Situation in oil region yet to improve, HRW says

The quality of life and governance have yet to improve in Nigeria’s impoverished Niger Delta despite the change from military to civilian government in the West African country in 1999, Human Rights Watch (HRW) said on Tuesday. In a report titled, ‘The Niger Delta: No Democracy Dividend’, the international human rights group said President Olusegun Obasanjo’s government was still repressing protests by deploying personnel from the armed forces at oil facilities in the oil-rich southern region. Though more revenue has flowed to states in the south, ordinary people had not benefitted, the report said. As a result, the people in the region have remained very angry with both the government and the oil companies, and the disruption of oil operations through occupation of facilities and other forms of protests has continued. "The Nigerian government still seems to support oil production at any cost," said Bronwen Manby, deputy director of the Africa Division of Human Rights Watch, who wrote the report. "And the oil companies too often go along with whatever the government does - or even make things worse," she added. According to the report, a November 1999 incident in which soldiers destroyed the southern town of Odi, killing hundreds of people in reprisal for the killing of 12 policemen, appears to have defined President Obasanjo’s approach to dealing with the region’s restiveness. While pointing out that nothing on the same scale had happened since, HRW recalled an incident in the village of Liama in which the navy reacted to the seizure of boats and employees of a contracting company working for Shell by launching reprisal attacks, burning down dozens of houses and killing about four people. The report said because of the remoteness and difficult terrain - mangrove and swamp - of the oil region, security forces were inclined to act with impunity there. Such incidents often went unreported or reached the mass media late and in distorted form. Oil companies often exacerbated the violence in the region by making pay-offs in compensation for oil spills or access to drilling sites, which split communities into factions fighting each other. "In Finima, where ExxonMobil has a large export terminal, the oil company made a substantial compensation payment which ended up being used by one faction in a community dispute to bring in the security forces to arrest their opponents in the village," said HRW. HRW said it wanted the Nigerian government to investigate members of the security forces implicated in rights violations in the oil region, including those committed by preceding military regimes. Oil companies, the report said, should also monitor the conduct of law enforcement agencies in their operational areas, and voice their concerns both publicly and in private with the concerned authorities. They were also advised to have third parties audit payments they make to communities or their representatives. The report also urges leading industrialised countries in the G8 and the European Union to work towards setting up "a binding code of conduct for multinational oil companies" based in their countries to ensure they conform with internationally acceptable human rights standards. "The G8 should require transnational corporations to publish all net taxes, fees, royalties and other payments made to the Nigerian state," it added. Full report