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Project name: Education For social Justice, 2009-2013
Applicant: Leeds education development center
Partners: Consortium of six partners (UK, Portugal, Estonia, Bulgaria, Latvia and Slovenia)
Case study – The Niger delta - Nigeria
Country
Population
Location
Niger Delta
Thematic area
Targets
Actions to do
Nigeria
West Africa
Western Nigeria, population
MDG, poverty, corruption, environment, capital
flight
Youth, policy makers, national and international
legislation and organisations
Education, understanding, active and global
citizenship, advocacy
Oil as natural resource: The purpose of this case study is to introduce the challenges of wealth
utility in one of Africa’s populated country Nigeria and the delta region. Oil exploitation is normally
understood as an asset that generates income to the state and to the local people, hence
alleviating poverty and better infrastructure development. Observing decades of developments in
the region, the outcome speaks contrary.
This case study has five parts; Introducing the region, the case of Niger delta, Environmental
damage, the role of Multinational companies (MNC) and new comers (China and India),
action participation towards global citizenship and conclusion.
I. Introducing the region:
Nigeria is an African country in west Africa that has neighbors like Benin, Niger, Chad and
Cameroon. It is the most populous country of 36 states and one of the world's biggest oil
producers. In Nigeria, oil has generated an estimated of US$600 billion since the 1960s. Billions
of dollars have been pumped out of their land with nothing in return. It has also polluted the
country's politics. When the first discovery was made in the late 1950s, Nigeria was on the cusp of
gaining independence from Britain. The potential oil revenues were seen by many as the perfect
launch pad for an independent Nigeria. It hasn't worked out that way. Instead, it has become the
perfect launch pad for corrupt politicians and businessmen to enrich themselves at the expense of
their people. Oil in the Gulf of Guinea, which snakes its way along the coast of West Africa from
Ivory Coast down to Angola, is cheap and plentiful; Nigeria was Africa's largest oil producer,
producing more than 2.5m barrels per day. Nigeria's reserves are estimated at 184 trillion cubic
feet (five trillion cubic meters), good for an estimated 240 years of production at current levels. The
curse of the black gold is the tragedy that is taking place in a land of plenty, in Nigeria West Africa
which is the largest oil exporter in Africa. Nigeria is the largest producer of petroleum in Africa and
is among the world’ top ten oil producers (and is a member of OPEC). In addition to its large non-
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renewable resource base, the Niger delta is home to the world’s third largest mangrove forest, the
most extensive freshwater swamp forests in West and Central
Africa, and the site of Nigeria’s remaining primary forest, including a high concentration of
biodiversity and several centers of endemism.
Map
of
Nigeria
in
Africa
and
the
Delta
(http://www.waado.org/NigerDelta/Maps/NigerDelta_WestAfrica)
region
in
the
country
Despite this, many people in the oil-producing areas have to drink, cook with and wash in polluted
water, and eat fish contaminated with oil and other toxins.
II. The Niger Delta: The price of being blessed by Oil - the curse of the black gold
One of the great deltaic regions in the world, the Niger delta is a vast sedimentary basin
constructed over time through successive thick layers of sediments dating back 40-50 million
years to the Eocene epoch. One of the world’s largest deltas, the immense coastal plain covers
almost 70,000 square kilometers. The Niger delta has been defined for a variety of political,
ecological and geological purposes, but the conventional geographical perimeter extends from the
Benin River in the west to the Imo River in the east, and from the southernmost tip at Palm Point
near Akassa to Aboh in the north where the Niger River bifurcates into its two main tributaries.
This area represents roughly 25,900 square kilometers, about 2.8% of the Nigeria land area. It is a
classic arcuate delta, typically below the15 meter contour across its entire extent.
The delta is endowed with very substantial hydrocarbon deposits. Crude oil production from the
delta runs at almost 2 million barrels per day which accounts for roughly 90% of Nigerian export
revenues. The Niger Delta is one of the world’s 10 most important wetland and coastal marine
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ecosystems and is home to some 31 million people (including people directly affected ) from five
ethnic groups: Ijaw, Isoko, Itsekiri, Ukwuani, and Urhobo.The massive oil deposits have been
extracted for decades by the government of Nigeria and by multinational oil companies. According
to Amnesty International report, 2010, abundant oil and oil industry has brought poverty and
pollution to Niger Delta.
