THE IMPACT OF THE CRISIS IN THE NIGER DELTA AREAS

THE IMPACT OF THE CRISIS IN THE NIGER DELTA AREAS ON ENERGY PRODUCTION, DISTRIBUTION AND CONSUPTION


A SEMINAR PRESENTED
BY

(AGWANIHU EZINWANNE FABIAN)


IN PARTIAL FULFILMENT OF THE REQUIREMENT FOR THE AWARD OF BACHELOR DEGREE IN EDUCATION/ECONOMICS, ALVAN IKOKU COLLEGE OF EDUCATION,OWERRI, IMO STATE.


September, 2008.

CHAPTER ONE
INTROUCTION
NIGERIA’S NIGER DELTA COMMUNITY
The Niger Delta of the Niger River in Nigeria is a densely populated region sometimes called the Oil Rivers because it was once a major producer of palm oil. The area was the British Oil Rivers Protectorate from 1885 until 1893, when it was expanded and became the Niger Coast Protectorate.
The Niger Delta as defined officially by the Nigerian Government, extends over about 70,000 km² and makes up 7.5% of Nigeria’s land mass. Historically and cartographically, it consists of present day Bayelsa, Delta and Rivers States. In the year 2000, however, Obansanjo's regime expanded its definition to include Abia State, Akwa Ibom State, Cross River State, Edo State, Imo State and Ondo State. Some 31 million people of more than 40 ethnic groups including the Ijaw and Igbo people, speaking some 250 dialects live in the Delta.
The South-South Niger Delta includes Akwa Ibom State, Bayelsa State, Cross River State, Delta State, Edo State, and Rivers State.
Western Niger Delta consists of the western section of the coastal South-South Nigeria which includes River State, Delta State and Bayelsa State. The western Niger Delta is an heterogeneous society with several ethnic groups with Ijaw as the majority. Other ethnic groups include Urhobo, Ezon, Isoko, Itsekiri, Kolokunu, Ekpetiama Igbriran, Atissa, Biseni, Nemba, Ogbia, Ogbein, Ogoni, Etche, Ogba/Egbema, and Ikwerre (Igbo). Their livelihoods are primarily based on fishing and farming.
Eastern Niger Delta consists of the eastern section of the coastal South Nigeria which includes Akwa Ibom State and Cross River State. The eastern Niger Delta region has the Efik people (Annang / Efik / Ibibio, Oron and Eket people who are all related with a common language and ancestors were all referred to as Efik or Calabar people in early Nigerian history). The eastern Niger Delta is a very homogeneous society. The people of this area share common ancestors and a common language (with some dialect). Their capital city at Calabar located at the coastal southeast of Nigeria (eastern Niger Delta) served as the major trading and shipping center during the pre-colonial and colonial period. Calabar also served as the first capital of Nigeria and the point of entry of Western religion and Western education into southeastern Nigeria. The combined population of the Ibibio, Annang and Efik people is the fourth largest single-language-group in Nigeria.
Coincidentally, Nigeria has become Africa's biggest producer of petroleum, including many oil wells in the Oil Rivers. Some 2 million barrels a day are extracted in the Niger Delta. Since 1975, the region has accounted for more than 75% of Nigeria's export earnings. Much of the natural gas extracted in oil wells in the Delta is immediately burned, or flared, into the air at a rate of approximately 70 million m³ per day. This is equivalent to 41% of African natural gas consumption, and forms the single largest source of greenhouse gas emissions on the planet. The environmental devastation associated with the industry and the lack of distribution of oil wealth have been the source and/or key aggravating factors of numerous environmental movements and inter-ethnic conflicts in the region, including recent guerilla activity by the Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta (MEND).
Development in the Niger-Delta of Nigeria is skewed in disfavor of the geographical zone of the Niger-Delta of Nigeria because of public policies that have consistently failed to improve the welfare of the people. Part of the development enigma is orchestrated by the exploitative tendencies of multinational oil companies that have blandly plundered for fossil fuel and thereby truncated the sustainability of the indigenous environment. The continuing crisis of youth restiveness and resistance is traceable to this larger development issue. This seminar paper examines the prevailing social trend in the Niger-Delta and concludes rather emphatically that some of the consequences of social disequilibrium (e.g., the ubiquity of social miscreants [area boys], juvenile delinquents, and other deviant behaviors) cannot be understood independently of environmental problems that stem from a warped development initiative that roundly undermines the existential base of the Niger-Delta peoples.
The people of the Niger delta states live in extreme poverty even in the face of great material wealth found in the waters by their homes. According to Amnesty International 70% of the six million people in the Niger River Delta live off of less than 1$ US per day. For many people this means finding work in a labor market, which is in many instances hostile to them. Much of the labour in the past has been imported. As the government official’s siphon off all the money generated from oil sales the infrastructure suffers. Most of the villages do not have electricity or even tap water. They do not have good access to schools or medical clinics. For many, even clean drinking water is difficult to come by. The deterioration of the infrastructure in the delta states is so severe it is even a problem in the more urban areas. One example of this is the airport at Port Harcourt. Part of a fence was not properly maintained and an Air France flight hit a herd of cattle on the runway.
