Let's keep truckin'

So I will be honest. This blog was originally started as an assignment for my International Communications class. However after looking at my analytics I see that this blog has attracted quite a bit of people from around the world. Therefore even though I have already received my grade for the class, why stop there? I could really be going somewhere with this thing! I hope to get even more knowledgeable on the issue, and please offer me your input on any news as far as the Niger Delta goes. Thank you!

I will also be quite busy this summer, as I will be working an intense and time consuming job in Tennessee. I doubt there will be more than one time a week I will even have time to think about what to write next. Therefore, I am down for some helpers. If anyone likes to blog about anything or is very knowledgeable on what is going on in the Niger Delta, please let me know. I would love to partner up with some people, because all my information so far has either just been me blabbing or reporting stories I found on the internet.

If interested, reply to this blog or email me at RJohnston@flagler.edu. Thank you!

"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

Oil's dirty business.

It is a little slow-paced, but this video will give you an up close informative view of the intentions of the Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta (MEND) and the results of oil spills to the community.

Nigerian rebels with a deadly cause

The Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta (“MEND”) is a militant indigenous people’s movement dedicated to armed struggle against what they regard as the explotation and oppression of the people of the Niger Delta and the degradation of the natural environment by foreign multinational corporations invovled in the extraction of oil in the Niger Delta and the Federal Governement of Nigeria. MEND has been linked to attacks on foreign-owneed petroleum companies in Nigeria as part of the Conflict in the Niger Delta.

A wave of attacks on oil installations and kidnapping of foreign oil workers has reduced ouptut by 25% and now it has expanded its theatre of operations by placing a car bomb in a miltary barracks in the regional capital, Port Harcourt. Shell has withdrawn 330 employees from the region, and shut down four pumping stations. Four Shell employees are currently being held hostage.
These rebels are responsible for causing most of the problems for the oil companies in Nigeria. They feel like they are serving a good cause that will benifit their country in the end. They are not just crazy guys who pick up guns and shoot away, they are trained militants. Kids are being trained to fire guns and rebel against their government before they even break puburty. Upon further research I read that it started off with friendly meetings, but as time passed and no beneficial changes were made the rebels resorted down to malicious forms of violence.

Methods to MEND attacks include:

• Swarm-based maneuver. The guerrillas are using speed boats in the Niger Delta's swamps to quickly attack targets in succession. Multiple, highly maneuverable units have kept the government and Shell's defensive systems off-balance defending the sprawling network.
  
• Radically improved firepower and combat training. This new capability has allowed the guerrillas to overpower a combination of Shell's western-trained private military guards and elite Nigerian units in several engagements. Note: one of Shell's private military operators was captured as a hostage.
  
• Effective use of system disruption. Targets have been accurately selected to completely shut down production and delay/halt repairs. This is a systematic operation. Additionally, the guerrillas are making effective use of Shell's hostages to coerce both the government and the company

More than half of the citizens living in the oil rich Niger Delta are still living below the poverty line, and the government continues to use oil revenues for annynomous causes. I do not know how guerrilla warfare will spark any sort of change in the government officials' hearts. Their rebellious actions are only decreasing oil production, resulting in less petroleum exports and revenue incomes for the country. What do you think? Do you feel there are alternatives ways the citizens of the Niger Delta could speak out against their governement?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Movement_for_the_Emancipation_of_the_Niger_Delta

http://globalguerrillas.typepad.com/globalguerrillas/2006/01/nigerian_evolut.html

Little Bee

Yesterday I bought the book "A Long Way Gone" by Ishmael Beah at Borders book store. In the novel the author describes his true past as a child soldier in Sierra Leone and his rehabilitation process. I heard him speak two weeks ago at the Community College in Jacksonville and I have been wanting to read his book ever since. A Borders employee showed me where the book was, and upon telling him my obsession with Africa history referred me to the book "Little Bee" by Chris Cleave. Suprisingly, he told me the book is about two Nigerian women who lived ordinary lives until oil was discovered, and how they coped with problems to come. I plan to read after I finish "A Long Way Gone" (which has kept me reading so far). I tried to look up a synopsis of "Little Bee" on the internet but there are no in-depth description because the author does not want too much of the story to be revealed without reading it. Here is the description on the back of the book:

WE DON'T WANT TO TELL YOU TOO MUCH ABOUT THIS BOOK.

It is a truly special story and we don't want to spoil it.

Nevertheless, you need to know something, so we will just say this:

It is extremely funny, but the African beach scene is horrific.

The story starts there, but the book doesn't.

And it's what happens afterward that is most important.

Once you have read it, you'll want to tell everyone about it. When you do, please don't tell them what happens either. The magic is in how it unfolds.

