Sandy Cioffi, director of the documentary “Sweet Crude” interviewed on Democracy Now!

In this small region of Nigeria known as the “south-south,” something huge is happening. The adverse effects of oil exploration have been unfolding in the Niger Delta for the past 50 years. Now, the people have had enough. From environmental activism to peaceful protest to stakeholder dialogs, nothing has worked. A new brand of militancy has emerged in a different kind of attempt to call attention to the desperate poverty and injustice.

Here, citizens of an oil-rich nation struggle to eat in a land that can no longer support them. The Delta’s water and soil have been fouled by the same oil production that accounts for more than 80 percent of the country’s revenue. Traditional fishing and farming livelihoods are all but gone. Potable drinking water is rare. So is electricity. With pitifully few clinics and schools, curable conditions go untreated and illiteracy is high. Families are broken up, as men die young or take off for the cities to find jobs.

The advent of militancy has brought both hope and fear to the region. People live with the constant threat of war, yet many feel that armed resistance is the only avenue left to make their voices heard……...Continued.

Links: Interactive map of Nigeria / Niger Delta

Slideshow

Tags:
Nigeria
Niger Delta
Oil
Shell + Chevron

In 2005, the High Court declared gas flaring illegal yet both the Nigerian government and oil multinationals have ignored the court ruling. Last year the Nigerian government once again promised to stop all gas flaring on the 1st January this year - a promise that goes back nearly 40 years. Companies defying the order were to be shut down. Once again the government has shown complete disregard and insensitivity to the communities in the Niger Delta and given into pressure from Shell, Chevron, Elf etc. The date has now been set for the end of the year but no one really believes that the government will once again bow to the oil multinationals.

Inemo [Ndelta] has put together this short video “Fire in the Delta” which shows the environmental damage [gas flares both on the ground and those that burn up in the sky; old leaking pipes across farmlands and homes; oil filled creeks and ponds; oil fires which burn the land and people; across the region. [Also check out some of his Ijaw dub samples for example this one dedicated to Ijaw activist and legend Adaka Boro]

Civil society groups have responded by demanding the government enact legislation to once and for all end gas flaring rather than continue to make promises that are always broken.
Last week the 13 civil society organisations (Social Action, Environmental Rights Action (ERA), Movement for the Survival of the Ogoni People (MOSOP), the Ijaw Youth Council (IYC), Benin River Forum, Niger Delta Women for Justice (NDWJ),
[Read more…]

The US Africa Command, AFRICOM is reportedly on it’s way to the Gulf of Guinea. I am beginning to feel as if we’ve been projected back in a time machine to the day the Portuguese emissary, Diego de Azambuja landed in what was to become El Mina with the intention of building a “a storehouse” for all the gold and slaves they hoped to acquire in the name of the King of Portugal . The place which would become known as El Mina and which was later to become the infamous slave dungeon witnessed an event some* describe as “The Beginning” of slavery and it’s afterlife which continues today. On that day, January 19th, 1482, Diego de Azambuja landed with six hundred men on the shores of present day Ghana to meet King Caramansa. The Akan King was not happy about the idea of a permanent Portuguese presence but somehow he was persuaded. However it is not difficult to imagine what would have happened if he had refused and thus the trade in slaves began, a few hundreds at first and eventually thousands passed through Elmina.

And so 500 years later, another emissary from the West lands on the Gulf of Guinea ready to stake out their claim to the waters and lands of Africa in the name of the King of America and oil. Although Nigeria’s President, Yar’adua has given his support to AFRICOM he is now playing both sides by saying yes he supports it but not in his back yard. Well sorry Mr President, it doesn’t work like that and do not expect us to believe that you are so naive to think you can have your cake and eat it at the same time.

President Umaru Musa Yar’Adua, during his visit to US President George W. Bush, late last year, said that the Federal Government was in support of AFRICOM.
The Special Assistant to the President (Communications), Mr. Segun Adeniyi, had clarified the President’s statement, which had generated controversy.
He had explained that President Yar’Adua’s statement negated what people thought he meant, adding that his support for AFRICOM did not mean that he wanted its headquarters sited in the country.