The leadership of the Niger Delta region is responsible for most of the underdevelopment in the region. There is large scale corruption amongst the elected leaders especially governors and the leaders have helped sponsor the militants groups kidnapping innocent people and sabotaging efforts by the federal government for any infrastructure development. Indicted corrupt leaders are also cheered by the Niger Delta people.
Government and private initiatives to develop the Niger Delta region have been introduced recently. These include the Niger Delta Development Commission (NDDC), a Government initiative, and the Development Initiative (DEVIN), and the new Niger Delta Master plan by President Yar’Adua.


CHAPTER TWO
ENERGY PRODUCTION IN NIGERIA
PETROLEUM
The extraction and drilling of petroleum in Nigeria is the largest industry and main generator of GDP in the West African nation which is also the continent's most populous. Since the British discovered oil in the Niger Delta in the late 1950s, the oil industry has been marred by political and economic strife largely due to a long history of corrupt military regimes and complicity of multinational corporations, notably Royal Dutch Shell. Despite this, it was not until the early 1990s that the situation was given international attention, particularly following the murder by the Nigerian state of playwright and activist Ken Saro-Wiwa, provoking the immediate suspension of Nigeria from the Commonwealth of Nations. Nigeria is identified by the international community and the firms in operation there as a major concern with regards to human rights and environmental degradation. The Nigerian government, oil corporations, and oil-dependent Western countries have been criticized as too slow to implement reforms aimed at aiding a desperately under-developed area and remediation of the unsustainable environmental degradation that petroleum extraction has wrought.
PRODUCTION AND EXPLORATION
As of 2000, oil and gas exports accounted for more than 98% of export earnings and about 83% of federal government revenue, as well as generating more than 40% of its GDP. It also provides 95% of foreign exchange earnings, and about 65% of government budgetary revenues.
Nigeria's proven oil reserves are estimated by the U.S. United States Energy Information Administration (EIA) at between 16 and 22 billion barrels (3.5×109 m³), but other sources claim there could be as much as 35.3 billion barrels (5.61×109 m³). Its reserves make Nigeria the tenth most petroleum-rich nation, and by the far the most affluent in Africa. In mid-2001 its crude oil production was averaging around 2.2 million barrels (350,000 m³) per day.
Nearly all of the country's primary reserves are concentrated in and around the delta of the Niger River, but off-shore rigs are also prominent in the well-endowed coastal region. Nigeria is one of the few major oil-producing nations still capable of increasing its oil output and unlike most of the other OPEC countries; Nigeria is not projected to exceed peak production until at least 2009. The reason for Nigeria's relative unproductively is primarily OPEC regulations on production in order to regulate prices on the international market. More recently, production has been forced to a halt intermittently by the demands and actions of the Niger Delta's inhabitants who feel they are being exploited.
Nigeria has 159 total oil fields and 1481 wells in operation according to the Ministry of Petroleum Resources. The most productive region of the nation is the coastal Niger Delta Basin in the Niger Delta or "South-south" region which encompasses 78 of the 159 oil fields. Most of Nigeria's oil fields are small and scattered, and as of 1990, these small unproductive fields accounted for 62.1% of all Nigerian production. This contrasts with the sixteen largest fields which produced 37.9% of Nigeria's petroleum at that time. As a result of the numerous small fields, an extensive and well-developed pipeline network has been engineered to transport the crude. Also due to the lack of highly productive fields, money from the jointly operated (with the federal government) companies is constantly directed towards petroleum exploration and production.
Much of Nigeria's petroleum is classified as "light" or "sweet", meaning the oil is largely free of sulphur. Nigeria is the largest producer of sweet oil in OPEC. This sweet oil is similar in constitution to petroleum extracted from North Sea. This crude oil is known as "Bonny light". Names of other Nigerian crude, all of which are named according to export terminal, are Qua Ibo, Escravos blend, Brass river, Forcados, and Pennington Anfan.
In terms of exportation, the U.S. remains Nigeria's largest customer for crude oil, accounting for 40% of the country's total oil exports; Nigeria provides about 10% of overall U.S. oil imports and ranks as the fifth-largest source for U.S. imported oil.
There are six petroleum exportation terminals in the country; Shell owns two, while Mobil, Chevron, Texaco, and Agip own one each. Shell also owns the Forcados Terminal, which is capable of storing 13 million barrels (2,100,000 m³) of crude oil in conjunction with the nearby Bonny Terminal. Mobil operates primarily out of the Qua Iboe Terminal in Akwa Ibom State, while Chevron owns the Escravos Terminal located in Delta State and has a storage capacity of 3.6 million barrels (570,000 m³). Agip operates the Brass Terminal in Brass, a town 113 km southwest of Port Harcourt and has a storage capacity of 3,558,000 barrels (565,700 m³). Texaco operates the Pennington Terminal.

