, his farms, the university, library etc? That is why we have The Sun as anti-objoke owned by Kalu a known Objoke nemesis. posted on 02-01-2007, 12:28:43 PM KatampeRe: Curse of The Black Gold: Hope and Betrayal in The Niger DeltaQUOTE:
I think the folks that own the media, at least the newspapers with wider readership are NigerDeltans - the guardian, the thisday and the vanguard. How have they helped to further the debate or sensitized people? And what about folks like RMD and Dede`Mabiaku that are theatre and film practitioners ? I know RMD grew up in Effurun or Warri, same with Dede . Why haven't they done anything through the arts to sensitize people on the on the NigerDelta crisis. Its social crisis, pollution and the environmental degradation. I have witnessed some of these things first hand. I spent part of my early years in Warri, and I remember seeing gas flares from Ogunu. The wetlands that were supposed to be natural screeners for pollutants entering the waterbodies were in turn been polluted.In civilized country, wetlands like floodplains are conserved.Unfortunately, we behave like animals and have no respect for the environment. I rememeber a saying that ," E ni ba to ju ile nile agbe," meaning anyone who takes adequate care of the land profits or benefits. How have the custodians of the the Delta kept faith with this notion. I also remember guns were not really regulated as far back then.It was also common to see Luger everywhere .l had alsways suspected it was a question of time before the situation became a full blown crisis. The issue of the NigerDelta is complex , and our present political structure does not help it.The issue is better resolved under a democracy. I mean genuine democracy. The escalating tension is because of the worsening state of the economy.It is time we go back to regionalism - our present arrangement does not work, and we should seek to build a system of government that each regional grouping can be allowed the power to have jurisdiction on language, religion, police and many other areas. posted on 02-01-2007, 13:26:48 PM TechsistaRe: Curse of The Black Gold: Hope and Betrayal in The Niger DeltaThis news report makes me so angry.
We have an army deployed *within* the country that acts as judge, jury and executioner in the Niger Delta. We have thieving and corrupt officials at the local government, state government, and federal government levels. QUOTE:
We have an oil industry that has not seen fit to train and employ the indigenes of the communities they are exploiting, and local, state and federal governments that don't seem to realize that they can and should put pressure on oil companies to do exactly this. QUOTE:
We have an environmental protection agency (that's a joke!) that allows oil spills to burn for two months at a time, does not appear to study the impact of relocating villages to accommodate LNG plants, and has no interest in the fact that the fish that sustained the lifeblood of certain communities have disappeared. The local, state and federal governments also appear not to see any reason to provide quality primary/secondary education in affected areas or adult education/vocational training for those who have lost their traditional means of livelihood. We have a national press that's more interested in center politics than on reporting on news about the plight of everyday Nigerians in or outside the Delta. My question is what can the average Nigerian reading this article do to help the Niger Delta situation, whether s/he resides in Nigeria or abroad? For example, are there NGOs on the ground that we can support? I am genuinely interested in answers. posted on 02-01-2007, 15:10:54 PM LeCarreRe: Curse of The Black Gold: Hope and Betrayal in The Niger DeltaGlad to see folks angry. Lets face it, when I predicted that the Delta would boil, what was I called, a village jeremiah.
