Oil-producing region demands fairer deal

Conflict is simmering once again in Nigeria’s crisis-prone oil-producing Delta, with regular reports of local communities shutting down oil facilities, raiding river traffic in the remote region, and reprisal attacks on their isolated villages by the security forces. Four years after the execution of Ken Saro-Wiwa and eight other minority Ogoni rights activists by Nigeria’s then military government, the issues remain the same. Impoverished local people are protesting against the environmental destruction caused by the oil industry, and are demanding greater control over the resources their land produces - which accounts for 90 percent of the country’s foreign exchange earnings - little of which they see in terms of local development spending. The Ijaws, the country’s fourth largest ethnic group, spread over six states in the Delta, have gone a step further. In December last year, they issued an ultimatum for the withdrawal of Nigerian security forces and the multinational oil companies from their territory. The 11 December Kaiama Declaration also demanded a national sovereign conference to discuss the position of ethnic nationalities within Nigeria’s federation. The Ijaws are not calling for secession. But they want to own their resources and land, with power devolved through a new federal system, in which ethnic nationalites, rather than the state, would retain the bulk of revenues generated from their territories. “The object of our struggle is self-determination and socio-economic justice,” Ijaw Youth Council member and environmental lawyer, Oronto Douglas, told IRIN. “We are not saying we want control of our resources so the rest of the country can go to blazes,” Douglas, Saro-Wiwa’s former lawyer, added. “But I think if someone has been patient for 42 years [since oil was first discovered], the world should commend him.” At the end of December, in an escalation of the confrontation with the authorities, some 24 people died when soldiers opened fire on a demonstration by Ijaw youths in the Bayelsa state capital of Yenagowa. The military government of Abdulsalami Abubakar has since ended the state of emergency, but the area - among one of the poorest in the country - remains tense and heavily policed. Ijaw youths have turned to their god of justice, Igbesu, to back their cause. The so-called “Igbesu boys” - according to tradition unarmed fighters - have declared a two-month period of mourning for the dead in Yenagowa. But activists say after that period, protected by their god, they will force the military and oil workers off their land. “It’s a plan, not a threat,” a member of the youth council, Pius Waritime, told IRIN. In the meantime, Ijaw strategy has been to occupy and close oil facilities, to push the government to negotiate. According to Douglas, community action has shut in 500,000 barrels of oil a day, out of a normal output of 2.1 million barrels in just two months. With the ending of continuous gas flaring from installations, some of which are situated in the middle of villages, “we have given some of our people a wink of sleep,” he added. It is, however, a high-risk approach. Douglas charges that the oil companies have provided the army with helicopters and speedboats to attack Ijaw villages in a bid to re-open the facilities. In January, two people were killed and 28 wounded in an army raid on Opia and Ikiyan, press reports say. The Ijaws fear more widespread attacks. Along with other Delta people, the Ijaws face grinding poverty, unemployment, and are deeply frustrated by the neglect of successive governments. Community agitation has, therefore, also spawned pure and simple banditry. But the hijacking of oil workers and attacks on river traffic in the Warri region are condemned by Douglas as the work of “a few hungry and angry elements”. The three political parties in Nigeria’s transition have all promised a fairer deal to the oil-producing regions. According to an “Igbesu boy”, the current government “doesn’t seem comfortable in handling the issue”. “It would be better to deal with the civilians,” he says. “The military would not like to see unarmed youths have their way.” But given the depth of anger among Ijaws, it is an issue that cannot be swept away. “Every Ijaw man believes they are in a struggle, even if you may not be directly involved in it,” he told IRIN.