Blood and Oil -- A Special Report The Africa Fund 50 Broad Street, Suite 711 New York, NY 10004 Tel: (212) 785-1024 www.prairienet.org/acas/afund.html September 16, 1999 Nigeria: Blood and Oil -- A Special Report by Michael D. Fleshman, Human Rights Coordinator The return of elected civilian government to oil-rich Nigeria after 15 years of corrupt and brutal military rule is a surprise African success story. Since his inauguration three months ago, President Olusegun Obasanjo has purged an entire coup-prone generation of senior military and police officers and launched sweeping investigations of past human rights abuses and corruption by the departed generals. During a recent fact-finding mission to Nigeria I began to notice something that human rights leaders said had not been seen in the country for decades -- signs of hope. But the seizure last week of Texaco's Nigerian wells and facilities by local residents angry at corporate and government practices in the Niger Delta oil fields -- the second shutdown in as many months -- is hard evidence that in the oil producing communities hope is still in desperately short supply. After 10 days in communities poisoned forever by untreated oil spills, ravaged by hunger and poverty and terrorized by government security forces I can understand why. I saw the environmental devastation first hand when I visited the village of Utuegwe 1, where a pipe owned by the Shell Oil Company ruptured a year earlier, releasing hundreds of thousands of barrels of crude oil into the community's fresh water and fishing streams. The sight that greeted me was horrendous. A thick brownish film of crude oil covered everything, collecting along the shoreline and staining the surface of the still water. The humid air was thick with oil fumes and black smoke from an open fire where two men burned sludge and dead foliage in a futile cleanup effort. Two other villagers, without protective clothing or safety equipment, stood waist deep in the oily water, skimming the surface with cotton rags and wringing the excess into plastic buckets for five dollars a day. That Shell's "cleanup" is grossly inadequate and dangerous to the workers is obvious. Yet in the Niger Delta oil fields Shell's behavior is all too typical. For decades Shell and other foreign oil companies, including Mobil, Chevron, and Texaco, have operated behind the bayonets of successive military dictatorships -- extracting $300 billion worth of crude oil from this vast and environmentally fragile wetland while returning virtually nothing to the oil producing communities except abject poverty, bloody repression and massive pollution. In May 1998, for example, Chevron flew in members of the feared Mobile Police to the company's Parabe platform to end a peaceful occupation by a local community angered at the company's refusal to negotiate with them. Two young men were shot dead, and a third wounded and later tortured. In January of this year Chevron provided company helicopters and boats to the Nigerian army to attack a community strongly opposed to the oil companies' presence in their area. Over a dozen people died in that assault spurring calls for a Congressional investigation. The European companies are no better. In April of this year, for example, the citizens of Ekebiri village responded to the refusal of the Italian company Agip to pay compensation for decades of oil spills by shutting two valves on a nearby pumping station. The protest action caused no harm to the environment or the facility but it did reduce output. For that crime, Agip dispatched a crew to re-open the valves accompanied by 40 soldiers. The troops shot and killed seven men from the village and arrested two traditional leaders. What is a human life worth to a foreign oil company in Nigeria? Apparently just $143.00, the amount Agip originally offered each of the families of the murdered men to compensate for their loss. The oil companies have ignored calls for substantive dialogue with the oil producing communities on such urgent issues as human rights, environmental protection and the desperate poverty afflicting the indigenous peoples of the region. At a time when the Obasanjo government is trying to end rampant corruption the companies still prefer to pay off favored traditional leaders to silence community complaints instead of solving them. A fruitless decade of non-violent protests, failed negotiations and brutal repression has produced a growing sense of hopelessness and frustration, particularly among some young people, about the prospects for peaceful change. As a result there have been cases in recent months when opposition to the companies has taken the form of kidnappings of company officials and armed seizures of facilities. Chevron in particular has used these comparatively isolated and widely condemned acts of force against the companies to justify its reliance on state violence to crush even the most peaceful opposition. There are disturbing hints that the oil companies have urged the new government to crack down on the protests -- setting the stage for further confrontations between the Federal government and the local communities. This cruel combination of environmental negligence, economic exploitation and violent repression has brought the Niger Delta oil fields to the brink of civil war and threatens the economic and political stability of Nigeria's emerging democracy. In theory the elected government -- the majority shareholder in joint ventures with the foreign oil companies -- could simply regulate improvements in environmental and human rights practices. But at a time when the cash-strapped Obasanjo administration is struggling to restore government services and restart an economy ruined by corruption and mismanagement, it is unlikely to impose costly new regulations on an industry that generates 80 percent of government revenue and virtually all of the country's hard currency earnings. Washington can and should be more supportive of the Obasanjo government by increasing the modest $27 million aid package announced earlier this year and by pushing harder for debt relief and poverty alleviation programs with European allies. The U.S. should join the Nigerian human rights community and encourage the Obasanjo government to open a genuine dialogue with leaders of the oil producing communities and the oil companies on a resolution of the crisis that meets the needs of both residents and producers. There is much at stake. Nigeria is sub-Saharan Africa's most populous country and the dominant military power in volatile west Africa. It is also America's largest trading partner in the region and an important U.S. oil supplier. U.S. oil companies have billions of dollars invested in the Nigerian oil industry and produce half of Nigeria's annual 2.2 billion barrel annual output. Consumers can help too, by insisting that companies adhere to minimum environmental and social responsibility policies in Nigeria and withdraw their patronage from companies that don't. One way or another the unjust status quo in the Niger Delta oil fields will change. How it changes could well mean success or failure for Africa's newest democracy. _____________________________________________ The Africa Fund was established in 1966 by The American Committee On Africa to educate Americans about the struggle for self determination, independence and economic, racial and social justice in Africa. Human Rights Coordinator Michael D. Fleshman recently returned from a month long tour of Nigeria.