NATURAL GAS
Natural gas reserves are well over 100 trillion ft³ (2,800 km³), the gas reserves are three times as substantial as the crude oil reserves. The biggest natural gas initiative is the Nigerian Liquefied Natural Gas Company, which is operated jointly by several companies and the state. It began exploration and production in 1999. Chevron is also attempting to create the Escravos Gas Utilization project which will be capable of producing 160 million standard ft³ of gas per day.
There is also a gas pipeline, known as the West African Gas Pipeline, in the works but has encountered numerous setbacks. The pipeline would allow for transportation of natural gas to Benin, Ghana, Togo, and Cote d'Ivoire. The majority of Nigeria's natural gas is flared off and it is estimated that Nigeria loses 18.2 million USD daily from this.

STATE OF THE OIL SECTOR
The Nigerian oil sector can be categorized into three main sub-sectors, namely, upstream, downstream and gas. The most problematic over the years has been the downstream sector, which is the distribution arm and connection with final consumers of refined petroleum products in the domestic economy. The incessant crisis in supply of products culminated in the decision by Government in 2003 to deregulate the downstream sub-sector. However, the manner of its implementation has been controversial because it ignores the economic realities in Nigeria.
Oil production by the joint venture (JV) companies accounts for about 95% of Nigeria’s crude oil production. Shell, which operates the largest joint venture in Nigeria, with 55% Government interest (through the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation, NNPC), produces about 50% of Nigeria’s crude oil. Exxon Mobil, Chevron Texaco, ENI/Agip and TotalfinaElf operate the other JV’s, in which the NNPC has 60% stake.
The over-dependence on oil has created vulnerability to the vagaries of the international market. In particular, the place of oil in the psyche of the average Nigerian has become more profound since the "imperfect" deregulation of the downstream segment of the Nigerian oil industry in 2003. The contradiction is more glaring now with the recent rise in crude oil prices at the global markets, which meant more external earnings for Nigeria, but also increased the expense burden on imported refined petroleum products! It is such contradictions (perhaps aberrations) that make the Nigerian economy appear strange at times, as policies seem to ignore what appears obvious to do. As such, policies designed to address the deficiencies and defects in the structure end up being poorly articulated and/or implemented because of regional, political or rent-seeking selfish interests.
Obviously, it is the same rent-seekers that continually sabotage the reinvigoration of the domestic refineries, making Nigeria to depend on importation of refined products to meet the domestic need. At present, Nigeria has four refineries, with a combined installed refining capacity of 445,000 barrels per day (bpd). These four refineries are:
(1) The first Port Harcourt Refinery was commissioned in 1965 with an installed capacity of 35,000 bpd and later expanded to 60,000 bpd.
(2) The Warri Refinery was commissioned in 1978 with an installed refining capacity 100,000 bpd, and upgraded to 125,000 bpd in 1986.
(3) The Kaduna Refinery was commissioned in 1980 with an installed refining capacity of 100,000 bpd, and upgraded to 110,000 bpd in 1986.
(4) The second Port Harcourt Refinery was commissioned in1989 with 150,000 bpd processing capacity, and designed to fulfill the dual role of supplying the domestic market and exporting its surplus.
The combined capacities of these refineries exceed the domestic consumption of refined products, chief of which is premium motor spirit (gasoline), whose demand is estimated at 33 million litres daily. The refineries are however, operating far below their installed capacities, as they were more or less abandoned during the military era, skipping the routine and mandatory turnaround maintenance that made products importation inevitable. Importation notwithstanding, there have been persistent product shortages that gave strength to the argument for deregulation of the downstream oil sub-sector in Nigeria.
Nigeria’s proven gas reserves are estimated at over 170 trillion standard cubic feet (scf), which is substantially larger in value than oil. Apart from this, there are several other energy sources (renewable and non-renewable), that have become key to economic policy formulation. Some gas utilization projects have been initiated in response to Government’s decision and insistence on gas flare-out in 2008.



CHAPTER THREE
THE CRISIS IN THE NIGER DELTA REGION AND IT EFFECTS ON EERGY
CONFLICTS IN THE NIGER DELTA
Conflict in the Niger Delta arose in the early 1990s due to tensions between the foreign oil corporations and a number of the Niger Delta's minority ethnic groups who felt they were being exploited, particularly the Ogoni as well as the Ijaw in the late 1990s. Ethnic and political unrest has continued throughout the 1990s and persists despite the conversion to democracy and the election of the Obasanjo government in 1999. Competition for oil wealth has fueled violence between innumerable ethnic groups, causing the militarization of nearly the entire region by ethnic militia groups as well as Nigerian military and police forces (notably the Nigerian Mobile Police). Victims of crimes are fearful of seeking justice for crimes committed against them because of growing "impunity from prosecution for individuals responsible for serious human rights abuses, [which] has created a devastating cycle of increasing conflict and violence". The regional and ethnic conflicts are so numerous that fully detailing each is impossible and impractical. However, there have been a number of major confrontations that deserve elaboration.