No, the situation is worse than National Geographic makes it out to be. Since 1957 the Delta and oil producing spaces have suffered. It is only in this region that over 15,000 Nigerian troops and security officers are deployed, to garrison the region. It is this region that has had death squads known as Internal Security Task Force since the early 1990s. Wake up Nigerians, murder has been committed under our very noses and in our name for almost 15 years now. Go back and view documentaries such as Delta Force, and listen to the commentary of Lt. Colonel Okuntimo, then you will fully comprehend the war crimes committed against fellow Nigerians. But guess what? It is about to get worse: 1. 2 days ago (late Jan. 2007), Mr. Atiku at a campaign stop said that Mr. Obasanjo a few weeks ago authorized the purchase of $2 billion in weapons to suppress the Delta militants. Given what we know (Mr. Atiku leaked the cat out of bag in an interview with the FT in late 2006), we expect those purchases are coming from China, hence the spate of attacks against Chinese and Asians in recent weeks. http://www.angolapress-angop.ao/noticia-e.asp?ID=506174 2. Mr. Obasanjo's aides reacted angrily and accused Mr. Atiku of treason / sedition / leaking official secrets. http://allafrica.com/stories/200702010405.html http://allafrica.com/stories/200702010130.html 3. MEND heared, got angry and gave the FGN 72 hours to release Mr. Dokubo among other concessions including resource control. If Mr. Dokubo is not released, the Filipino and other hostages it is holding will be executed. At current count, MEND may be holding 24 while other delta militants hold about 14 hostages. They will also resume attacks. MEND has finally said the words "civil war" today Feb. 1, 2007. http://today.reuters.co.uk/news/CrisesArticle.aspx?storyId=L01855803&WTmodLoc=World-R5-Alertnet-4 4. Security sources gave Mr. Obasanjo in recent days claiming that Mr. Atiku. MEND and certain collaborators are in the final stages of an attempt to seize power via a Delta insurrection. 5. Given context, the bet is now a question of when, not if, Mr. Obasanjo will declare a state of emergency, order out the army into the Delta and other hot zones, and halt the transition. Of course, his war cabinet will be filled with notables and patriots! posted on 02-01-2007, 15:51:16 PM TechsistaRe: Curse of The Black Gold: Hope and Betrayal in The Niger DeltaI remember watching the Delta Force video years ago and Col. Paul Okuntimo's description on the tape of how the army used machine guns and grenades against villagers in a campaign of terror and intimidation. What eventually happened to him? Wasn't he promoted or something?
That video and the aftermath of Saro-Wiwa's murder at least got some Nigerians to march in DC in protest against Shell in the US and to boycott Shell. I marched in DC - can't see that it did much good though. What, in your opinion, can people do now? Do we just sit back and let a civil war in the Delta decide things, knowing that all the oil-hungry countries like the US, China etc. will be backing the Nigerian army with arms and possibly troops, without sparing a thought for the very real human rights and environmental issues plaguing the Delta? QUOTE:
posted on 02-01-2007, 15:58:17 PM Tola OdejayiRe: Curse of The Black Gold: Hope and Betrayal in The Niger DeltaNkire,
I hear you. SLB posted on 02-01-2007, 18:55:28 PM PukpabiRe: Curse of The Black Gold: Hope and Betrayal in The Niger DeltaMy people,
I wonder why Nigerians like to play the ostrich; acting like they do not see what is going on by hiding their heads in the sand, while their whole body is seen by all. Again, I wonder why Nigerians refuse to accept the truth, which naturally is a prelude to making ammends. Our elders say we should be able to "identify from whence we got drenched by the rain." The truth is that it is too late in the day for the Niger Delta to declare war; they can't. The usurpers came to save them from the Igbo in 1967. Now that they are free of the "Igbo parasite". methinks they should perpetually embrace the conquering Hausa-Fulani oligarchy and their Yoruba "co-conspirators" and sing alleluya to their names forever. Wait a minute, they have been given Vice-President, and their leader, Clark says they are okay(not odili beacause odili is not a a real South-South)(whatever that means). The bitter truth is that oil (the Niger Delta) is a war booty, seized from the Igbo, by the help of the Niger Delta thenselves, and the Yoruba (who also sing one Nigeria because of oil). The Niger Delta protest, in the eyes of the Oligarchy is a mere nuisance, period. Ka Chineke mezie okwu. Paschal Ukpabi, J.d. Michigan, USA posted on 02-01-2007, 20:30:07 PM AuspiciousRe: Curse of The Black Gold: Hope and Betrayal in The Niger DeltaA-ha!
