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The Guardian: Delta force

Nigeria’s oil-rich coast supplies the country with 90% of its foreign earnings, yet for years its wealth has been siphoned off by the government and oil companies. Now a rebel army is attempting to ’emancipate’ the region by blowing up pipelines and kidnapping foreign workers. Chris McGreal meets the fighters

Thursday May 10, 2007

Somewhere in the Niger delta, a score of fit young men grasp colonial-era British rifles, Kalashnikovs and a couple of heavy machine guns. Gun posts face the water to guard the rudimentary military camp with its wooden barracks, cookhouse and the only generator for miles. An attack is unlikely to come from any other direction.

One of the soldiers carries forward an old table and sets it down next to the river. The rest of the men fan out behind it as a short,stocky man in his forties sits down, leans across and introduces himself as General “I Am”, the “general officer commanding the western flank of the Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta” (Mend).

The western flank, he explains, extends from the Chevron oil company’s gas flare on the edge of the sea, past scores of villages and towns dotting the creeks and rivers that carve up the Nigerian coast, to a stronghold within striking distance of Warri, the main town in the area.

“This is our territory. The soldiers dare not come here now. They came and we defeated them,” he says. “We are civilised people, educated people, and we do not want our children to be deprived as we have been deprived so other people can get rich from what is under our feet. The oil companies and government have had many years to treat us right. They have never done it. Now we are making them think.”

One of the general’s men later says that he is “uneducated but a good leader – the number two in command of Mend who has killed Nigerian soldiers”.

The general and his fellow rebels have done more than that. The group has seized control of a large part of the sprawling swamps and waterways of the Niger delta to drive out foreign oil companies and shut down the source of the country’s wealth, and a crucial component of America’s fuel supply.

The Nigerian government is already losing about £500m a month in oil revenue because the rebellion has forced Shell to stop half of its operation and other firms to cut back drilling, following the abduction of hundreds of workers in audacious raids on pipelines and pumping stations.

Mend launched one of its most damaging attacks earlier this week when it blew up three pipelines belonging to an Italian company, Eni, halting the pumping of 150,000 barrels a day. The rebels have also reached as far as 60km (37 miles) out to sea to snatch oil workers from offshore platforms. This week, four Americans were seized at gunpoint from a barge off the coast, and about two dozen other oil workers were kidnapped from other installations. Eleven Filipinos and South Koreans were released after a few days in captivity, but at least 13 other foreign workers are still being held.

Even the streets of the region’s main city, Port Harcourt, are virtually a no-go area for foreigners, who are abducted in broad daylight and from bars at night. More than 250 have been taken in all, and the oil companies have stumped up large sums to get them back. Two were killed by the Nigerian army during a rescue attempt.

The militants’ reputation among people in the region has grown as they have robbed banks, assaulted police stations, killed Nigerian soldiers and freed prisoners. They have also blown up some of the thousands of miles of pipelines running through the delta, and Shell’s loading terminal for its huge oil tankers, forcing it to suspend the export of nearly 500,000 barrels a day.

The situation has deteriorated so badly in just a few months that the US, worried about the stability of its fifth largest source of oil, has sent old coastguard cutters to protect oil platforms and troops to train Nigerian forces in how to fight in the creeks. It has made little difference. Mend’s campaign continues to grow, built on a foundation of anger, bitterness and, above all, a burning sense of injustice at decades of exploitation by western oil interests and Nigeria’s self-enriching politicians and military leaders.

In 1995, the Nigerian army dragged the writer and environmentalist Ken Saro-Wiwa to the gallows in the dank execution chamber of Port Harcourt prison, then threw his body into a pit of lime to deny him a proper grave. The military declared that the deaths of Saro-Wiwa and eight other Ogoni leaders had saved Nigeria from civil war and break up. Saro-Wiwa’s sometimes violent campaign for a fair deal for the marginalised Ogoni people had threatened the financial interests of the Shell oil company and Nigeria’s military rulers. It also raised the old spectre of secession, a taboo since Biafra’s failed bid for independence claimed more than a million lives in the late 1960s.

