Nigerian women take over oil company

600 Nigerian village women took over ChevronTexaco's
Escravos terminal on Monday.

700 employees – including Americans, Britons, Canadians
and Nigerians – have been trapped for six days.

The women, from the Ugborodo and Arutan communities,
want ChevronTexaco to provide water, electricity,
schools and clinics for their villages.

Contact Amit Srivastava <amit@corpwatch.org> if you
want to get on the CorpWatchIndia email list.

Canadians will not take similar action against 
multinational corporations until we have been reduced
to the same poverty level as the people of Escravos,
Nigeria. Which may not take all that long!

Bob Olsen, Toronto



Nigerian Women Stick to Oil Demands
Sat Jul 13, 5:52 PM ET
By D'ARCY DORAN, Associated Press Writer

ESCRAVOS, Nigeria (AP) - Oil company executives thumped the table and even 
offered concessions, but the women who took over a giant oil terminal and 
trapped hundreds of workers inside did not budge Saturday in their demands 
for jobs for their sons and electricity for their homes.

Tempers flared during the talks held in a sweltering village of rusty tin 
shacks only 100 yards from the looming concrete terminal, where 700 
employees – including Americans, Britons, Canadians and Nigerians – have
been trapped for six days.

"I've put everything on the table that I am prepared to give," 
ChevronTexaco representative Dick Filgate declared at one point. "I want 
Escravos back. I want the ladies off the site."

At another point, the American oil executive pounded his fist on the table 
when he was interrupted by a representative of the village chief.

"In our culture, only the chief pounds the table," he warned through a 
translator.

As many as 600 women from villages around the terminal took over the 
multinational Escravos plant on Monday, saying they want the company to 
hire their sons and use some of the region's oil riches to develop their 
remote, rundown communities.

Nigeria is the world's sixth-largest oil exporter – and the fifth-biggest
supplier of U.S. oil imports – in major part because of the vast reserves
of the Niger Delta here. Yet the people in the Niger Delta are among the 
country's poorest.

Unarmed but unbudging, the women have blocked access to the helipad, 
airstrip and docks that provide the only exits for the facility, which is 
surrounded by rivers and swamps.

ChevronTexaco officials said Saturday some of the women's 23 demands would 
take time to fulfill, while others – such as a demand to build 80,000
houses – were unrealistic. But they said they were prepared to keep
negotiating.

The talks took place in a community center in Ugborodo village. Amid 
frustrated outbursts, women and oil company executives often spoke cordially.

"I can't give you everything on the list but I am prepared to continue the 
dialogue," Filgate, general manager of asset management for ChevronTexaco's 
Nigeria subsidiary, told the women, some in bright flowered dresses.

The peaceful protest by unarmed women is a departure for Nigeria, where 
such disputes often are settled with machetes and guns. In the oil-rich 
Niger Delta, armed young men routinely resort to kidnapping and sabotage to 
pressure oil multinationals into giving them jobs, protection money or 
compensation for alleged environmental damage.

Hostages generally are released unharmed.

The women, from the Ugborodo and Arutan communities, want ChevronTexaco to 
provide water, electricity, schools and clinics for their villages. They 
complained that previous company promises to transform the villages into 
modern towns had not been realized.

Ugborodo is without electricity, except for a community-owned gasoline 
generator supplying sporadic power to a few.

Late Saturday, Anunu Uwawah, a protest leader, said the talks had made 
progress, including a pledge by ChevronTexaco to help the women establish 
fish and poultry farms to supply food to the terminal.

But the women were disappointed the company had not firmly agreed to hire 
village men.

"If they signed an agreement today, we would leave the yard tomorrow," 
Uwawah said. "But it is not happening."

In the terminal airfield, two dozen women danced in the rain alongside four 
helicopters and a plane, chanting: "This is our land."

Talks were expected to continue Sunday.

Filgate said it took time to develop the swampy region, where Nigeria's 
government has provided little infrastructure.

"Right now I can say we can hook you up to electricity. We have done it in 
other villages ... but it's difficult, it takes a long time to figure out 
how to do it," he said.

"Recognize that we can only do so much. You've given me a list of 22 items. 
As for water supply, we will help you with water supply, and we are also 
very much in favor of education."

The oil giant also would look into demands that ChevronTexaco help reverse 
the erosion of riverbanks surrounding the villages, Filgate said. The women 
said the erosion had worsened in recent years after the company began 
dredging nearby rivers for soil to build a gas plant.

"But this can't be done in three months' time," Filgate said.

Delta state police commissioner John Ahmadu said Saturday he hoped the 
standoff would soon end in a peaceful and orderly way. "I don't foresee a 
problem," he said.

On Wednesday, about 100 police and soldiers armed with assault rifles were 
sent to the terminal to protect the facility, but they had orders not to 
harm the women.

A ChevronTexaco spokesman said Wednesday the protest would not affect the 
facility's July production quota.

The struggle between international oil firms and local communities drew 
international attention in the mid-1990s, when violent protests by the tiny 
Ogoni tribe forced Shell to abandon its wells on their land.

The late dictator Gen. Sani Abacha responded in 1995 by hanging nine Ogoni 
leaders, including writer Ken Saro Wiwa – triggering international outrage 
and Nigeria's expulsion from the Commonwealth, an organization of Britain 
and its former colonies.


==================================
Amit Srivastava
International Programs Coordinator
CorpWatch
P.O. Box 29344, San Francisco, CA 94129, USA
Tel: 1 415 561 6472 Fax: 1 415 561 6493
Email: amit@corpwatch.org
Web: http://www.corpwatch.org
http://www.CorpWatchIndia.org
==================================
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