Here we go again...same old sing-song... As we were saying, o'jare! Auspicious. posted on 02-01-2007, 20:38:28 PM KatampeRe: Curse of The Black Gold: Hope and Betrayal in The Niger DeltaQUOTE:
Mbaise man, how now? I thought someone said he met you at the NIDO jamboree. I thought you wre all for Nigeria. So, do you have any suggestions on the way forward? Would you like to work with progressive Hausa and Yoruba people? It is time you got tired of this your ethnic rantings, and step out like a man so we can salvage Nigeria. You come across like someone who is paranoid, abi you never recover from the war? posted on 02-01-2007, 20:49:49 PM KatampeRe: Curse of The Black Gold: Hope and Betrayal in The Niger DeltaQUOTE:
I think our sense of outrage should make us locate interest groups involved in environmental activities in the United States, Canada, Britain and other countries. The reason is to have them bring more awareness that is international to the problems of the Niger Delta so the federal government can do better. Blood Diamond has helped achieved that feat in Sierra Leone. In addition, they could help promote environmental research activities in the Niger Delta, and organising fact-finding missions In Canada, the region of Alberta produces large amounts of oil. Smaller production goes on, in one or two other provinces. As a result of increasing oil production, Canada has a super power status as an oil producer, and it is using this new status as a leverage in its foreign policy. It uses it as a negotiating instrument on the international arena. However, the rising oil production profile has meant greater responsibilities also. This has meant environmental responsibility and sustainability - debates on the impact of oil on the environment, as a result, environmental problems are being addressed at a rapid rate, and there have been calls and considerations for moratorium on exploration activities. The song is sustainability, a vague term that also translates into impact on the human and animal population in terms of jobs, animal wild life and overall quality of life. I think we should call for a moratorium on oil prospecting activities, and it this is feasible in Nigeria, until the federal government exhibits the will to address the myriad of problems facing the Niger Delta. There should be calls for indigenous capacity, made predominantly of people in the Niger Delta, this would enable them participate in the oil wealth of their region. The oil prospecting leases issued should be recalled and reissued after addressing the socio-economic conditions plaguing the people of the Niger Delta. I know Oronto Douglas belong(ed) to an NGO, Environmental Rights Action. It appears the NGO is more involved in Genetically Modified food now. I know the same guy was the commissioner for information of Bayelsa State and he had some cosy relationship with the former Bayelsa governor, Alams. Other NGO’s may be available, maybe other members on the forum can supply them. posted on 02-01-2007, 20:57:01 PM EmjRe: Curse of The Black Gold: Hope and Betrayal in The Niger Deltahmmmmm..........What does Mend want like nkire rightly asked? Quo Vadis Mend.
Where is SOD and WIND? Something has to be done to put an end to this continous/slow death visited on the people of the Niger-Delta Region. QUOTE:
posted on 02-01-2007, 21:29:36 PM EdnutRe: Curse of The Black Gold: Hope and Betrayal in The Niger DeltaQUOTE:
Guys I wonder how many other ways we can twist this above quoted from this Nigerian based bootlicker. posted on 02-01-2007, 22:20:38 PM Oguguo YakereRe: Curse of The Black Gold: Hope and Betrayal in The Niger DeltaFirst of all I am surprised that many of us here are just waking up to know the truth about all the woes caused by the oil drillers. Are we being sincere? If somene from the Delta or across the Niger had given this narration in place of the National Geographic Society it would have been ridiculed with such words as untrue, sensational, breeding hatred and what have you. Or, why didn't BBC report it, when BBc is an accomplice of our ordeal.
Late Governor Onunanka Mbakwe (blessed be his memory) cried to the Federal Government for help to rescue communities victimised in the oil business. He was laughed to scorn and called the crying governor. In Egbema, the night time is like day time because of gas flaring. Apart from the pollution in the air which targets the lungs, the continual light causes some of our people to suffer from insomnia due to the distortion of their biological clock for sleeping. Mbakwe is long gone and nothing has changed. Take it or leave it, what we are witnessing is a continuation of the war which some hate to recall because according to them it took place over forty years ago, and yet the booty is still being shared and for the same war reason people are hesitating to vote for "some people" especially if they refuse to deny their identity. It is like saying stop recalling the war after forty years but we have it in mind against you as we choose who to vote for. Yakere posted on 02-02-2007, 04:02:27 AM EyesWideOpenRe: Curse of The Black Gold: Hope and Betrayal in The Niger DeltaOguguo.....me thinks part of the problem is that there are not enough people crying out.....how many nigerians read the news? how many people sit down and think....its pretty normal for a lot of nigerians to think " ah i have said my own and they wont listen" and then sit down and expect that someone else is motvated enough to sort out your problem for you if they really want to.