Twelve years later, the legacy of that judicial lynching has not been to quell unrest but instead to spawn the biggest insurgency since the Biafra war. Nigeria’s president, Olusegun Obasanjo, has denounced Mend as a group of criminals and terrorists, but support for the organisation has permeated deep into the region. The delta is the source of 90% of Nigeria’s foreign earnings but its 10 million inhabitants have little to show for it except environmental devastation. Most homes have no electricity, running water or access to health care. Schools are derelict. There are few jobs.

The bitterness is so deeply felt that some politicians in the president’s own party publicly say that the rebels’ cause is just, even if they object to the strategy of abducting foreigners.

General I Am is evidently in charge at his riverside camp but most of the talking is done by two other men who, like almost everyone associated with Mend, decline to give their real names. One identifies himself as a biochemist, the other as an accountant. They say they turned their back on their professional lives because their families were suffering and the only jobs they could find were poorly paid. “People have been marginalised, widely neglected for years,” says the biochemist. “We have the oil, the God-given resources, but we have no electricity, no water, no hospitals. Everything has gone to extinction. The government has abandoned us as a people, and meanwhile they are sucking from us.

“Where these oil companies operate there is electricity, there is water. But just outside, in the host communities, there is nothing. See the structures people live in. People are living hand to mouth. They have a short lifespan. People die at a tender age. They piss in the water, shit in the water and then drink the water. Most of these companies don’t fulfil their social responsibilities. What they do in other countries they don’t do here, and what they do here they don’t do in other countries.”

Mend fighters move through the waterways on fibreglass speedboats powered by roaring outboard engines. While their claim to control thousands of square miles of territory may be overstated, the creeks and rivers cannot be said to be in the hands of the Nigerian government either. Not a soldier or policeman was to be seen when I visited the rebels. They move freely in and out of villages and towns, often with their guns slung loosely and at ease, as if they are not expecting trouble.

A few kilometres along the waterway from the Mend camp is the village of Ojudo-Ama. Its scores of inhabitants live in wood and bamboo houses raised on stilts above the tide and linked by rickety walkways. All the water for drinking and cooking arrives in large drums filled upriver beyond the penetration of the sea and then balanced precariously on canoes for the hours-long journey home.

There are two lightbulbs in Ojudo-Ama, run from a single small generator. One lights the living room of the village chief, Poye Powei-Eritei, who is also a pastor at the church, the largest structure in the village.

“There’s an absolute lack of basic social facilities. It is as though they think we are not even part of Nigeria,” he says. “We are a suffering people because the activities of the oil exploration have made fishing very difficult for us. Because of that we are in serious hunger. You can see the abject poverty. The most important thing for us is water. Water is a major problem, and then a hospital. There’s no hospital anywhere here. It takes six hours by boat.”

Mend is mostly an Ijaw movement, and ethnic rivalry underpins its struggle. The Ijaws are the largest ethnic group in the delta and the fourth largest in Nigeria. But they claim that Yorubas and Hausas, the two largest groups, who have dominated the political and military leadership of the country, have directed a disproportionate share of the resources to developing their regions.

“The Niger delta state is the source of the wealth of the nation,” says the accountant at General I Am’s side. “Without oil there is nothing to finance the budget. Why should they use oil to develop other places and not us? In the north, all the villages have electricity and water. Abuja [Nigeria’s capital] has been transformed into a mini-London and we are abandoned.”

Among the larger towns under Mend control is Arogbo, on the river’s edge. It is the most mystical of towns to the Ijaw and holds the shrine to the god of war, Egbesu. Denying control to the Nigerian government has been an important step in establishing Mend’s credentials among the Ijaw. Even here, with a paved road not far downriver, there is no fresh water supply. There are electricity pylons and cables, but they are linked to a generator that rarely runs because the residents can’t afford the fuel. The locals want to be connected to the national grid, which provides power at a fraction of the cost.

