Of all Nigeria’s larger-than-life problems–ravenous corruption, unlivable cities, ethnic chaos–the crisis in the delta is by far the most urgent. The government gets 80 percent of its revenues from the vast oil fields under and around the Ijaws’ villages. Yet the 2 million-barrel-a-day gusher has bypassed the delta’s brutally poor people. In 1995 the military regime executed Ken Saro-Wiwa, an ethnic Ogoni, and eight other local activists on trumped-up murder charges in the city of Port Harcourt. If the plan was to scare the delta into silence, it backfired. The execution brought international condemnation upon the junta and harsh criticism on the oil giants in the delta.
No one is sure what Nigeria’s newly elected civilian president will do about the Ijaws. The candidate favored to win the vote last weekend was Olesegun Obasanjo, the military ruler from 1976 to 1979. Back then he crushed labor unions and the press. Now he insists he’s a democrat and a reformer–although his backers include most of Nigeria’s wealthiest men. Bright Abilo, an Ijaw youth leader, warns: “If the civilian government does not listen to us, there will be war.”
It’s no idle threat. Delta rebels don’t need to match the Army’s firepower. With few or no guns, saboteurs could inflict serious economic harm on the government. And the Ijaws are unquestionably desperate. Nembe Creek, a typical straw-and-mud village inside the delta, has no electricity, no safe drinking water and no infrastructure. Children with distended bellies and orange hair, symptoms of severe malnutrition, splash in a pool of polluted water. Locals say the waste leaked from a modern oil-flow station. Less than 50 meters outside the village, it spews heat and noxious fumes–and occasional spills of crude–24 hours a day.
On the far side of the delta, hundreds of kilometers away, an Ijaw named Resident Kofa lives in a riverside village ringed by oil from a recent pipeline rupture. “We are suffering,” he says. “Our government doesn’t give us a voice.” Many of the more than 5 million Ijaws complain that Abuja ignores them because they are outnumbered by Nigeria’s three largest ethnic groups, the Hausa, the Yoruba and the Ibo, who together constitute roughly half of the country’s 120 million people.
Late last year Ijaw protesters made themselves heard. They cut the delta’s output by 20 percent by taking over flow stations and oil terminals. The companies asked the government in Abuja to restore order. Ever since then the delta has been under virtual military occupation. Gunboats patrol the creeks, and police have set up checkpoints every dozen kilometers along the river roads. Often the troops get out of hand. On Jan. 4, for instance, soldiers and police in boats and a Chevron-owned helicopter strafed and burnt the villages of Opia and Ikenyan. Four villagers were killed. More than 50 are missing and presumed dead. Chevron, saying it did not condone the action, is investigating. The government claims to have pulled out some troops since late last year and says rogue troops are being disciplined.
Security forces have also repeatedly fired on peaceful demonstrations. “They want to exterminate the Ijaw,” says Goddey Nieeigsa, 31, who survived such an attack in December. He has been in a hospital ever since, his leg shattered by a bullet. Other activists refuse to be intimidated. Emomotimi Iteimor, 23, stands on the deck of an Ijaw-occupied Shell flow station south of Warri and vows: “We will not leave until they bring electricity, schools and jobs–or go.”
The oil giants insist they have no quarrel with the Ijaws. They blame the delta’s problem on rapacious government officials. Shell spokesman Bobo Brown says his company, the largest multinational operating in Nigeria, has recently set up a development committee that will give more than $40 million this year to build schools, libraries and jetties. Campaigning in the delta last week, Obasanjo himself promised to bring jobs and development.
Locals doubt it. As military ruler, Obasanjo created the 1978 Land Use Act, which turned all natural resources into federal property. But they haven’t quit hoping. “The cost of fighting a guerrilla war in the delta would be five times more than developing it,” says Dimieari Von Kemedi, a local youth leader. “I have no doubt the government knows that. The delta cannot be conquered by the military. It’s too dense, too confusing. It will be a terrible war.” No one wants to see a test of that prediction.
