| Nigeria: Report on the Crisis in the Niger Delta The Africa Fund 50 Broad Street, Suite 711 New York, NY 10004 USA Tel: (212) 785-1024 Fax: (212) 785-1078 Nigeria Transition Watch Dateline: Lagos, Nigeria, June 10, 1999 Report on the Crisis in the Niger Delta by Michael Fleshman Human Rights Coordinator, The Africa Fund The violence that has devastated the city of Warri near Chevron's Escravos tank farm is only the most recent and most tragic manifestation of the rage sweeping the impoverished communities of Nigeria's oil fields after decades of repression and exploitation by military dictatorships and western oil companies. Since the current violence began in late May, 600 homes have been destroyed, as many as 300 people have died and thousands more have fled the city center and outlying residential districts to escape attacks by hundreds of young men in military uniforms armed with machine guns and assault rifles. The days old civilian government of newly elected President Olusegun Obasanjo rushed thousands of troops into the area and declared a dusk-to-dawn curfew on June 8 in an effort to contain the fighting. The Nigerian pressreported yesterday, June 9, that a tense calm had been established, punctuated by sporadic clashes between the opposing sides and with the security forces on the outskirts of town. The immediate cause of the crisis was a 1997 decision by now deceased dictator General Sani Abacha to relocate a Local Government Authority (effectively a town council) in Warri from a district occupied by the majority Ijaw people to that of the minority Itsekeris. The move was made to bolster the despised dictator's political fortunes and to punish the Ijaw community for its increasingly visible opposition to his regime. Resentment in the Ijaw community boiled over on Inauguration Day, May 29, when Ijaw activists protested the installation of an Itsekeri politician at the head of the disputed LGA, triggering clashes between the communities and spilling over to the Urhobo community, whose young men have also battled armed Itsekeri youth. Western press reports and the oil companies have focused on the ethnic character of the violence to portray it as "tribal warfare" unrelated to the decade-long struggle by the various minority peoples of the Niger Delta oil fields against the oil companies and military rule. Nothing could be further from the truth. Nigerian human rights and environmental activists, trade union and religious leaders and elected officials say that the failure of both theAbacha and Abubakar military regimes to redress local grievances, the deliberate manipulation of ethnic tension by the military and gross economic exploitation and environmental destruction of the minority communities by the oil companies have driven the indigenous peoples of the region to the very edge of survival and fueled a desperate competition between them for what little resources are available. Warri, like other towns in the oil fields, presents a harsh contrast of staggering wealth and appalling poverty.Heavily guarded oil company compounds with paved streets, swimming pools, satellite telephones and supermarkets sit yards away from villages without electricity, running water or a school. By law, Nigeria's oil wealth and the land above it is owned by the Federal government, not by the local communities. For decades Nigeria's ruling generals and the oil companies have extracted billions of dollars a year from these communities and returned virtually none in the form of jobs, health care, or education. Oil spills and decades of pollution and acid rain from gas flaring have destroyed the livelihoods of the indigenous people. Compensation for the devastating effects of oil production is always inadequate, often unpaid, and commonly stolen by corrupt traditional leaders beholden to the Federal government in far-away Abuja for their positions, and to oil company patronage for money. The small sums of money doled out by the national government to LGAs for salaries and administration are often the only real source of income in local communities, making control of local governments a life-and-death matter, dividing communities along ethnic lines and weakening collective action against abusive government and corporate policies. The reality of the current tragedy was summed up in an commentary in the current edition of the respected weekly Tempo newspaper. "The animosity, actually, is not among the feuding communities. Rather it is a sort of resentment against the state which exploits the oil yielding billions of dollars and leaves the area underdeveloped. And when such animosity lasts too long, the concerned people start suspecting one another of collaborating with the enemy or of being too passive with him. Hence the inter-communal clashes, which only justice in the sharing of oil revenue can solve in the long run." The outstanding head of the Nigerian oil workers union Pengassan, former prisoner of conscience Milton Dabibi, told me last night that only the immediate intervention of the Obasanjo government, and the establishment of a credible dialogue between the communities, the government and the oil companies on a fundamental restructuring of economic and political institutions in the region can bring an end to the bloody crisis in Nigeria's oil fields. In recent weeks he has traveled extensively throughout the Niger Delta, including Warri, to establish just that dialogue. His initiatives deserve the full backing of the international community. But to date the major multi-national producers, Shell, Mobil and Chevron have refused to support it. Dabibi had high praise for President Obasanjo's efforts to resolve the Warri crisis. The President is expected to fly to Warri on Friday to meet with leaders of the communities in Warri to end the fighting. But until the legitimate demands of the peoples of the Niger Delta for control of their land and resources, for economic and social justice and for an end to repression are met, the political fires raging in the Delta will continue to burn. Michael Fleshman is traveling in Nigeria for a month. Founded in 1966 by the American Committee on Africa, The Africa Fund works for a positive U.S. policy toward Africa and supports African human rights, democracy and development. Contact: The Africa Fund, 50 Broad Street, Suite 711, New York, NY 10004 USA. Tel: (212) 785-1024. Fax: (212) 785-1078. E-mail: africafund@igc.apc.org website: www.prairienet.org/acas/afund.html. | |
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