In Ojudo-Ama, Powei-Eritei leans over the railings of his balcony and gestures to the south-west toward one of the huge gas flares speckled across the region that have come to symbolise what people see as the indifference of the oil companies. Communities that have no electricity live in the perpetual light of the giant flames burning off natural gas from the oil wells. Shell alone has a network of 73 gas flares that could provide enough electricity to power every village in the areas around its oil facilities. But it was easier and cheaper to burn the gas off.

What might have been a benefit to the delta peoples instead became a nightmare as the flares killed off vegetation over large areas and, villagers claim, poisoned them with pollutants released by the flames. Only since the delta’s descent into rebellion have the oil firms and governments slowly moved to make more use of the wasted natural gas.

Hostage taking and sabotage have been a by-product of oil in the delta for years. Often the abductions were carried out by young men demanding jobs. The oil companies paid them off and found themselves caught in a cycle of kidnappings and blackmail. The sabotage was sometimes intentional and at times the accidental result of the widespread looting of oil. Communities cracked pipelines to siphon off fuel, sometimes with devastating results as pipeline explosions killed hundreds each year. Some were particularly horrific. A few years ago, 312 villagers scooping fuel from a burst pipeline deep in the bush at Viri-Court were killed after two wheelbarrows carrying off the plundered oil collided and provided the spark for the blast that ripped nearly a mile along the pipeline. Trees as far as five miles away were scorched by the explosion.

But the financial damage to Nigeria was caused by the big-time theft, known as “bunkering”, in which oil was siphoned off wholesale into tankers for sale across Nigeria’s borders. As much as 10% of the country’s oil was stolen in this way, and many got rich off it, including soldiers and politicians. Mend’s arrival changed the equation, bringing together disparate groups and shifting the focus from extortion to coherent political demands.

Mend was born out of an incident in 2004 when a delta strongman, Mujahid Dokubo-Asari, declared “all-out war” on the Nigerian government over its neglect and abuse of his region. A year later, he was arrested and accused of treason. Not long afterwards, Mend made its appearance with an attack on a Shell facility by well-armed rebels in three speedboats, forcing the Nigerian navy to retreat and abducting four oil workers from a Shell boat. In a parallel attack, Mend blew up a Shell pipeline. Four days later, it hit a Shell pumping station, killing 14 soldiers and two of the company’s caterers. Shell swiftly shut down one oilfield nine miles offshore, one of its largest, fearing that it was no longer safe to move by boat.

The voice of Mend – and possibly its leader – is a mysterious being who goes by the name of Jomo Gbomo. He is contactable only by email, and acknowledges that Gbomo is not his real name. It is not even certain that Gbomo is one person, but the Mend fighters under General I Am acknowledge him as their leader.

“Our aim is to force the oil companies out of the Niger delta [or] otherwise compel the Nigerian government to cede its control over the resources of the Niger delta to its indigenes,” said Gbomo in reply to emailed questions from the Guardian. “We intend to achieve this solely through armed struggle and perhaps, at some stage, negotiations based upon the rights of the people of the Niger delta as agreed in the pre-independence constitution.”

Gbomo accuses the oil companies and successive Nigerian governments, civilian and military, of a cynical conspiracy against the people of the delta. “Successive governments have deliberately resisted developing the delta. For natural growth, certain basic infrastructures must be put in place as has been done in other parts of Nigeria. We have no roads, electricity or drinking water. The refusal of the central government to provide these basics contributed immensely to stunting the growth of the delta,” he wrote.

“The oil companies, on the other hand, have refused to act responsibly. Pipes are never replaced, leading to massive spillages for which they refuse to compensate villagers. Farmland and rivers are totally destroyed … ”

At present, the government transfers 13% of the oil revenues back to the delta states that generate them. Until recently, it was just 3%. Mend wants 50% of the money to come back to the state government, to match what used to happen when cocoa was the main export.

