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Higher oil prices breed repression

Nigeria is the world’s eighth-largest oil exporter. Over the last several years, the United States has increased its imports of oil from the African continent. Some estimates suggest that approximately 25 percent of foreign oil used in the U.S. comes from Africa.

Despite the growing U.S. reliance on oil from the continent and the recent spike in oil prices on the international market, the peoples of Nigeria’s petroleum-producing region, the Niger Delta, have sunk deeper into poverty and underdevelopment.

In response to the disparity related to the increased extraction of oil, the rising prices on the international market and the astronomical increase in profits reaped by the transnational oil corporations, the peoples of the Niger Delta have stepped up their resistance to the exploitation of their land and resources.

This resistance has taken on both an armed and a mass character. In recent years, women’s organizations have occupied and disrupted oil production facilities to illustrate the social and environmental impact of the exploitation of the national oil reserves by multinational corporations.

A guerrilla organization known as the Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta has also formed. The group has engaged in seizing employees of various transnational firms as well as acts of sabotage against oil installations and pipelines.

Just recently MEND claimed responsibility for a series of strikes against pipelines, flow stations, and other oil and gas facilities. This was ostensibly done in response to what the group claimed were ground and air attacks against its bases by the military forces of the Nigerian federal government.

Officials from the Nigerian federal government have admitted that attacks against oil pipelines in the Niger Delta have significantly curtailed production. It was announced that up to 150,000 barrels per day were lost during a week of fighting between the military and MEND forces.

MEND claimed that it suspended its operations as a result of pleas made by elders within the communities surrounding the oil production facilities. A spokesman from the Nigerian Joint Task Force welcomed MEND’s announcement but added that the group had to demonstrate its willingness to refrain from attacks on oil pipelines and installations.

MEND was held responsible for six attacks over the course of one week, the most intense series of attacks in several years. Royal Dutch Shell, which has been hit the hardest by the recent spate of attacks, declared a “force majeure” on shipments of Bonny Light, a type of crude oil. Force majeure is a contractual term used by oil suppliers that indicates they are unable to reach their quotas as a result of conditions beyond the company’s control.

Royal Dutch Shell, which drills onshore in Nigeria in partnership with the state-managed Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC), has been reluctant to issue any exact figures relating to the fall in oil production.

The oil workers’ union, Pengassan, has criticized the government for taking a “lackluster” approach to negotiating a meaningful settlement with the people of the Niger Delta. It points out that, as a result of the continuing unrest in the Niger Delta, the southwest African nation of Angola is providing an increasing portion of oil produced on the continent and is becoming “the alternative haven of oil investors.”

MEND claims that it wants a greater share of the oil wealth allocated for development in the region, which has been devastated by environmental toxicity resulting from the lack of concern shown by both the transnational oil companies and the federal government toward pollution and the residual effects of production.

However, there is also the reality of a large market in the informal sector, where enormous amounts of oil are stolen and sold outside recognized commercial channels. The seizure of oil workers also brings in money for the gunmen, who are paid ransoms for the release of those employed by the transnational firms.

MEND is not the only organization engaging in sabotage activities against the foreign-owned firms. Among the Ijaw people, a relatively small nationality, armed groups have developed that engage in sabotage against oil pipelines and installations. Recently, representatives of these groups declared a “full-scale war” against the Joint Task Force of the Nigerian military.

An Ijaw leader, Chief Edwin Clark, said in a press conference Sept. 17 that the source of the conflict in the oil-producing Niger Delta stemmed from the failure of the federal government to develop a system where the people could benefit from the large-scale extraction and production of petroleum.

Clark, who formerly served as an information minister in the government, criticized the JTF for atrocities carried out against civilians in the region. Nigeria’s ThisDay newspaper reported on Sept. 17 that the JTF in Delta State attacked an innocent Agge community and burnt over 150 houses.

Clark said: “We sympathized with the Army when their base was attacked in Bomadi by some few militants, but we have also observed that each time it appears that peace will return to the area, the JTF will always launch an attack without any reason, in order to give reason for their stay in the Niger Delta where most of them engage in illegal bunkering”—supplying ships with oil.

Not much information is available about the general program of MEND and other groups engaging in sabotage campaigns against the transnational oil firms and the NNPC. However, it is quite obvious that, with more than 100 million people—the largest population of any country on the African continent—Nigeria needs a national unity program to effectively challenge the transnational oil firms who work in conjunction with the federal government to rob the people of their most profitable resource—oil.

During the late 1960s, the contradictions between the peoples of the eastern region and those in the north and the west erupted into a civil war that lasted from 1967 to 1970. This tragic episode in Nigerian history, known as the “Biafran War,” brought devastation to the peoples of this region.

These regional divisions in Nigeria are the direct result of the legacy of British imperialism. The colonial policy of “divide and rule” was used by the British to maintain control of the agricultural and later oil resources of the country. When Nigeria gained independence in 1960, it was almost inevitable that these divisions would continue and consequently hamper any real effort aimed at genuine national unity and development.

In general the peoples of the east and south have been separated economically and socially from those of the west, while the northern people have traditionally dominated the military. Adding to this crisis in governance is the dominance of the oil industry and the corruption it breeds. The failure of capitalism and capitalist production methods in Africa is most starkly illustrated in Nigeria, where there is little equitable distribution of the wealth emanating from the exploitation of oil and other national resources.

It will be absolutely necessary for the trade union movement, which has an umbrella federation known as the Nigerian Labour Congress, to link up with the people residing in the rural areas where oil is extracted to build a people’s front designed to take control of the production of oil and utilize this national resource for the benefit of the people.

Sectional struggles based on ethnicity and regionalism will not be sufficient to fight effectively against the transnational oil companies and the successive governments that have been all too willing to carry out the bidding of these international conglomerates.