What they're doing so we can drive our cars

NIGERIA: FIRE IN THE DELTA

Unreported World reports from one of Nigeria's most unstable regions. It's home to one of the richest oil fields in the world, but its people are living in extreme poverty and a polluted environment, caught in the crossfire between armed gangs sabotaging the oil production and harsh reprisals from security forces. Reporter Matt McAllester and director Tim Hetherington investigate.

Friday 10 November 2006 7.35pm

McAllester and Hetherington begin their journey in the Delta Province of Ogoniland. They’ve found a burning well-head, which has been blazing out of control for a month. Oil workers claim that the fire was no accident - someone had tried to steal the well-head. There are as many as three hundred oil spills every year in the Delta and many of them could be the result of sabotage or theft, with the crude oil being sold on the black market.

The team travel to Port Harcourt on the Delta coast - a sprawling, booming metropolis built on the 2.5m barrels of oil pumped every day from the region’s wells. Last year the central government earned about 45 billion dollars from oil production, but seventy per cent of the region’s people live on less than one US dollar a day.

Poverty has led to violence, with armed gangs infiltrating the city. They claim that they are trying to force the government to give more of the proceeds from the region’s oil into the hands of the locals. But those they claim to be championing often end up as victims of their activities.

The team visits the burnt out remains of the Aker Base district, which was once home to three thousand people. Locals claim the district was burnt down by the security forces in a reprisal for a rebel kidnapping of an oil worker, although the army says the fire was started by militants dressed as soldiers. Most of its inhabitants were forced to flee, but some families are still there, scavenging for food and so desperate that they ask McAllester to take their children.

The team picks up an armed escort and travels further into the Delta to the Obigbo flow station, run by Shell. It’s under constant threat of attack from rebels and kidnappers. Security costs have skyrocketed and at least two companies have pulled out in recent months. McAllester meets an American oil engineer working for Willbros who was held hostage for twelve days deep in the swamps by a militant group. He tells them that there were up to a hundred well armed and well trained men at their camp.

McAllester and Hetherington arrange to meet one of the rebel groups. They travel deep into uncharted territory through river creeks heavily polluted with crude oil, until they reach their camp. The rebels’ leader tells them: “I don’t have anything to eat. What do you expect me to do? What belongs to me does not come to me. So I have to fight to get it. By all means. Even if it will take my life I will stand and fight and get my own.”

They return to the coast and a meeting with Peter Odili, the Governor of one of the main States. In his headquarters, which his spokesman said had cost 200 million US dollars, and over a bottle of Cristal champagne he tells Unreported World that the violence will soon die down and that he has plans to develop the area and bring in jobs for its inhabitants. Meanwhile, the violence continues, the pollution remains and for the Delta people this most precious commodity is not a blessing, but a curse.


Taken from : Channel 4 - Unreported World