Militias Rule Nigeria’s Oil Output; President Yar’Adua Speculates on Nuclear Energy

They go by the boisterous acronym MEND, or the Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta, and they are lethal. As political students of Niccolò Machiavelli, they have crafted Machiavellian tactics to a fault, and boast about shutting oil pipelines in their motherland to get the ears of their sullen government and the rest of the capitalist world which is driven by its lust for oil.

But they don’t just boast, they actually engage in hostage taking and abduction of foreign oil workers working in Nigeria’s oil rich but socio-economically poor Delta region for ransom (they call it pollution reparation); sometimes killing them and even bombing oil pipelines for effect.

MEND said in an email circulated to news media in January 2006: “It must be clear that the Nigerian government cannot protect your workers or assets. Leave our land while you can or die in it…. Our aim is to totally destroy the capacity of the Nigerian government to export oil.”

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MEND and other militant groups under their umbrella claim they are campaigning for a fairer share of oil wealth for local communities in the Niger Delta, whose land and water have been polluted by oil extraction for over five decades.

Between 1993 and 2006, MEND and affiliated rebel groups orchestrated vicious attacks on oil platforms, pumping stations and pipelines, effectively reducing the country’s oil production by 10% by the beginning of 2007.

Big oil conglomerate Royal Dutch Shell, which has not been without its fair share of controversies around the world, had by that period withdrawn 330 employees from its oil fields in the region, and shut down four pumping stations. Last week, the wait was finally over. It became official that Shell was pulling out of Ogoniland, part of the larger Niger Delta and which rose to international notoriety in 1995 after then military government of Sani Abacha hanged its defenders, among them the famous Ken Saro Wiwa.

So it was more than befitting that Saro Wiwa’s son, also named Ken Saro Wiwa, now special assistant to the president on international affairs told a news wire: “Ever since Shell pulled out of the acreage in 1993 they have not been able to find a re-entry plan that is workable, that has the agreement of the community.”

But Shell, and other thick skinned big oil firms like Chevron, continue to face the wrath of the pipeline rebels elsewhere in Nigeria and hardly a week passes before another attack is staged on oil installations in Africa’s largest oil producer country. The allure of profit, however, ensures they stay put, despite the dangers and the government’s inability to rein in the heavily armed rebels and their iron-willed backers.

Only Thursday this week, militants in speedboats attacked Royal Dutch Shell’s main offshore facility in Nigeria, cutting the country’s oil output by another 10%, forcing the Anglo-Dutch giant to stop output from the $3.6 billion facility.

It was reported that the strike on Shell’s Bonga field, which lies some 120 km (75 miles) off the coast, wounded Shell’s production of Bonga Light crude where it has a nameplate capacity of 220,000 barrels per day. In a separate incident on the same day, armed youths in military fatigues attacked an oil security vessel and kidnapped two crew members.

In an email to newsrooms, which is now the hallmark of their communication with Big Oil, MEND said: “The location for today’s attack was deliberately chosen to remove any notion that offshore oil exploration is far from our reach.”

MEND has recently sent an array of letters to US president George Bush seeking official US government intervention in Nigeria. They suggested that former president Jimmy Carter and actor George Clooney, a UN Messenger of Peace, mediate between them on one hand and the Nigerian government and the oil industry on the other, to bring about environmental and economic justice in their land.

It is demanding reparations for pollution of their farmlands by the oil companies as well as an equitable share of the profits derived from oil extracted from their region.

Nigeria’s soft-spoken president, Umaru Yar’Adua, seems overwhelmed by this oil business and is beginning to focus elsewhere to address his country’s energy crisis. Yar’Adua is now speculating about nuclear energy and has sought the help of French president Nicolas Sarkozy in this venture.

Whether a long-term electro-nuclear program to help meet the huge energy demands of Nigeria will help alleviate the environmental mess in the Niger Delta shall remain to be seen. But the six billion dollar question shall definitely be about the security of such installations in the wake of the militia successes with oil.

Image courtesy: Stakeholder Democracy Network at Flickr

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