The day oil was discovered....

74 year old Chief Sunday Inengite remembers very clearly the day oil was discovered in Nigeria. He says he was 19 when the British, Germans, and Dutch came in search of oil.

“They made us be happy and clap like fools, dance as if we were trained monkeys.”

Inengite talks about how the oil companies have caused almost nothing but problems for the rich environment they used to have. He says now the environment “has been damaged, affecting fish catches, and the small plots of land where people had grown crops are polluted by oil spills and gas flares.” Therefore you would suppose that the government, who controls the oil companies and have received insurmountable amounts of revenues from petroleum, would use the benefits from the oil that destroyed their environment to give back to the Nigerian people suffering from it. Not at all actually. Here is an excerpt from a BBC news article that talked about what Inengite had to say about the Nigerian government:

The government gets tax and royalties on the oil the companies produce.

The government is also a majority shareholder in Nigeria's oil industry and has made over $1.6trillion in revenue over the last 50 years, according to analysts at Standard Bank.

"I don't only blame the whites that came here, what about the government?" Mr Ingenite says.

"People in the government get nearly all the money from the economy."

When the BBC visited the first oil well a few kilometres down the road, we were approached by men working as commercial motorcycle taxis.

They all insisted oil companies, especially Royal Dutch Shell, should give them money as compensation for taking the oil.

But as we spoke, a local government official drove up in his brand new luxury four-wheel-drive car, an expensive gold watch dangling on his wrist.

Why don't people ask their leaders where their money is?

"They have hearts as black as coal, they are evil people - what would be the point?" said Julius Esam, 27.

The white people who discovered oil in Nigeria are not fully to blame for the living instabilities the Nigerians endure. It seems government is keeping almost all the revenues for themselves. The citizens do not even know what the officials are doing with the money. All they know is that they have it. Nigeria receives the most petroleum revenues out of every country in Africa. So why are so many more of it citizens in poverty now than there was when Chief Sunday Inengite was a little boy?

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/africa/7840310.stm

How to Pick Up Nigerian Women

I have added a picture on the top right corner of the page revealing the location of the Niger Delta on a world map. Sorry I was really hoping to create a picture slide show and post something today about Nigeria's newest president Umara Yar'Adua, but I have to work in half an hour until 10:00 and afraid I would be unable to compile something worth reading in such a short amount of time. Therefore I figured I'd post something a little more light-heartening than usual. Here is a little video I found about how to pick up women in Nigeria. Enjoy! I'll update again later.

FIshing in the Delta

Before oil was discovered in Nigeria fishing was a prominent form of farming for the citizens. In fact many peoples lives have depended on the fishing market. This article explains some of the effects the oil market has had on fishing in Nigeria as well as some of the citizens' thoughts on the modern fishing industry.

The future of more than 8 million people in the Niger Delta whose livelihoods depend upon fishing and the surrounding ecosystem hangs in the balance due to threats posed by industrialized fishing and shrimp farming.

These people live in coastal communities and fishing settlements in the fragile saline mangrove swamps of the Niger Delta, the breeding ground for more than 60 percent of the fish caught along the west coast of Africa.

Coastal communities are concerned about the progressive decline of their fish catch due to the pollution of their fishing grounds by oil companies like Shell, as well as unsustainable fishing practices by illegal trawlers. These trawlers ignore local and national laws, catching fish regardless of size, and destroying the fishing nets and traps of local people.

Fisherfolk also dread the proposed collaboration between Shell and the UN Development Program for industrialized shrimp farming in the Niger Delta. Although the project sponsors claim poverty alleviation for fishing communities as a main goal, local people have not been consulted in this blatantly top-down development scheme. The ulterior motive for the scheme is clear, with worldwide demand for tropical shrimps increasing dramatically in recent years.

Fisherfolk worry with good reason that the shrimp farms will pollute their fishing grounds and simultaneously destroy the mangrove forests, their source of wood for building boats and paddles, fish traps, fences and carvings.

Horror stories about shrimp farming in Asian countries including Thailand, Indonesia, India and Taiwan heighten people's fears. In these countries, shrimp farms have been accompanied by displacement, loss of traditional fishing rights, environmental degradation, land conflicts, migration to overcrowded cities, pollution by harmful antibiotics and chemicals, and gross inequalities between those who profit and those who lose. The promised local employment at the shrimp farms is generally less viable than people's original fishing-based livelihoods, catalyzing a downward spiral of poverty and environmental degradation.