My mom, my aunties, they do it all the time. They mention something once and then expect that if you really want to do it for them you will remember. It is wrong for the nigerian government, past and present not to have addressed the issue of the niger delta properly....now all the political parties are using this as part of their campaign strategy..."choose a deputy from the niger delta". The truth is, martin luther king had to fight the battle for all of us to get where we are today. Unfortunately, no one wants to be the scape goat, no one wants to be Ken Saro Wiwa...the international community is only as interested as it benefits them to be, no one will come into your house and teach your children how to behave. If it does not become the collective intent of the people of the niger delta and nigerians as a whole to fight wrong, it wont happen. You can only get a group of people together to agree on something when we have a leader with a vision, persuasion and motivation, but amongst the balck people, no one wants to do it. Yes....the purpose of any kind of toture is to kill the moral of would be followers of this person who dared to follow in the accusseds footsteps. Public hangings have the same effect. However, when the group is so large and non violent can you hang all of them? But if we do form a group, be sure that someone will betray us. The ibo man because he feels it is his eternal right to not trust any other nigerians because of biafra, the hausa man because he feels everyone is trying to put him out anyway and so he needs to out smart them, the yoruba man because he feels a sense of superiority because he has more institutions of learning around him and thinks he has a better plan. Tell me...would the slave trade have been possible with the help of black men! Yes,...it is a war...a war we need to fight for ourselves, for our children, for every black person....no matter how many coloured passports you have, your roots are still nigerian and where i live its become more and more embarrasing to say so...what can i do? I am Nigerian. So also are the lazy nigerian professionals i work with, so also are the currupt nigerians involved in social security scams where i live...if we dont fight this, its not going to go away, its only going to get worse. Thinking of oneself alone is only living a lie.....you are nigerian and this is not going to go away. Still watching EWO posted on 02-02-2007, 06:52:59 AM M. AkosaRe: Curse of The Black Gold: Hope and Betrayal in The Niger DeltaThank you Nkire.
What does MEND really want??? Do they want to carry on as a terrorist organisation, terrorizing innocent oil workers and support staffs ? Do they want to declare independence from Nigeria, ally themselves with other like minded groups of marginalised, over exploited and abused minorities? Do they wish to remain in Nigeria and be treated as "special Nigerians" at the expense of other Nigerians? posted on 02-02-2007, 07:20:06 AM OluyeRe: Curse of The Black Gold: Hope and Betrayal in The Niger DeltaThere is a lot of emotions on this tread, and rightly so. Nobody should live the way the people in the Niger Delta are living.