1. THE CASE OF OGONILAND (1992-1995)
Ogoniland is a 404-square-mile (1,050 km2) region in the southeast of the Niger Delta basin. Economically viable oil was discovered in Ogoniland in 1957, just one year after the discovery of Nigeria's first commercial petroleum deposit, with Shell and Chevron setting up shop throughout the next two decades. The Ogonis, a minority ethnic group of about half a million people who call Ogoniland home, and other ethnic groups in the region attest that during this time, the government began forcing them to abandon their land to oil companies without consultation, and offering negligible compensation. This is further supported by a 1979 constitutional addition which afforded the federal government full ownership and rights to all Nigerian territory and also decided that all compensation for land would "be based on the value of the crops on the land at the time of its acquisition, not on the value of the land itself." The Nigerian government could now distribute the land to oil companies as it deemed fit.
The 1970s and 1980s saw the government's empty promises of benefits for the Niger Delta peoples fall through, with the Ogoni growing increasing dissatisfied and their environmental, social, and economic apparatus rapidly deteriorating the Movement for the Survival of the Ogoni People (MOSOP) was formed in 1992. MOSOP, spearheaded by Ogoni playwright and author Ken Saro-Wiwa, became the major campaigning organization representing the Ogoni people in their struggle for ethnic and environmental rights. Its primary targets, and at times adversaries, have been the Nigerian government and the oil company Royal Dutch Shell.
Ogoni Flag created by Ken Saro-WiwaBeginning in December 1992, the conflict between Ogonis and the oil infrastructure escalated to a level of greater seriousness and intensity on both sides. Both parties began carrying out acts of violence and MOSOP issued an ultimatum to the oil companies (Shell, Chevron, and the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation) which demanded some $10 billion in accumulated royalties, damages and compensation, and "immediate stoppage of environmental degradation", and negotiations for mutual agreement on all future drilling.
The Ogonis threatened to embark on mass action to disrupt their operation if the companies failed to comply. By this act, the Ogoni shifted the focus of their actions from an unresponsive federal government to the oil companies engaged in their own region. The rationales for this assignment of responsibility were the benefits accrued by the oil companies from extracting the natural wealth of the Ogoni homeland, and neglect from central government.
The government responded by banning public gatherings and declaring that disturbances of oil production were acts of treason. Oil extraction from the territory had slowed to a trickle of 10,000 barrels per day (1,600 m³/d) (0.5% of the national total). However, because the withdrawal was a temporary security measure, it provided the government with a compelling reason to 'restore order'.
Military repression escalated in May 1994. On May 21, soldiers and mobile policemen appeared in most Ogoni villages. On that day, four Ogoni chiefs (all on the conservative side of a schism within MOSOP over strategy) were brutally murdered. Saro-Wiwa, head of the opposing faction, had been denied entry to Ogoniland on the day of the murders, but he was detained in connection with the killings. The occupying forces, led by Major Paul Okuntimo of Rivers State Internal Security, claimed to be 'searching for those directly responsible for the killings of the four Ogonis.' However, witnesses say that they engaged in terror operations against the general Ogoni population. Amnesty International characterized the policy as deliberate terrorism. By mid-June, 30 villages had been completely destroyed, 600 people had been detained, and at least 40 had been killed. An eventual total of around 100,000 internal refugees and an estimated 2,000 civilian deaths were recorded.
In May 1994, nine activists from the movement who would become known as 'The Ogoni Nine', among them Ken Saro-Wiwa, were arrested and accused of incitement to murder following the deaths of four Ogoni elders. Saro-Wiwa and his comrades denied the charges, but were imprisoned for over a year before being found guilty and sentenced to death by a specially convened tribunal, hand-selected by General Sani Abacha, on 10 November 1995. The activists were denied due process and upon being found guilty, were executed via hanging by the Nigerian state.
The executions were met with an immediate international response. The trial was widely criticised by human rights organisations and the governments of other states, who condemned the Nigerian government's long history of detaining their critics, mainly pro-democracy and other political activists. The Commonwealth of Nations, which had also pleaded for clemency, suspended Nigeria's membership in response. The United States, the United Kingdom, and the EU all implemented sanctions; however, none of these had an impact on oil production.
Shell asked the Nigerian government for clemency towards those found guilty, but its request was refused. However, a 2001 Greenpeace report found that "two witnesses that accused them (Saro-Wiwa and the other activists) later admitted that Shell and the military had bribed them with promises of money and jobs at Shell. Shell admitted having given money to the Nigerian military, who brutally tried to silence the voices which claimed justice".
As of 2006, the situation in Ogoniland has eased significantly, progressed by the transition to democratic rule in 1999. However, no attempts have been made by the government or an international body to bring about justice by investigating and prosecuting those involved in the violence and property destruction that have occurred in Ogoniland, although a class action lawsuit has been brought against Shell by individual plaintiffs.
