Opinion - News Analysis   

Raging battles against energy giants in Nigeria

Andy Rowell

A decade after the execution of Ken Saro-Wiwa, old and new battles against energy giants in Nigeria are raging.

EVERY NIGHT, the great gas flares of the oil-rich Niger Delta billow into the African sky and can be seen from space. On Wednesday evening, these symbols of pollution, waste and injustice will be joined by small beacons of resistance. Thousands of candles will be lit as communities hold processions in remembrance of the judicially murdered writer and environmental activist Ken Saro-Wiwa and eight fellow Ogonis. November 10 is the 10th anniversary of their deaths in a prison in Port Harcourt.

Ten years on, the situation is as desperate as it was when Saro-Wiwa led a peaceful uprising of the Ogoni in opposition to Shell and the fact that the nation's great oil wealth had never reached the people who had always lived there.

Says Patrick Naagbanton, Ogoni director, Niger Delta Project for Environment, Human Rights and Development: "There is the same environmental pollution, degradation of the environment, the same harassment of our people by the military, and the oil communities continue to use armed guards."

Inspired by the Ogoni uprising, other ethnic groups in a region of 12 million people have stood up to fight the oil industry and the Nigerian Government. The Illaje have protested against U.S. giant Chevron, leading to protesters being killed and tortured. The Ijaw, one of the largest delta groups, mobilised in the late 1990s, demanding an end to oil production on their land. The military was called in and more than 200 people were killed, tortured, and raped, according to Human Rights Watch.

By 2000, another lethal ingredient had been added to the tinderbox of the delta. "Oil bunkering" — the siphoning of oil from the myriad pipelines, to be sold on the black market — was now accounting for 10 per cent or more of Nigeria's oil production. And much of this was funding the purchase of arms.

When Alhaji Dobuko Asari, leader of the Niger Delta People's Volunteer Force, threatened all-out war in the delta in September 2004, world oil prices rose to $50 a barrel for the first time. A peace deal was signed, but Asari was arrested in Port Harcourt a year later and charged with five counts of treason last month. He could face the death penalty if convicted. The date of the trial has been set for November 10 — a day activists see as being beyond coincidence.

Meanwhile, the delta is on the verge of another new development. Nigeria's vast gas reserves, which have traditionally been flared, are increasingly being liquefied for export, with the U.K. keen to secure resources as North Sea reserves dwindle. Neo-conservative thinktanks that led the Bush administration to war in Iraq now talk of the Gulf of Guinea as the "next Gulf," an area of strategic interest, to be protected by the military might of America and her allies, including the British.

- Guardian Newspapers Limited 2005

(Andy Rowell is, with James Marriott and Lorne Stockman, joint author of The Next Gulf — London, Washington and Oil Conflict in Nigeria, published this week by Constable and Robinson. Details of the Saro-Wiwa anniversary at www.remembersarowiwa.com)

Printer friendly page  
Send this article to Friends by E-Mail

Stories in this Section

A salute to Citizen Narayanan
Preserving the vibrancy of cultures
Politics of accusation, culture of suspicion
Keeping a watch on winged visitors
Eyes in the sky
Republican ideal pickled into dogma
Raging battles against energy giants in Nigeria
A great loss
Unnecessary comment
Great cartoon
Riots in Paris
State's withdrawal
Fractionating blood
Plight of the mentally ill
Kashmir dialogue process has to be broad-based, says Azad

Copyright © 2005, The Hindu. Republication or redissemination of the contents of this screen are expressly prohibited without the written consent of The Hindu