The oil producing states in Nigeria – all in the Niger delta - account for 90% of oil revenues yet
they receive only 19% of the statutory revenues from the Federal government derived form
petroleum sales. Not surprisingly, by the 1970s and 1980s, a number of ethnic communities had
begun to mobilize against the so-called “slick alliance” of oil companies and the Nigerian military.
A foundational role was played by Ken Saro-Wiwa and the Ogoni people, a small ethnic group of
400,000, who established a political wing (MOSOP) to challenge Shell for environmental
compensation and the Nigerian state for direct control of “their oil”. While Saro-Wiwa and the
MOSOP leadership were hung by the Nigerian military in 1995, since that time the Niger delta has
become a zone of conflict and heightened struggles as more minorities (the Adoni, the Itsekiri, the
Ijaw) organize. Indeed, the central political issue in Nigeria currently is “resource control” which
refers directly to who controls the oil resources and how ethnic minorities in the delta will “selfdetermine” their futures in a reformed federation.
III. Environmental damage:
The scale of pollution and environmental damage has never been properly assessed. The figures
that do exist vary considerably depending on sources, but hundreds of spills occur each year.
According to the UNDP, more than 6,800 spills were recorded between 1976 and 2001.
According to the National Oil Spill Detection and Response Agency some 2,000 sites require
treatment because of oil-related pollution. Oil fouls everything in southern Nigeria. It spills from the
pipelines, poisoning soil and water. Oil spills have polluted their rivers and land, making fishing
and farming impossible. Flares, burning constantly, have filled their air with soot.
It stains the hands of politicians and generals, who siphon off its profits. It taints the ambitions of
the young, who will try anything to scoop up a share of the liquid riches—fire a gun, sabotage a
pipeline, kidnap a foreigner. Even the jobs the oil industry promised have gone elsewhere, to wellpaid foreigners and Nigerians from less marginalized parts of the country. Oil spills result from
corrosion of oil pipes, poor maintenance of infrastructure, leaks and human error and at times are
as a consequence of vandalism, theft of oil or sabotage. For those who live closest to the oil fields,
the best they can hope for is casual labour: when there is a spill or a pipeline bursts, locals are
employed for pennies to clear it up.
According to Alice Okoko – from Women of Africa, who presented the case from southern
perspective and Fred Uduma president of the Association of Nigerians in Slovenia in 2011 have
highlighted that it is the women and children who suffer most as result this man-made poverty and
environmental damage.
Pollution and environmental damage caused by the oil industry have resulted in violations of the
rights to health and a healthy environment, the right to an adequate standard of living (including
the right to food and water) and the right to gain a living through work for hundreds of thousands of
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people. Even the jobs the oil industry promised have gone elsewhere, to well-paid foreigners and
Nigerians from less marginalized parts of the country. Oil spills result from corrosion of oil pipes,
poor maintenance of infrastructure, leaks and human error and at times are as a consequence of
vandalism, theft of oil or sabotage. For those who live closest to the oil fields, the best they can
hope for is casual labour: when there is a spill or a pipeline bursts, locals are employed for
pennies to clear it up.
The failure of the Nigerian government to hold oil companies to accountable for the pollution
is seen as a matter of corruption and lack of capacity building and infrastructure.
The lack of functioning regulatory system and lack of environmental prevention strategy helped oil
companies to exploite resources without good cooperate governance philosophy. They do not
adequately prevent environmental damage and they frequently fail to properly address the
devastating impact that their bad practice has on people’s lives. The United Nations Development
Program (UNDP) describes the region as suffering from “administrative neglect, crumbling social
infrastructure and services, high unemployment, social deprivation, abject poverty, filth and
squalor, and endemic conflict.” This poverty, and its contrast with the wealth generated by oil, has
become one of the world’s starkest and most disturbing examples of the “resource curse”.