2. IJAW-ITSEKIRI CONFLICTS (1997)
The late 1990s saw an increase in the number and severity of clashes between militants of the Ijaw ethnic group, the largest in the entire Delta region with a population of over 7 million, and those of Itsekiri origin whose number is only about 450,000. The conflict between the two groups has been particularly intense in the major town of Warri. While the Ijaw and the Itsekiri have lived alongside each other for centuries, for the most part harmoniously, the Itsekiri were first to make contact with European traders, as early as the 16th century, and they were more aggressive both in seeking Western education and in using the knowledge acquired to press their commercial advantages; until the arrival of Sir George Goldie's National Africa Company (later renamed the Royal Niger Company) in 1879, Itsekiri chieftains monopolized trade with Europeans in the Western Niger region. Despite the loss of their monopoly, the advantages already held by the Itsekiri ensured that they continued to enjoy a superior position to that held by the Ijaw, breeding in the latter a sense of resentment at what they felt to be colonial favoritism towards the Itsekiri.
The departure of the British at independence did not lead, as might have been expected, to a decrease in tensions between the Ijaw and the Itsekiri. With the discovery of large oil reserves in the Niger Delta region in the late 1950s, a new bone of contention was introduced, as the ability to claim ownership of a given piece of land now promised to yield immense benefits in terms of jobs and infrastructural benefits to be provided by the oil companies. Despite this new factor, rivalry between the Ijaw and the Itsekiri did not actually escalate to the level of violent conflict between the two groups until the late 1990s, when the death of General Sani Abacha in 1997 led to a re-emergence of local politics.
The issue of local government ward allocation has proven particularly contentious, as the Ijaw feel that the way in which wards have been allocated ensures that their superior numbers will not be reflected in the number of wards controlled by politicians of Ijaw ethnicity. Control of the city of Warri, the largest metropolitan area in Delta State and therefore a prime source of political patronage, has been an especially fiercely contested prize. This has given birth to heated disputes between the Ijaw, the Itsekiri and the Urhobo about which of the three groups are "truly" indigenous to the Warri region, with the underlying presumption being that the "real" indigenes should have control of the levers of power, regardless of the fact that all three groups enjoy ostensibly equal political rights in their places of residence.
3. IJAW UNREST (1998-1999)
The December 1998, All Ijaw Youths Conference crystallized the Ijaws' struggle for petroleum resource control with the formation of the Ijaw Youth Council (IYC) and the issuing of the Kaiama Declaration. In it, long-held Ijaw concerns about the loss of control of their homeland and their own lives to the oil companies were joined with a commitment to direct action. In the declaration, and in a letter to the companies, the Ijaws called for oil companies to suspend operations and withdraw from Ijaw territory. The IYC pledged "to struggle peacefully for freedom, self-determination and ecological justice," and prepared a campaign of celebration, prayer, and direct action 'Operation Climate Change' beginning December 28.
In December 1998, two warships and 10-15,000 Nigerian troops occupied Bayelsa and Delta states as the Ijaw Youth Congress (IYC) mobilized for Operation Climate Change. Soldiers entering the Bayelsa state capital of Yenagoa announced they had come to attack the youths trying to stop the oil companies. On the morning of December 30, two thousand young people processed through Yenagoa, dressed in black, singing and dancing. Soldiers opened fire with rifles, machine guns, and tear gas, killing at least three protesters and arresting twenty-five more. After a march demanding the release of those detained was turned back by soldiers, three more protesters were shot dead including Nwashuku Okeri and Ghadafi Ezeifile. The military declared a state of emergency throughout Bayelsa state, imposed a dusk-to-dawn curfew, and banned meetings. At military roadblocks, local residents were severely beaten or detained. At night, soldiers invaded private homes, terrorizing residents with beatings and women and girls with rape.
On January 4 1999, about one hundred soldiers from the military base at Chevron’s Escravos facility attacked Opia and Ikiyan, two Ijaw communities in Delta State. Bright Pablogba, the traditional leader of Ikiyan, who came to the river to negotiate with the soldiers, was shot along with a seven-year-old girl and possibly dozens of others. Of the approximately 1,000 people living in the two villages, four people were found dead and sixty-two were still missing months after the attack. The same soldiers set the villages ablaze, destroyed canoes and fishing equipment, killed livestock, and destroyed churches and religious shrines.
Nonetheless, Operation Climate Change continued, and disrupted Nigerian oil supplies through much of 1999 by turning off valves through Ijaw territory. In the context of high conflict between the Ijaw and the Nigerian Federal Government (and its police and army), the military carried out the Odi massacre, killing scores if not hundreds of Ijaws. Subsequent actions by Ijaws against the oil industry included both renewed efforts at nonviolent action and militarized attacks on foreign oil workers.
4. THE EMERGENCE OF ARMED GROUPS IN THE DELTA REGION (2003-2004)
The ethnic unrest and conflicts of the late 1990s (such as those between the Ijaw and Itsekiri), coupled with a spike in the availability of small arms and other weapons, led increasingly to the militarization of the Delta. By this time, local and state officials had become involved by offering financial support to those paramilitary groups they believed would attempt to enforce their own political agenda. Conflagrations have been concentrated primarily in Delta and Rivers States.