I beg to take a different viewpoint on the issue but be rest assured that the goal is the preservation of human live. Much of the capital territory belonged to the Bwari people of the middle belt. By a federal act. they lost their farmlands to a master plan. Today, Ijaws, Igbos and the rest of Nigerians deliberate and live at Abuja. Eminent domain prevailed. Recently there was a fire at Abule Egba, a sawmill was built over a pipeline which was vandalised-eminent domain was breached, several lives were lost. Expressways, sea ports and airports are built at the cost of communities. No one who chooses to remain on the fringes of the airport complains that planes taking off at night prevents them from sleeping. Similarly people don't endanger their life by living beside the expressway where trailers may swerve in and wipe them out, even if that parcel of land belonged to their fore fathers. What makes the Niger Delta special, is it because they have brought more to the table? What about other Nigerian communities who continually give up their land and resources for the common good? Big or small, they too gave up what they had when the nation demanded it. Oil business is risky business. If the government sees it fit that no human activity should go on around oil pipelines how much more the oil fields? Is it really possible to have oil fields and human communities cohabiting side by side? Like say, can we have a nuclear reactor and have indigenous people living around it? Wouldn't common sense dictate that they should be relocated for their safety? What then continues to sustain the shanty villages in the Delta region? Is it the love of their land or are those communities serving and living on the oil business too? What the Niger Delta needs is a master plan that will determine which area is suitable for human living and settle displaced people in those areas. We must however be sure that certain communities will have to cease existing in the midst of the oilfields. It is a price which other Nigerians elsewhere have payed. posted on 02-02-2007, 07:57:08 AM FjordRe: Curse of The Black Gold: Hope and Betrayal in The Niger DeltaLet's begin with a proposition: that appeasement in the Niger Delta cannot be in the interest of what should be retribution for Nigeria's treatment of the Niger Delta peoples. And uncanny as it may sound, there is something significant about the continued siege on the Niger Delta by the Nigerian state. Everytime, one's conviction that the solution to the Nigerian problem will come from the Niger Delta ir reinforced. As the interest of the Nigerian State has not changed over decades, the Niger Delta will continue to be raped until the quest for liberation reaches critical mass, and then the end - almost literally - will come.
Of course, Shell Petroleum Development Company, that arm of the Shell company operating most of the land and swamp fields in joint venture with the Nigerian State will have a heavy price to pay. Nothing other than a complete breakdown of order in the Niger Delta, the deprivation of the Nigerian State oil revenues from lands that've been raped since oil was discovered at Oloibiri will provide a lasting solution. Let Shell and other operators be shamed (yes, their image is important to them, even if not so the Nigerian State that owes the Niger Delta billions in any currency for unpaid royalties at least) into becoming more responsible. Let the environmental groups in as a temporary measure; when the time for the true solution is ripe, they'll have to move out. . posted on 02-02-2007, 08:49:38 AM Nero africanusRe: Curse of The Black Gold: Hope and Betrayal in The Niger DeltaQUOTE:
oluye, you are either a very ignorant person or you are so insensitive that you are almost inhuman can you explain what you wrote up there. what have you yourself brought to the table !!! are you from mars that you dont know that in the creeks where people are predominantly fishermen . the land is polluted so they cannot farm and the water is polluted so they cannot fish , cos the fishes are dead oil is a risky business is that how oil exploration is carried out elsewhere ? you suggest they be resettled run van berg the former MD of shell acknowledged that niger delta is as big as his country - holland and you suggest they be resettled to where , your village? i always see a certain insensitivity in all you write and it is wicked!!!!!! posted on 02-02-2007, 12:30:32 PM EdnutRe: Curse of The Black Gold: Hope and Betrayal in The Niger DeltaQUOTE:
Oluye, I tend to agree more with most of your position on this NDelta issue and I bet that majority of our fellow country men do too. I really believe that the best thing for Nigeria is to relocate this people out of that land while the oil is still flowing or permanently. Nero A, If the land is polluted, and the fisherman can no longer fish, then why are they still there? Why can’t they be relocated to say Lake Chad area where the country is in need of fishermen? Why can’t the rest be relocated to Northern Nigeria where I understand we have large land mass begging to be farmed? There is nothing new about relocating Nigerians for one reason or the other as we all were witnesses to the most recent one in Cross Rivers State. Nigeria lost over $2 billion to this criminals running around the creeks of Niger Delta giving Nigeria bad name and this need to stop. Move these people even if it be by force to the North. posted on 02-02-2007, 12:41:45 PM AnonRe: Curse of The Black Gold: Hope and Betrayal in The Niger Delta[QUOTE] QUOTE:
 Ednut oh.... Una ama egbu mmadu na cyber space nka... Sorry to laugh but this just cracked me up, because it almost sounded serious. Nna I don't even know what to say again Comments Page: 1 2 |
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