Oil revenues estimated at $400 billion should have led to development that benefited the mass of Nigerians. Instead, it has merely bred greed and fuelled corruption, finds photojournalist Tim Hetherington.
'The soldiers came and started pouring fuel all around. Then they struck a match, and that was the end of it.'
I’m listening to a resident describe how Nigerian soldiers burnt down a shanty town on the edge of Port Harcourt, the oil capital of the Niger Delta. Acer Base was home to over 2,000 people. Now it's a pathetic wasteland of scar-black tin roofing. In a nearby market place, three homeless children lie on the damp ground, wrapped only in dirty bed-linen. One, a baby of two years, has burn marks on his face and the slightest movement sends him into spasms of agony.
'This a story of greed and division'
The army’s actions were designed as a form of retribution. The residents’ crime? To live in an area where militants came to kidnap an Italian oil worker. In the ensuing struggle, militants had shot dead an army officer, and the soldiers wanted revenge.
Ken Saro-Wiwa
It is incidents like this that fuel a sense of injustice in the Niger Delta. This injustice is nothing new: in the mid 1990s the Niger Delta issue came to prominence in the British press when the Nigerian military dictator Sani Abache ordered the execution of activist Ken Saro-Wiwa.
Saro-Wiwa was leading his tribal Ogoni community against the activities of the multinational oil company Shell. As the struggle became increasingly militant, a number of elders sympathetic to Shell were killed by local youths, and Saro-Wiwa was convicted of complicity in the murders.
Even with the support of the government, Shell was still forced to shut down its operations in Ogoniland. However, the problem didn’t go away. Instead, it shifted to other areas of the Delta and in turn has become more complex.
This isn’t a simple story of bad companies and innocent communities. It’s a story of greed and division.
Nigerian oil revenues
It is estimated that the Nigerian government has received over $400 billion in oil revenue since ‘black gold’ was first discovered in the late 1950s. Nigeria is Africa’s biggest oil producer and the world's fifth largest exporter, producing around 2.6 million barrels a day. Oil exploration in Nigeria is an important part of multinational oil company profits, but rightly it is the Nigerian government that receives the largest slice of the cake.
Nigeria should be a haven of development and progress. There should be running water, electricity, good roads and an abundance of schools. But instead of being a budding Dubai, most Nigerians live on less than $2 a day.
According to World Bank figures, Nigeria ranks as one of the poorest countries in the world, with a Gross National Income per capita of $560 and more than 70% of the population living in poverty. Moreover, the Delta states where oil is found are some of the least developed in the whole federation of 36 states.
To understand the source of the conflict in the Delta, you need to travel into the maze of mangrove swamps know as ‘the creeks’. This hinterland can be a grey and oppressive place where ramshackle villages lie in the shadow of oil facilities. Far from the centres of political power, the communities are forgotten and left to fend for themselves by any means necessary.
The young men compete to receive lucrative contracts from oil companies to provide services like protecting pipelines. However, the temporary nature of these contracts and squabbles over payment can lead the same young men to kidnap oil workers in return for ransom money.
Many local gangs are also involved in the theft of oil at its source, known as ‘bunkering’. With the Delta considered a high security area, it’s hard not to conclude that this activity is conducted with the complicity of local politicians and the army.
It is also common knowledge that politicians employ the gangs as muscle during the election period to ensure that an area delivers a favourable vote. ‘Election by selection’ is a popular Nigerian mantra.
MEND kidnappings
The recent wave of high profile kidnappings began in February this year as a shadowy group calling itself the Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta (MEND) emerged as the new militant standard bearers. The group has employed an unusual level of sophistication, using hostages and the related media attention to portray themselves as locked in a selfless struggle with oil companies and the Nigerian government.
MEND does not seek a separatist state. They are fighting to ensure that a greater share of the oil wealth generated from the Delta stays there, and for the necessary political power that will allow them to access these riches.
At present only 13% of Nigerian oil revenues flow back to the eight regional state governments in the Delta. The balance of 87% goes into a ‘Federation Account’, together with other non oil revenues, to be parcelled out between all the 36 Nigerian states, the local governments and the federal government – the latter takes the lion’s share and provides these funds rather irregularly to the states.
For many, this is the only source of government revenue and Delta politicians and militants are demanding that, at a minimum, the region receive 50%.
Even with relatively small percentage flowing back, areas like River State (where Port Harcourt is situated) receive an annual state budget of over $1 billion dollars. Such huge sums of money should be able to create appropriate services for local citizens of the state.
I was one of a handful of foreign journalists to whom MEND released Texan oil worker Macon Hawkins in March 2006. During a secretive meeting on the creeks somewhere near to Chevron’s Escravos oil facility and the village of Okorinkoko, I was met by three boatloads of militants.
Having reported in African conflicts, I was struck by the discipline of this group. These weren’t young rebels wearing wigs and causing mayhem. All wore camouflaged flack jackets, black ski masks, and were heavily armed.
Only one person spoke, delivering a torrent of dull political rhetoric. We were handed Macon, apparently because he had diabetes and it was his birthday.
During the ensuing media circus that our involvement generated, the remaining hostages were quietly released at another location. No one had been harmed, a political point had been made, and no doubt money had exchanged hands. In local parlance, the boys had been ‘settled’.
But whether the local communities stand to gain from the activities of their ‘boys’ is debatable. When I revisited Okorinkoko a couple of weeks ago, I saw no visible benefit from their being ‘on the frontline’. The window glass of the chief’s house remained broken from where a government helicopter gunship had attacked, children were still drinking from the same filthy pool that constituted a well, and only a set of new plastic chairs in the unfinished meeting room gave the impression of development.
Instead of solving problems, the oil wealth has created a schizophrenic society where government has visibly failed and militant activity creates a siege mentality.
By trying to play all sides to keep the oil flowing, the oil companies exacerbate the situation, while remaining hesitant to criticize a government that could award contracts to competing firms. Yet Nigeria’s failings are evident.
Endemic corruption
The country lies near the bottom of Transparency International’s table of most corrupt countries, and its own Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) is investigating 31 out of 36 state governors. In 2005, Depriye Alamaseigha, the governor of the oil rich state of Bayelsa, was arrested in the UK on charges of money laundering when he was caught entering the country with £1.2 million pounds in cash.
There is no doubt that oil exploration has damaged the local habitat of the Delta. But it is the web of corruption and complicity fuelled by the oil bonanza that is having far more serious consequences on the psychological landscape of its inhabitants.