Prior to 2003, the epicenter of regional violence was Warri. However, after the violent convergence of the largest military groups in the region, the Niger Delta People's Volunteer Force (NDPVF) led by Mujahid Dokubo-Asari and the Niger Delta Vigilante (NDV) led by Ateke Tom (both of which are comprised primarily of Ijaws), conflict became focused on Port Harcourt and outlying towns. The two groups dwarf a plethora of smaller militias supposedly numbering more than one hundred. The Nigerian government classifies these groups as "cults", many of which began as local university fraternities. The groups have adopted names largely based on Western culture, some of which include Icelanders, Greenlanders, KKK, and Vultures. All of the groups are constituted mostly by disaffected young men from Warri, Port Harcourt, and their sub-urban areas. Although the smaller groups are autonomous from within, they have formed alliances with and are largely controlled from above by either Asari and his NDPVF or Tom's NDV who provided military support and instruction.
The NDPVF which was founded by Asari, a former president of the Ijaw Youth Council, in 2003 after he "retreated into the bush" to form the group with the explicit goal of acquiring control of regional petroleum resources. The NDPVF attempted to control such resources primarily through oil "bunkering", a process in which an oil pipeline is tapped and the oil extracted onto a barge. Oil corporations and the Nigerian state point out that bunkering is illegal; militants justify bunkering, saying they are being exploited and have not received adequate profits from the profitable but ecologically destructive oil industry. Bunkered oil can be sold for profit, usually to destinations in West Africa, but also abroad. Bunkering is a fairly common practice in the Delta but in this case the militia groups are the primary perpetrators.
The intense confrontation between the NDPVF and NDV seems to have been brought about by Asari’s political falling out with the NDPVF’s financial supporter Peter Odili, governor of Rivers State following the April 2003 local and state elections. After Asari publicly criticized the election process as fraudulent, the Odili government withdrew its financial support from the NDPVF and began to support Tom’s NDV, effectively launching a paramilitary campaign against the NDPVF.
Subsequent violence occurred chiefly in riverine villages southeast and southwest of Port Harcourt, with the two groups fighting for control of bunkering routes. The conflagrations spurred violent acts against the local population, resulting in numerous deaths and widespread displacement. Daily civilian life was disrupted, forcing schools and economic activity to shut down and resulting in widespread property destruction.
The state campaign against the NDPVF emboldened Asari who began publicly articulating populist, anti-government views and attempted to frame the conflict in terms of pan-Ijaw nationalism and "self-determination." Consequently the state government felt the escalated the campaign against him by bringing in police, army, and navy forces that began occupation of the Port Harcourt in June 2004.
The government forces collaborated with the NDV during the summer, and were seen protecting NDV militiamen from attacks by the NDPVF. The state forces failed to protect the civilian population from the violence and actually increased the destruction of citizens' livelihood. The Nigerian state forces were widely reported to have used the conflict as an excuse to raid homes, claiming that innocent civilians were cahoots with the NDPVF. Government soldiers and police obtained and destroyed civilian property by force. The NDPVF also accused the military of conducting air bombing campaigns against several villages, effectively reducing them to rubble, because it was believed to be housing NDPVF soldiers. The military denies this, claiming they engaged in aerial warfare only once in a genuine effort to wipe out an NDPVF stronghold.
Innocent civilians were also killed by NDPVF forces firing indiscriminately in order to engage their opponents. At the end of August 2004 there were several particularly brutal battles over the Port Harcourt waterfront; some residential slums were completely destroyed after the NDPVF deliberately burning down buildings. By September 2004, the situation was rapidly approaching a violent climax which caught the attention of the international community.
5. THE MOVEMENT FOR THE EMANCIPATION OF THE NIGER DELTA (2006 - 2007)
In January 2006, less than seven months after the first Oil Shockwave conference almost as if they'd been given walk-on parts in the simulation several boatloads of heavily armed Ijaw militants overran a Shell oil facility in the Niger delta and seized four Western oil workers. The militants called themselves the Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta and said they were protesting the environmental devastation caused by the oil industry, as well as the appalling conditions in which most delta inhabitants live. There are no schools, medical clinics, or social services in most delta villages. There is no clean drinking water in delta villages. There are almost no paying jobs in delta villages. People eke out a living by fishing while, all around them, oil wells owned by foreign companies pump billions of dollars' worth of oil a year. It was time, according to MEND, for this injustice to stop.
The immediate effect of the attack was a roughly 250,000-barrel-a-day drop in Nigerian oil production and a temporary bump in world oil prices. MEND released the hostages a few weeks later, but the problems were far from over. MEND's demands included the release of two Ijaw leaders who were being held in prison, $1.5 billion in restitution for damage to the delicate delta environment, a 50 percent claim on all oil pumped out of the creeks, and development aid to the desperately poor villages of the delta. MEND threatened that, if these demands were not met, which they weren't, it would wage war on the foreign oil companies in Nigeria.
"Leave our land while you can or die in it," a MEND spokesman warned in an e-mail statement after the attack. "Our aim is to totally destroy the capacity of the Nigerian government to export oil."