According to Amenesty International report 2008, more than 60 per cent of people in the region
depend on the natural environment for their livelihood, yet pollution by the oil industry is destroying
the vital resource on which they depend.
Oil pollution kills fish, their food sources and fish larvae and damages the ability of fish to
reproduce, causing both immediate damage and long-term harm to fish stocks. Oil spills and
waste dumping have also seriously damaged agricultural land. Long-term effects include damage
to soil fertility and agricultural productivity, which in some cases can last for decades. In numerous
cases, these long-term effects have undermined a family’s only source of livelihood. The
destruction of livelihoods and the lack of accountability and redress have led people to steal oil
and vandalize oil infrastructure in an attempt to gain compensation or clean-up contracts.
Armed groups are increasingly demanding greater control of resources in the region, and engage
in large-scale theft of oil and the ransoming of oil workers. Government reprisals against militancy
and violence frequently involve excessive force, and communities are subjected to violence and
collective punishment, deepening anger and resentment.
IV. The role of Multinational companies (MNC) and new comers (China and India):
The oil industry in the Niger Delta involves both the government of Nigeria and subsidiaries of
multinational companies. The Shell Petroleum Development Company (Shell), a subsidiary of
Royal Dutch Shell, is the main operator on land, also the French Total, Italy's Agip, and
USA’s ExxonMobil and Chevron are all present in the area. Recently the deepwater fields
are attracting aggressive new investors from China, India, and South Korea, all energyhungry and are buying stakes in Nigeria's offshore blocks. "Most Western companies in
Nigeria will find it difficult to compete, especially with China," Goldman says. That's because oil
purchases by the Chinese come with their commitment to finance large infrastructure projects,
such as rehabilitating a railroad line.
"After 50 years, the oil companies are still searching for a way to operate successfully with
communities," says Antony Goldman, a London-based risk consultant. The delta is littered with
failed projects started by oil companies and government agencies—water tanks without operating
pumps, clinics with no medicine, schools with no teachers or books, fishponds with no fish.
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"The companies didn't consult with villagers," says Michael Watts, director of the African Studies
Program at the University of California, Berkeley. "They basically handed out cash to chiefs."
The largest new petroleum endeavor on the delta is taking shape along the Nun River, a tributary
of the Niger. Operated by Shell, the Gbaran Integrated Oil and Gas Project, since 2008, will
encompass 15 new oil and gas fields, more than 200 miles (320 kilometers) of pipeline, and a
sizable gas-gathering plant. New roads are already gashing the forest. Mounds of long black pipes
await burial. Near a bank of the Nun, Nigerian soldiers crouch behind a ring of sandbags, a .60caliber machine gun facing the road as they guard the entrance to the construction site of the gas
plant. Cranes and bulldozers crawl over a cleared space large enough to fit two shopping malls.
From the air, it must look as if a patch of skin has been removed from the face of the forest.
The regulatory system in the Niger Delta is deeply flawed. There was no federal environmental
protection agency until 1988, and environmental impact assessments weren't mandated until
1992. But now, Nigeria has laws and regulations that require companies to comply with
internationally recognized standards of “good oil field practice”, and laws and regulations to
protect the environment but these laws and regulations are poorly enforced. The government
agencies responsible for enforcement are ineffective and, in some cases, compromised by
conflicts of interest.
The people of the Niger Delta have seen their human rights undermined by oil companies that
their government cannot – or will not – hold to account.” said Audrey Gaughran from Amnesty
International. He said, companies have been systematically denied access to information about
how oil exploration and production will affect them, and they are repeatedly denied access to
justice.
The sense of relentless crisis has deepened since last year, when a secretive group of armed,
hooded rebels operating under the name of the Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger
Delta, or MEND, intensified attacks on oil platforms and pumping stations, most operated by Shell
Nigeria. Militants from MEND and other groups have killed soldiers and security guards,
kidnapped foreign oil workers, set off car bombs in the delta city of Warri to protest the visit of
Chinese oil executives, and, to show off their reach, overrun an oil rig 40 miles (64 kilometers)
offshore in the Gulf of Guinea. The attacks have shut down the daily flow of more than 500,000
barrels of oil, leading the country to tap offshore reserves to make up for lost revenue. With each
disruption, the daily price of oil on the world market climbed. According to the Brussels-based
International Crisis Group, escalating violence in a region teeming with angry, frustrated people is
creating a "militant time bomb."