Friends of the Earth Nigeria is increasing the heat on oil companies to accept liability for the messes they have made in the Niger Delta. This will allow fish, crabs, shrimp, crustaceans and other sea food to flourish again. At the same time, they are encouraging the development of small-scale fisheries and artisanal shrimp farming in order to relieve poverty and stress on the environment. They are also working with partners in the North, including Friends of the Earth Netherlands, to inform the public about the social, economic and ecological impacts of shrimp imports.

http://www.foei.org/en/publications/link/poverty/16bottom.html

Royal Dutch Shell and History

Here is some quick history I found through a source on Wikipedia.org.

Ogoniland is a 404-square-mile (1,050 km2) region in the southeast of the Niger Delta basin. Economically viable oil was discovered in Ogoniland in 1957, just one year after the discovery of Nigeria's first commercial petroleum deposit, with Shell and Chevron setting up shop throughout the next two decades. The Ogonis, a minority ethnic group of about half a million people who call Ogoniland home, and other ethnic groups in the region attest that during this time, the government began forcing them to abandon their land to oil companies without consultation, and offering negligible compensation. This is further supported by a 1979 constitutional addition which afforded the federal government full ownership and rights to all Nigerian territory and also decided that all compensation for land would "be based on the value of the crops on the land at the time of its acquisition, not on the value of the land itself." The Nigerian government could now distribute the land to oil companies as it deemed fit. The 1970s and 1980s saw the government's empty promises of benefits for the Niger Delta peoples fall through, with the Ogoni growing increasing dissatisfied and their environmental, social, and economic apparatus rapidly deteriorating the Movement for the Survival of the Ogoni People (MOSOP) was formed in 1992. MOSOP, spearheaded by Ogoni playwright and author Ken Saro-Wiwa, became the major campaigning organization representing the Ogoni people in their struggle for ethnic and environmental rights. Its primary targets, and at times adversaries, have been the Nigerian government and the oil company Royal Dutch Shell.

Royal Dutch Shell plc, commonly known simply as Shell, is a multinational oil company of Dutch and British origins. It is the second largest private sector energy corporation in the world, and one of the six "supermajors" (vertically integrated private sector oil exploration, natural gas, and petroleum product marketing companies). The company's main business is the exploration for and the production, processing, transportation, and marketing of oil and gas.

You may recognize Shell for it’s many gas stations off the highways in the U.S. I guess there is more to this multi-million dollar company than the gas we have in our engines. The Ogoni people have a history of struggling because of Shell’s presence in Nigeria. They have received nearly no assistance from their government and have a lack of social services to go to. They have been treated as a “separate and distinct ethic nationality,” as if they are not even Nigerian citizens at all. And it seems their government will do anything to keep the petroleum selling for their own benefits, even if it means keeping more than half it’s country in poverty.

BCC Coverage of Niger Delta.

This BBC news story will give you a good idea of the crisis of the Niger Delta. What surprised me the most is how most of the violence and kidnapping are being performed by children young enough to still be in school. Over 200 people kidnapped, being held for ransom. It almost seems like Nigerian children do not have much of a choice. With a lack of efficient education and health, they become rather easy targets for gang recruiters. I also was also astonished with how reliant fishing use to be in Nigeria, and how it almost completely vanished along with the birth of oil.

”PORT HARCOURT, Nigeria, Feb 17 (Reuters) - Nigerian youths attacked guards protecting three oil flow stations operated by Royal Dutch Shell on Thursday to push demands for more funds for the local community, security sources said.”

The gunmen were identified as loyal to the militant leader “Kitikata.” They wrote a letter demanding “they be given a contract to guard facilities at Nembe Creek, a hotspot for criminal raids, or else they would carry out further attacks.

Increased demand for community compensation of the Niger Delta’s vast amount of petroleum exports has led to numerous instances of violence. The oil facilities’ operations have resulted in many problems for the communities of the Niger Delta including environmental damages (oil spills, unpleasant stenches, etc.) and unemployment. This has led to an increase in gang activity, kidnappings of oil factory workers, and attacks on major pipelines. Violence in the Delta has cut a fifth of the country’s oil output in the last few years.

Niger Delta Crisis

This blog aims to bring global attention to the issue of poverty in the Niger Delta in Nigeria, Africa. While oil spills in most places around the world are all over international news stations, the Niger Delta very seldom receives media attention despite it’s average of around 4 spills per years.

Oil in Nigeria was first discovered in 1958. The Niger Delta has accounted for over three-fourths of the countries’ export earnings since 1975. Despite this 70% of the Delta’s 31 million people live below the poverty line. Instead of putting forth plans of action to decrease the lack of surplus in the Delta, the Nigeria government puts more spending towards expanding it military presence.

Judging by the amount of resources in the Niger Delta, Nigeria should be one of the wealthiest countries in Africa. I intend to dive deeper into this issue to discover how this irony came forth. Please feel free to post whatever you like and feed me whatever information that will assist.