If as This Day reports, Africa is united in it’s rejection of AFRICOM then we need to ask why the US Navy about to set anchor off the Guinea coast (covering the waters of two oil producing nations - Gabon and Nigeria, whilst they and the rest of the continent’s leaders are doing nothing? Either because they are weak and simply lackey’s of the United States or they are liars and in fact have made the deal with the US and the rest is a pretence. As I reported a few days ago, part of the “brief of AFRICOM is to integrate the environment and other development issues and human security” in other words ARICOM will become a means to the militarisation of development and environmental issues from “natural” disasters to managing opposition to environmental destruction such as gas flaring in the Niger Delta. Despite the huge fan fare around Nigeria’s announcement that gas flaring would end in 2007 and any company not complying would be shut down. Nigeria shut down Shell and Exxon? Not surprisingly the multinationals have arrogantly ignored the ruling and the deadline has now been extended by a further 12 months to December 2008. Unless you have seen a gas flare especially those on the ground it is difficult to imagine the force, the intensity and heat emanating from flared gas and the soot and smoke that spreads far and wide over agricultural land, fishing creeks and villages.

It is no coincidence that AFRICOM’s naval forces are sailing towards the Bright of Bonny and the waters off both Gabon and the Niger Delta after all it is here to protect the multinationals and their interest and I do not for one minute believe that this is being done without the full cooperation of President Yar’adua. The militants are getting stronger and are more well armed that two years ago - we wait and watch as the end game begins.

It is also timely that Ike Okonta’s long awaited book “When Citizens Revolt: Nigerian Elites, Big Oil and the Ogoni Struggle for Self-Determination” has just been published.

Okonta examines the Ogoni struggle for Self-Determination, which has since been replicated by other nationalities in the Niger Delta. The book considers the “origins and implications of the emergence and persistence of ethnic identities and the communal politics they engender in postcolonial Africa.”

* Saidiya Harman “Lose Your Mother: A Journey Along the Atlantic Slave Route”

Tags:
Nigeria
Niger Delta
AFRICOM
Shell
MEND
Okonta

“The Naked Option: a last resort,” is a feature documentary highlighting the struggle by women of the Niger Delta against the multinational oil companies and military occupation by the Nigerian Federal Government.

The film is still in production but based on the preview and from comments by activists in the ND it should be a powerful film depicting the fightback from the gender commons of the Niger Delta.

Film Preview

Tags:
Nigeria
Niger Delta
Niger Delta Women
Shell
Exxon

Some rare footage from the Biafran war 1967-1970 in seven parts. For some reason embedding Part 1 has been disabled. This footage is from Part 3.

There are more knowledgeable people than myself on this period of “Nigeria’s” history. I say “Nigeria” because the nation was constructed not by those who now live within it’s boundaries, but by a foreign colonial power whose interests were served by these borders. Like most civil wars the events leading to the secession followed by what the Federal government termed a “police action” but which was in fact a war, are complex. Nonetheless I believe one of the major mistakes made by the Biafran leadership was to assume that the non-Igbo people that fell within Biafra would automatically and willingly support the notion of Biafra. Whereas in fact those minorities were divided between those who supported Biafra and those who supported the Federal government or a “one Nigeria”. Often villages and towns were divided down the middle. There are historic reasons for this as for example the relationship between the Kalabari and Bonny people with the Igbo is that of cousins.

From what I have read and what I have been told by my own family, I do not believe the Biafran leadership made any serious attempt at inclusiveness or to win the hearts and minds of the Delta peoples. In her novel, Half of a Yellow Sun, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, alludes to this fact in one scene where non-Igbo women were accused of being traitors and not to be trusted. Another much overlooked dynamic in the war was of course oil. Biafra was only really viable as a nation if it had access to the Delta and to oil. Likewise by 1967, Nigeria was at the beginning of the oil boom and the accompanying corruption of leadership with $billions going into the personal pockets of leaders across the nation. Would they have bothered to fight if there was no oil. Would Biafra have seceded if there was no access to the Delta oil?

However it has to be said that there are many people in the Delta regions who may not have supported the secession in 1967, but who would today, take the opposite point of view and who in fact believe they made an error in not supporting the Biafran cause. 40 years has passed and it is only recently that Nigerians, writers, journalists are now beginning to talk about the events leading up to the war, the war itself and the terrible loss of lives and suffering that took place. I believe there has been a deliberate decision as a nation, not to discuss Biafra which has led to the failure to acknowledge the horror of the 3 years of war as well as the years it took to recover, for the people of Biafra.

Tags:
Biafra
Nigeria