CHAPTER FOUR
CONCLUSION AND RECOMMENDATION
CONCLUSION
Less than a year before Nigeria holds its third national elections since the end of military rule in 1999, tensions are running high in the southern Niger Delta. A number of militant groups have begun allying themselves to local politicians with electoral aspirations. These groups and others continue to use legitimate grievances, such as poverty, environmental destruction and government corruption, to justify increasingly damaging attacks against government and oil industry targets. Removing the incentives for violence will require granting a degree of resource control to local communities. Engaging Delta groups in sustained, transparent dialogue also remains critical to finding a solution to the militant puzzle. Equally important, credible development efforts must be supported and stiff penalties for corruption imposed upon those who embezzle and squander funds.
Demands from militants have included the creation of additional states for Ijaws, amenities and jobs for rural communities, contracts and oil concessions for faction leaders and even calls for independence. The spokesman for the Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta (MEND), the most vocal and best organised of the militant organisations to emerge in 2006, says his group’s goal is to achieve resource control concessions or wreak "anarchy".
Attacks since December 2005, including a spate of oil worker kidnappings, have at times forced oil production shutdowns of up to 800,000 barrels per day, threatening Nigerian government plans to nearly double production to four million barrels a day by 2010. Only some of those production losses have been offset by recent offshore developments. Two companies with foreign shareholders sign allied in August 2006 that they would be withdrawing from the Niger Delta due to security concerns.
The most potent weapon in the militants’ arsenal is the growing anger among the region’s twenty million inhabitants. In more than seven years of civilian rule, functionaries at the local, state and federal levels are perceived to have failed to deliver tangible economic benefits for impoverished residents. Militant groups have largely ignored the incremental administrative reforms begun since 2003 and are succeeding in drawing upon anger against a pervasively corrupt system of governance inherited from the military era. Militant groups have managed to win sufficiently broad popular support to operate openly in many communities and have not been weakened by the imprisonment since September 2005 of publicity-seeking warlord Alhaji Dokubo-Asari. To date, militants have not been sufficiently organised or united to mount a viable separatist insurgency. Most fighters would concede that winning independence for the Niger Delta remains highly unlikely, although support for such a movement is growing.
Community groups in the Niger Delta complain they have few incentives to protect oil infrastructure from militant and criminal groups. For impoverished locals, government officials and even oil company staff, oil theft offers significant rewards. Since a government crackdown on oil theft began in mid-2005, piracy and kidnappings have been on the rise. Oil facilities and workers are difficult to defend, nowhere more so than in the Niger Delta’s tangle of swamps and rivers.
Environmental claims are increasingly incorporated into the rhetoric of insurgency and need to be independently addressed. Locals have long complained that spilled oil from deteriorating decades-old pipelines has devastated fishing, although over fishing is also to blame. Oil companies insist that the vast majority of spills that have occurred in recent years are the result of sabotage by oil thieves and other groups trying to extort compensation payments.
Resolving the Niger Delta crisis will require far greater commitment on the part of the federal government and corporate stakeholders in ensuring the oil industry operates fairly and transparently in the region, with visible benefits to the local population. Without serious and sustainable reforms, all parties stand to lose.
RECOMMENDATIONS
To the Nigerian Federal Government:
1. Engage in negotiations with a broad-based delegation of Niger Deltans from the region’s ethnic councils, religious groups and other civil society organisations. The terms of reference for the talks should focus on expanded local resource control as called for by the Special Committee on Oil Producing Areas in 2002; further, the venue for negotiations should be a location within the Niger Delta to allow for greater transparency and local participation, and if talks need to break off into smaller groups to address problems of individual communities, efforts should be taken to keep the process transparent.
2. Institute, while this dialogue is proceeding, a derivation formula of between 25 and 50 per cent of mineral resources, including oil and gas, to all Nigerian states, and phase this in over five years in order to avoid budgetary shock to non-oil producing states and to encourage exploration and production of other mineral resources throughout Nigeria.
3. In the short to medium term, until state and local governments are demonstrably representative of and answerable to Niger Delta communities, allocate any additional monetary resources beyond current statutory state and local government payments directly to locally-controlled foundations willing to accept the assistance and oversight of qualified, independent, international development professionals.
4. Repeal or reform legislation such as the Petroleum Act and the Land Use Act that effectively deprive local residents of an ownership stake in land and resources.
5. Consider a constitutional provision to abolish criminal immunity for the president and state governors, and encourage law enforcement bodies such as the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) to prosecute cases of local and state government corruption.
To Nigeria’s Senate and House of Representatives:
6. Pass the proposed Nigerian Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative (NEITI) bill to entrench recent oil and other mineral industry reforms.
To the State Governments of the Niger Delta:
7. Implement economic reforms and ensure that state government allocations are spent on projects that focus on health services and safe drinking water, education, job training and transportation.
8. Where state and local government development capacity is lacking, partner with reputable development professionals who have a demonstrated commitment to community participation in planning and implementation.