The problem is not only the amount of money, but who controls it and how it is used. The delta has little to show for eight years of democratic rule and millions of dollars supposedly poured into rebuilding the region. It does have a few new main roads, but most communities still have yet to get running water and electricity.

The government says the cost of running services into the creeks is prohibitive, although presumably the $380bn (£190bn) that Nigeria’s anti-corruption commission believes has been stolen from government coffers since independence from Britain in 1960 would more than cover the bill. All but five of Nigeria’s 36 state governors are under investigation by the anti-corruption commission. They include Diepreye Alamieyeseigha, the former governor of oil-rich Bayelsa state, who fled to Britain when he was accused of stealing millions of pounds. When he was arrested in Britain, he dressed as a woman to flee back to Nigeria.

“Corruption on the state government level, like everywhere else in Nigeria, sums up the hopelessness of the people of the Niger delta,” said Gbomo.

Mend faces a dilemma. Even if the government were to bow to its demand for half of the oil revenues to be returned to the delta states, that would not guarantee the money would be spent to develop the creeks. So the group wants the oil companies to lead the way by getting into the construction business.

“Chevron operate in this area and they should come and develop it,” says the biochemist. “We want immediate intervention. We cannot wait for the government to sort itself out and end this corruption. When we get intervention there will be positive changes in our lives and we will relax our struggle. If it doesn’t happen, the struggle will definitely go on.”

Shell now says that it “agrees that, in the past, not enough oil revenue has been returned to the oil-producing areas for developmental purposes. But the company cannot dictate how its contribution to the national purse should be spent – this is a matter for Nigeria.”

There are those, however, who believe that such claims are an attempt by the oil companies to deny responsibility for a problem that their own policies created.

Greg Afoegba was one of a group of Nigerian students who in 1988 hand-delivered a letter to Buckingham Palace addressed to the Queen. “Nigeria was once under the Queen of England. We wrote to her about the cheating and underdevelopment, about how she can help. We wanted her to intervene. To this date there has been no response,” he says.

Today, Afoegba is a local politician with Obasanjo’s ruling People’s Democratic party. He backs the government on most things but says it has got it wrong on the Niger delta, and supports Mend. For 10 years, Afoegba worked for a subsidiary of a French-owned oil firm as a procurement manager. He says that all the oil companies simply bought off local chiefs and politicians to keep the population in line.

“The oil companies are the first problem in the Niger delta,” he says. “If they know the problem is with the youths, they go to the youths and give them money. If the problem is with chiefs, they give the chiefs money. They play one off against the other. Over time, this has snowballed into a monster. They incite one group against another. They made monsters who became heroes.”

The relationship between Shell and some Ogoni chiefs laid Ken Saro-Wiwa’s path to the gallows. He accused four chiefs of being bought off by the oil company as part of Shell’s effort to end the dispute with the Ogoni. In his fury, Saro-Wiwa railed against the chiefs, calling them “vultures”. The four were killed not long after. The military government convicted Saro-Wiwa of inciting murder.

Shell was seen as particularly close to the despised military governments because it put Nigerian policemen on its payroll and used them as private security men. When the government sent police and troops to suppress opposition to the oil companies, suspicious Nigerians said it was done for Shell’s benefit.

After the public relations nightmare around Saro-Wiwa’s execution, Shell adopted new policies. It said it abandoned pay-offs in favour of spending millions of dollars on community development projects each year. The company says it has identified nearly 1,000 sites that need cleaning up and has already dealt with two-thirds of these. However, it says, it cannot get access to some sites because local communities will not allow it in. It also says it has created employment by using local people for the clean-up work. Gas flares are finally being used to generate power for the national grid.

Gbomo says it is all too late. Mend wants much more and will keep fighting until it gets it. “We have realised the futility of dialogue alone as a means of righting the injustice in the Niger delta” ·

http://www.guardian.co.uk/g2/story/0,,2076072,00.html

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