"Sweet Crude"

The documentary "Sweet Crude" by Sandy Cioffi informs the viewer about the issues of oil in the Niger Delta. For those who are a more of a visual learner, this might be much more fun for you to watch instead of reading my boring writings. Well, maybe not, but you should check it out nonetheless! Here is a description of it from the website.

In a small corner of the most populous country in Africa, billions of dollars of crude oil flow under the feet of a desperate people. Immense wealth and abject poverty stand in stark contrast. The environment is decimated. The issues are complex, the answers elusive.

The documentary film Sweet Crude tells the story of Nigeria’s Niger Delta. The region is seething and the global stakes are high. But in this moment, there’s an opportunity to find solutions. What if the world paid attention before it was too late?

For more info, check out www.sweetcrudemovie.com

Yar'Adua's meetings with world leaders.

These are two interviews that shows Umaru Yar'Adua's meeting with the Prime Minister of England Gordon a year ago and his meeting with U.S. past U.S. president George Bush when he was first elected the new leader of Nigeria in 2007. THis will give you a view on some of his intentions he spoke of for Nigeria.

President Yar'Adua offers amnesty to militants.

"On the Niger Delta, we are working on the holistic of the development and implementation of the Niger Delta Master Plan," president Umaru Musa Yar'Adua announced on Thursday at a National Executive Committee meeting of the Peoples Democratic Party in Abuja. "Also, we are working on terms for the granting of amnesty for all those who are ready to lay down their arms in the Niger Delta, and this amnesty will include not only laying down their arms but also reintegrating them and rehabilitating them into the Nigerian society."

The National Security Council will meet next week to work out the modalities for the amnesty.
Yar'Adua it seems is in pursuit of finding some common ground with the Niger Delta militants. He said the country must be prepared for "hard times" in order to endure this crisis, in which he say is "very much real." He claims there are no hope this financial meltdown could come to an end by 2009, but if the nation lays down their arms and are reintegrated into Nigerian society Nigeria could very well have one of the best economies in the world by 2020.

This of course is not what The Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta (MEND) want to hear. They want things to change now. I vaguely relate this to Herbert Hoover's comments when he was the U.S. president during the Great Depression in the early 1930s, when he stated it was best to "wait the crisis out." Whether or not his statement was true, people who were currently out of jobs and couldn't make ends meat to provide for their children did not want to believe that. They wanted to believe something was going to be done right away. Whether or not Yar'Adua comments are inevitably true the citizens of Nigeria don't want to hear that they will have to wait until 2010 to have a sustainable economy. They want action now.

http://www.234next.com/csp/cms/sites/Next/Home/5397620-146/Yar%27Adua_announces_amnesty_for_Niger_Delta.csp