From a potential model nation, Nigeria has become a dangerous country, addicted to oil money,
with people increasingly willing to turn to corruption, sabotage, and murder to get a fix of the
wealth. The cruelest twist is that half a century of oil extraction in the delta has failed to make the
lives of the people better. Instead, they are poorer still, and hopeless.
Their fishing community once stood on the other side of a small inlet, where fuel storage tanks
the size of cathedral domes now loom, and where the superstructure of a liquefied natural gas
plant juts higher than any tree in the forest. Houses in the new village are tightly packed, leaving
little room for gardens.
By the mid-1970s, Nigeria had joined OPEC (Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries), and
the government's budget bulged with petrodollars.
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The picture depicts Port Harcourt where choking black smoke from an open-air slaughterhouse
rolls over housetops, streets cratered with potholes and ruts.
Beyond the city, within the labyrinth of creeks, rivers, and pipeline channels that vein the delta
exists a netherworld. Villages and towns cling to the banks, little more than heaps of mud-walled
huts and rusty shacks. Decades of oil spills, acid rain from gas flares, and the stripping away of
mangroves for pipelines have killed off fish.
In 1960, agricultural products such as palm oil and cacao beans made up nearly all Nigeria's
exports; today, they barely register as trade items, and Africa's most populous country, with 130
million people, has gone from being self-sufficient in food to importing more than it produces. The
World Bank categorizes Nigeria as a "fragile state," beset by risk of armed conflict, epidemic
disease, and failed governance.
The sense of relentless crisis has deepened since last year, when a secretive group of armed,
hooded rebels operating under the name of the Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta,
or MEND, intensified attacks on oil platforms and pumping stations, most operated by Shell
Nigeria. Militants from MEND and other groups have killed soldiers and security guards,
kidnapped foreign oil workers to show off their reach, overrun an oil rig 40 miles (64 kilometers)
offshore in the Gulf of Guinea. The attacks have shut down the daily flow of more than 500,000
barrels of oil, leading the country to tap offshore reserves to make up for lost revenue. With each
disruption, the daily price of oil on the world market climbed. According to the Brussels-based
International Crisis Group, escalating violence in a region teeming with angry, frustrated people is
creating a "militant time bomb."
From a potential model nation, Nigeria has become a dangerous country, addicted to oil
money, with people increasingly willing to turn to corruption, sabotage, and murder to get a fix of
the wealth. The cruelest twist is that half a century of oil extraction in the delta has failed to make
the lives of the people better. Instead, they are poorer still, and hopeless.
Across the delta, people are hoping that someone will pay attention to the region's problems and
intervene. The U.S. and western Europe, the major consumers of Nigerian oil, are watching
closely. With the U.S. consulate in Lagos warning of a possible rebel attack on Bonny Island,
diplomats are urging greater military security. Stockholders of the oil companies are asking why
the situation has turned so perilous. Who is to blame? The answers are as complicated and murky
as the water trails in the delta. When the oil curse began with that first great gusher in the
creekside village of Oloibiri, 50 miles (80 kilometers) west of Port Harcourt, Nigeria was still a
British colony. At independence in 1960, few observers expected that Nigeria would mature into
an oil giant. But in subsequent decades, the oil companies, led by five multinational firms—from
the U.S.—transformed a remote, nearly inaccessible wetland into industrial wilderness. The
imprint: 4,500 miles (7,200 kilometers) of pipelines, 159 oil fields, and 275 flow stations,
their gas flares visible day and night from miles away. Recent reports by the United Nations
Development Program and the International Crisis Group identify some of the questionable
strategies employed by oil companies: paying off village chiefs for drilling rights; building a road or
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dredging a canal without an adequate environmental impact study; tying up compensation cases—
for resource damages or land purchases—for years in court; dispatching security forces to
violently break up protests; patching up oil leaks without cleaning up sites.
