Their hands raised in the air
Date: 08-Apr-03
Country: NIGERIA
Author: Daniel Balint-Kurti
Rows of houses lie in ruins, the ugly remains of previous fighting that show just how much can go wrong when oil, politics, poverty and ethnic rivalries are mixed together in the Niger Delta.
Over the past month, the unrest has worsened still further and scores of Ijaw and Itsekiri villagers have died. Up to a dozen soldiers have also been killed in the swamps and creeks around Warri.
The conflict has been disastrous for Nigeria's economy, forcing oil majors to evacuate and shut down almost 40 percent of the country's mainstay oil production.
It also risks spiralling into greater turmoil ahead of this month's presidential and legislative elections, the first since military rule ended in Africa's most populous country in 1999.
"We will drag other peoples and nations into a boiling cauldron of conflict. We fear the disintegration of the country," said Oronto Douglas, head of Environmental Rights Action (ERA), an organisation close to the Ijaws.
Ijaw militants now say they will blow up oil facilities if troops do not withdraw - threatening to cut off Nigeria's economic lifeline, from which Niger Delta communities say they have never drawn their fair share.
ECHOES OF OGONI CRISIS
What is happening now in many parts of the Niger Delta echoes the problems that forced oil firms out of southeastern Ogoniland in the early 1990s, but with consequences many times more serious.
Royal Dutch/Shell pulled out of Ogoniland in 1993 as a result of protests led by activist Ken Saro-Wiwa - whose execution for murder two years later turned into a public relations disaster for the oil giant.
Shell is in talks with government officials and community leaders about an eventual return to the area, but negotiations with the main Ogoni political group, Mosop, have failed twice since 1993.
"Ogoniland is our concession and for many reasons we want to earn our right to go back," said company spokesman Don Boham.
But Ogonis, who used to complain of frequent environmental damage by Shell, say they feel no worse off since the company left and are in no hurry to see it - except to clear up the latest pipeline leak.
Ogoniland only ever had a tiny share of the Niger Delta's oil and it is no longer produced there, but pipes do still carry 200,000 barrels per day of crude beneath its soil.
"All the land around here cannot be used again, and if someone puts a light to it, it will cause problems for the village," complained local youth Baridor Masi as oil dribbled out onto the fields.
Shell says it alone spends $120 million a year on the Niger Delta communities, but people living in villages as poor as anywhere else in the country of 120 million believe that their share is not getting through.
OIL FIRMS TRAPPED
Nearly everywhere, the oil firms run the gauntlet of community protests, acts of sabotage, compensation claims, demands for protection money and the kidnapping of workers for ransom.
"I think everyone likes to blame the oil companies because they've got nowhere by blaming the government, and at least the oil companies respond," said Bill Knight of Pro-Natura, which manages aid projects funded by oil firms and the European Union.
The oil firms themselves complain that they cannot be responsible for replacing the role of the government - which gets by far the largest slice of oil revenues through taxes and its majority stake in oil-producing joint ventures.
The latest disturbances, however, go far beyond protests or extortion. The Ijaws attacked some oil installations with assault rifles and are suspected of having even heavier weaponry in a growing arsenal.
Whoever wins the elections to be held between April 12 and May 3 will be faced with the tough task of trying either to negotiate a deal that will satisfy the brewing anger in the Niger Delta or take the dangerous gamble of using force.
"This is the jugular of Nigeria," said Ijaw author Eben Dobuko. "If they destroy the Niger Delta, they d
