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Farther on, a rebel camp sat brazenly on a riverbank, the blue roofs of its barracks plainly visible to oil company helicopters.
No solution seems in sight for the Niger Delta. The oil companies are keeping their heads down, desperate to safeguard their employees and the flow of oil. The military, ordered to meet force with force, have stepped up patrols in cities and on waterways. The militants are intensifying a deadly guerrilla offensive, hoping that rising casualties and oil prices will force the government to negotiate. National elections in April could exacerbate the violence, especially if politicians resort to the practice of hiring youth gangs to deliver votes at gunpoint.
Optimism is as scarce as blue sky in the sodden delta. "Everyone was sure they would be blessed with the coming of the black gold and live as well as people in other parts of the world," said Patrick Amaopusanibo, a retired businessman who now farms near the village of Oloama. He had to speak loudly to compete with the "black noise," the hissing and roaring of a gas flare near his cassava field. "But we have nothing. I feel cheated."
In some parts of the Niger Delta, oil still looks like a miracle. In the run-down fishing village of Oweikorogba on the Nun River, where families of ten sleep in a single room under leaky thatch roofs, hope materialized a year ago in the form of Chinese prospectors. They left without finding oil, but the people of Oweikorogba want them back, confident that they'll find a pot of gold. And if a stranger warns these villagers that oil is a curse in Nigeria, they will look at him and say: "We want oil here. It will make everything better."
[The end]
I read the above article with mixed emotions. Anger, fear, sorrow, pity, even guilt. How can my own people in the South-South of Nigeria suffer so much, yet I, living in my comfy corner of the South-West, am hardly touched by it? The injustice meted out to these people is staggering in its proportions. Truth is, I have heard various versions of this Niger Delta story time and again, but probably because everyone involved (government, oil companies, indigenes) tries to tell it to their own advantage, I never quite got the full picture. And I suspect that I still haven't. And for that I am scared.
I am reminded of the years of the Nigerian Civil War, when people in the North and West carried on with life as usual while their countrymen in the East perished by the day. Trouble is brewing in the Niger Delta, and it is not to be ignored. Whether we admit it or not, the problem is as much non-Niger Delta indigenes' as it is Niger Delta indigenes'. It is not a Niger Delta problem; it's a Nigerian problem. The earlier we realise this and take appropriate action, the better for us. Arise, o compatriots!
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