Women protesters disrupt work at navy base

Hundreds of women protesters in Nigeria's southern Niger Delta have blocked access and disrupted construction of a new naval facility planned by the government to protect oil operations in the troubled region, residents said Friday. They said the women from the ethnic Ijaw community of Beniboye, including teenagers and grandmothers, began blocking the waterways leading to the proposed naval base on mouth of the Forcados river, near the Atlantic coast since last week. Navy vessels carrying construction materials were prevented from reaching the site. "The women are not happy the government wants to build a base there when they lack basic amenities," Johnson Ekpebide, a member of the community, told IRIN. Oil transnational, Royal/Dutch Shell, which produces about half of Nigeria's oil, has one of its two main oil export terminals near the proposed naval base. Captain Titus Awoyemi, the commanding officer for the naval base in the nearby oil town of Warri, told reporters he had received a request from some members of the community demanding a six million naira (US $47,244)compensation to allow work to continue. Nigeria, Africa's biggest oil producer, has in the last decade seen an upsurge of protests by communities in the southern oil region, pressing for more access to the oil wealth produced on their land. Armed militants frequently disrupt oil operations, kidnapping and taking both foreign and Nigerian workers of oil companies hostage for ransome. President Olusegun Obasanjo, since his election in 1999, has moved to boost military presence in the region to protect oil installations from the disruptive activities of the militants. In July 2002 hundreds of women besieged the Escravos oil export terminal of US transational, ChevronTexaco for 10 days, to back demands for jobs and amenities for their nearby communities. Since then women have increasingly taken a frontline role in the oil region protests.