To the UN, International Community and Donor Governments:
9. Provide resources for and support an independent environmental impact assessment (EIA) of the Niger Delta as well as a credible, independent judicial mechanism to adjudicate compensation claims, taking steps to ensure that the credibility of such an environmental assessment is not damaged by funding from or association with government and energy companies, and that compensation is distributed transparently in a manner that benefits communities rather than "benefit captors" such as politicians and militant and traditional leaders.
10. Press the Nigerian government to reform legislation such as the Petroleum Act and the Land Use Act that effectively deny local control of resources.
11. Discourage heavy-handed military operations and and encourage negotiations between the federal government and Niger Delta groups.
12. Make budget and expenditure transparency a condition for aid to federal, state and local governments and end relationships with local and state administrations that have failed to address corruption.
13. Offer the good offices of a neutral country without oil interests in Nigeria to mediate between the federal and state governments and Niger Delta parties, based on the proposal already accepted in principle by several Delta activist and militant groups.
To the Energy Companies:
14. Make individual company project environmental impact assessment (EIA) studies more transparent and accessible to community groups. Obtain community assent before proceeding with infrastructure and other developments.
15. Abide by the rulings of independent arbitration and court decisions looking into environmental claims. Both the federal government and companies should ensure that they pay their share of pollution compensation awards.
16. Encourage corporate transparency by releasing detailed, public reports of expenditures, including costs of development and payments to governments, community groups and contractors.
17. End illicit and semi-illicit payments to both militants and paramilitary security forces deployed to protect oil installations.
18. Abolish the host-community system of payments to communities in favour of a system that deals with communities more holistically through ethnic and regional councils.
19. Refashion joint venture partnerships to include local participation and ownership and, to this end, enter into talks with government and local groups.
To the Energy Companies’ Home Countries:
20. Legislate to require companies with overseas operations to publicly disclose all payments to foreign governments. This initiative should be synchronised through the Group of Eight to provide additional credibility to extractive transparency efforts in developing nations.
REFERENCES
Nigerian Oil -- "Curse of the Black Gold: Hope and Betrayal in the Niger Delta" -- article from National Geographic Magazine (February 2007)
The Price of Oil: Corporate Responsibility and Human Rights Violations in Nigeria's Oil Producing Communities (Human Rights Watch, 1999)
THE NIGER DELTA: NO DEMOCRATIC DIVIDEND (Human Rights Watch, 2002)
"Shell hit by new litigation over Ogoniland" (Corporate Social Responsibility News, 2002)
Rivers and Blood: Guns, Oil and Power in Nigeria’s Rivers State (Human Rights Watch, 2005)
"Blood Oil" by Sebastian Junger in Vanity Fair, February 2007
Nigerian Oil -- "Curse of the Black Gold: Hope and Betrayal in the Niger Delta" -- article from National Geographic Magazine (February 2007)
Retrieved from "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nigerian_Oil_Crisis"
en.wikipedia encyclopedia, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Niger_Delta_Conflicts Categories: Economy of Nigeria
U.S. Energy Information Administration (U.S. EIA), "Nigeria Country Analysis Brief," December 1997.
Environmental Resources Managers Ltd, Niger Delta Environmental Survey Final Report Phase I; Volume I: Environmental and Socio-Economic Characteristics (Lagos: Niger Delta Environmental Survey, September 1997)
Nigeria: The Political Economy of Oil. ISBN 0-19-730014-6. (Khan, Ahmad)
Nigerian Crude and Gas Industry(NigeriaBusinessInfo.com)
McLennan, James; Stewart Williams (Feb 2005). Deepwater Africa reaches turning point. Oil & Gas Journal. Vol.103, 6; ABI/INFORM Global. pg. 18
Natural Gas(Online Nigeria Portal)
Where Vultures Feast. (Okonta and Douglas, 2001).
The Price of Oil: Corporate Responsibility and Human Rights Violations in Nigeria's Oil Producing Communities (Human Rights Watch, 1999)
The Open Sore of a Continent. Soyinka, Wole.
Impacts of Oil spills along the Nigerian coast (The Association for Environmental Health and Sciences)
Nigeria to start rehabilitation of oil joint venture facilities(NigeriaBusinessInfo.com)
Perception and Reality: Assessing Priorities for Sustainable Development in the Niger River Delta (Moffat and Lindén)
Media Briefing: Gas flaring in Nigeria (Friends of the Earth)
Boele, R., Fabig, H., Wheeler, D. (2001). Shell, Nigeria and the Ogoni: A Study in Unsustainable Development: I. The Story of Shell, Nigeria and the Ogoni People- Environment, Economy, Relationships: Conflict and Prospects for Resolution. Sustainable Development, 9, 74-86.
Carter, P. (2007). U.S. Department of State. Remarks on U.S. and International Cooperation in the Niger River Delta. http://www.state.gov/p/af/rls/rm/82010.htm
Junger, S. (2007). Blood Oil. Vanity Fair.com. http://www.vanityfair.com/politics/features/2007/02/junger200702



published by: tope and ezinne