Prince Wegwu, "We hold [oil workers] until they give us something"

Prince Wegwu, Chairman of the youth association in the village of Mbodo Aluu, “We hold the workers until they give us something…”

In the oil rich Niger Delta impoverished youth organize themselves into associations in the hope of gaining strength through numbers. Some have also taken up arms but Prince Wegwu, head of the youth association in the village of Mbodo Aluu, says his group use only non-violent means.

“Oil companies have 31 oil wells on my family’s land. We are told that they pump 30,000 barrels of oil out every single day of the year. Yet the companies give us nothing; the government gives us nothing. Is that fair?

So when oil workers come to fix equipment on our land we hold them until they give us something.

The oil companies tell us, ‘We are not allowed to give you money directly. The oil companies say, ‘We pay the government for the use of the land’, and yet they know they are using our land and that the government is cheating us.

The last time we held some workers was about two months ago. We saw them fixing an oil well so a big group of us went over and told them to give us something or we wouldn’t let them work.

They then said they can only give us a bit of drink money and they asked us how much drink money we wanted. We said, ‘Give us 20,000 naira [about $150]’ and they gave it to us and we let them alone.

We have gotten more but the most we ever got at one time was 50,000 naira [about $400]. If we had weapons we could get ten times that amount but we won’t do that.

What we are agitating for is 25 percent of all oil revenues. We know that the oil companies give money to people in secret and we want them to stop that. The companies should give part of the money to the oldest men in the village and the other part of it to the head of each family.

Sure some elders don’t always use the money correctly but that is where our youth associations come in: We would make sure the money does not go missing and ensure there is no violence.

But we don’t want money; we want jobs. We are all unemployed here.

As long as oil companies and the government give nothing, the youth will be angry. And it’s not good to get angry because that’s when things get violent.

dh/nr