V. Active participation for global citizenship
Activists with human rights groups are pressuring Shell to learn from past mistakes and treat
this high-profile project, which affects 90 villages, as a chance to work better with communities.
Michael Watts is advising NGOs on how to educate the local people about their rights. "For Shell
to conduct business as usual would be a public relations disaster," Watts says. "Folks say, 'Look,
these oil companies are making billions by taking out this black stuff from our territory—they
should have some ethical and social responsibilities.'"
Where does all the oil money go? That question is asked in every village, town, and city in the
Niger Delta. The blame spreads, moving from the oil companies to a bigger, more elusive, target:
the Nigerian government. Ever since it nationalized the oil industry in 1971, the government has
controlled the energy purse. In a joint venture arrangement, the state, in the name of the Nigerian
National Petroleum Corporation, owns 55 to 60 percent of multinational oil operations onshore.
The windfall in revenues from this arrangement has grown in real dollars from 250 million a year to
more than 60 billion in 2005. During that time, even though the government has evolved from a
military dictatorship to a democracy (the latest attempt at civil governance began in 1999), what
has not changed is what an International Crisis Group report calls a "cancer of corruption." A
Western diplomat quoted in the report was even more direct, referring to "the institutionalized
looting of national wealth." The money involved is staggering. The head of Nigeria's anticorruption
agency estimated that in 2003, 70 percent of oil revenues, more than 14 billion dollars, was
stolen or wasted. In what seem to be fairness, the federal government retains roughly half and
gives out the rest each month, on a sliding scale, to the 36 state governments. The core oil
producers—Rivers, Delta, Bayelsa, and AkwaIbom—receive the most.
Nigeria's first mass protest against the oil industry emerged in these tribal lands southeast
of Port Harcourt. In 1990, the charismatic writer Ken Saro-Wiwa, outraged by oil spills in
Ogoniland, founded the Movement for the Survival of Ogoni People. The organization
demanded control of the oil on Ogoni lands and an end to environmental damage. A
quarter of a million Ogoni, nearly half the population, rallied in early 1993 to support the
In the Niger Delta, escalating violence has undermined the country's financial stability and its
ability to supply crude to the Western world. Shipments from new offshore rigs are making up for
some of the oil lost to sabotage, but rebels identified with MEND have threatened to shut down
everything.
No one is sure how many delta people have picked up the gun to fight for their rights. Estimates
range from the low hundreds to the low thousands. What is certain is that each time the military
reacts with extreme measures, the number rises. The men wore conspicuous red-and-white ties
knotted around their arms. The ties and flags were symbols of Egbesu, the Ijaw god of war.
Warriors wear the knots as protection against death, believing that having taken an oath to
Egbesu, nothing metal—neither bullet nor machete—can harm them.
According to one reporter, oil companies are bribing local governments and chiefs. For
these firms, a seven-figure ransom is a small price to pay to keep on producing. At five
cents a barrel, getting oil out of the ground is 10 times cheaper in Nigeria than in Saudi Arabia. But
the cost of doing business in Nigeria is getting higher. Those same accounts are also regularly
feathered with money made from "bunkering" – stealing oil direct from the pipeline and selling it on
the black market.
The stability or otherwise of the Delta matters a great deal, even to those who have never heard of
it. Within a decade, the United States expects to extract around a quarter of its oil from the
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Gulf of Guinea. They see it as a safer option than the Middle East, and it has played a large part
in the thinking behind the establishment of the US's Africa Command – a plan for a series of
permanent military bases on the continent. Britain is one of the largest investors in Nigeria. The
Delta is crying out for a comprehensive political solution, one that would bring real investment to a
region starved for so long.
The case is more of the same across the Gulf of Guinea where oil is not bringing peace, security
and development. Equatorial Guinea is one of the richest countries in Africa. In reality, the money
is controlled by the companies and the ruling elites, The situation is similar in Gabon and Angola.
-----------------As class work or assignment:
a) Write down what kind actions you alone, with your schoolmates, with your teachers
and school can atke?
Hint: Use the type of actions you have been introduced in the ESJ project; after all your school
is a partner in this project