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oni people

Ogoni, Ijaw and other people in the Niger Delta, those who have been worse affected for decades have been trying to stand up for themselves, their environment and their basic human and economic rights.

divide communities by paying off some members to disrupt non-violent protests.

threaten the livelihood of neighboring local communities. Due to the many forms of oil-generated environmental pollution evident throughout the region, farming and fishing have become impossible or extremely difficult in oil-affected areas, and even drinking water has become scarce. Malnourishment and disease appear common.

loss of property, price inflation, prostitution, and irresponsible fathering by expatriate oil workers.

Organized protest and activism by affected communities regularly meet with military repression, sometimes ending in the loss of life.

While the story told to consumers of Nigerian crude in the United States and the European Union—via ad campaigns and other public relations efforts—is that oil companies are a positive force in Nigeria, providing much needed economic development resources, the reality that confronted our delegation was quite the opposite

oil company operating in the Niger Delta employing inadequate environmental standards, public health standards, human rights standards, and relations with affected communities.

Far from being a positive force, these oil companies act as a destabilizing force, pitting one community against another, and acting as a catalyst—together with the military with whom they work closely—to some of the violence racking the region today.

Oil For Nothing: Multinational Corporations, Environmental Destruction, Death and Impunity in the Niger Delta, Essential Action and Global Exchange, January 25, 2000

The military have been accused of thousands of killings, house/village burnings, intimidating people, torture and so on.

in the killing of Ken Saro-Wiwa to Chevron-marked helicopters carrying Nigerian military that opened fire upon protestors,

oil companies have neglected the surrounding environment and health of the local communities

oil spills that are not cleaned up, blatant dumping of industrial waste and promises of development projects which are not followed through, have all added to the increasing environmental and health problems.

corruption and religious tensions between Muslims and Christians

into 2004

Shell companies have worsened fighting in the Niger Delta through payments for land use, environmental damage, corruption of company employees and reliance on Nigerian security forces.

Shell companies and their staff creates, feeds into, or exacerbates conflict.

Voilence in the Niger Delta kills some 1000 people each year,

With over 50 years of presence in Nigeria, it is reasonable to say that the Shell companies in Nigeria have become an integral part of the Niger Delta conflict

Human Rights Watch’s 2010 report. They note although free speech and independent media remain robust and there have been some anti-corruption efforts. However, this is overshadowed by religious and inter-communal violence that has seen Muslims and Christians killing each other and by Nigeria’s political leaders’ “near-total impunity for massive corruption and sponsoring political violence”.

latest escalation of violence began in early 2006, hundreds of people have been killed in clashes between rival armed groups vying for illicit patronage doled out by corrupt politicians, or between militants and government security forces. Armed gangs have carried out numerous attacks on oil facilities and kidnapped more than 500 oil workers and ordinary Nigerians for ransom during this period

June 2009, followed a major military offensive in May against militants in the creeks of Delta State, which left scores dead and thousands of residents displaced.

— Nigeria, World Report 2010, Human Rights Watch

last several decades violence has been building off and on in the Niger River Delta

lucrative industry, which is living right next to very, very poor people and there is been a lot of conflict over time, a lot of mistrust built up between residents and the companies.

People feel that they have been cheated; people feel that their rights have been violated; they end up protesting against the companies or in some cases attacking the companies. The companies end up -- have to be protected by the military.

RAY SUAREZ: Not gaining but also feeling themselves burdened -- don't they -- by environmental concerns, fouling of the groundwater, that kind of thing?

t money paid to Nigeria's government in taxes - and the Nigerian Government will admit this -- a lot of the money over the years has been stolen.

Nigeria has a tremendous corruption problem, and the money that's disappeared is probably in the billions -- not the millions -- over the years -- perhaps the tens of billions

don't really have much of a functioning government

There aren't any roads in many areas; there aren't good schools in many areas; many places don't even have electricity; many places don't have telephone lines, although cell phones are now spreading through independent companies.

oil companies will say first off that they don't employ that many people

Shell acknowledged more than 200 oil spills last year alone. Thousands of barrels of oil were spilled in the water and there have been many oil spills over the years. And that has contributed, by many people's accounts, to environmental degradation there.

the face of the government to many people is a police officer or a soldier or sailor who is there fundamentally to guard an oil installation and not to help the people, or protect the people.

a feeling that the government has taken sides in this triangle and it's with the companies and not with the people who live there?

various ethnic groups in the Delta and tribal groups and different villages and individuals, many, many different groups, and it is often felt that the oil companies have taken sides, that they have gone about a divide and rule practice as some people will call it.

when they get frustrated, when there is an ethnic militia or an ethnic group that is going to engage in violence, they'll often turn it against oil companies, which they will see as perfectly justified, even though the oil companies will find it an outrageous disruption;

We get 1.2 million barrels a day from Nigeria; it's the fifth largest supplier of oil to the United States

Every day there is some more than 100,000 barrels, 140,000 from one company, as a matter of fact, that doesn't get out of Nigeria because of violence over the last couple of years and some days that's a much higher number.

in some cases you simply have people who live next to an oil facility, who feel they have been cheated, who feel that they're actually worse off for the facility being there because of pollution and other problems - who feel they're not benefiting and they go and they protest.

terminal in 2002 and again in 2005 was invaded by residents from nearby villages who simply felt that they were not gaining anything from Chevron.

They invade the terminal; they shut it down; Chevron makes promises; people feel the promises aren't kept; they come back again. That's one way that there's violence.

ethnic conflicts; there was a major one in 2003 revolving around elections

one group that felt that another group was having the election rigged in their favor and so they struck out. And they battled with Nigeria's military to some degree and they also attacked oil facilities because that was a way that they could strike back at the government.

disputed who owned a bit of oil land. The question who was got paid a little bit of money for the oil that was discovered on that land. They ended up fighting over it; a number of people were murdered.

military came in and essentially, by some people's account, settled matters by burning one of the villages. The military denies that the burning was intentional but, in any event, we went and visited -- a great number of buildings were destroyed, a number of people were killed.

no evidence of the government in many of these places. Does the oil company become -- in effect -- the government, and how do they respond to these challenges? What did they tell you about what they're trying to do in that part of Nigeria?

oil companies will have showcase instances in which they provided some community development.

instances in which oil companies have to acknowledge they have made promises that haven't been kept.

They will promise, for example -- in a village near the Chevron Terminal there is erosion of the land, which is blamed on the way that Chevron has managed its land. Whether that's fair or not, Chevron has promised to fix it by building some new housing on some new land. It hasn't been done yet, and Chevron has its own reasons why that hasn't been done -- they'll say because the situation is too unstable and there's been too much violence.

So each company is trying to do something but the question is: Are they doing something that's just public relations or that's too small to make a regional difference in a region of millions of people, or are they really going to do something that could change the situation?

thieves have cost Nigeria an average of around 100,000 ba

rrels of crude oil per day.

Financial analysts, meanwhile, said that Nigeria is benefiting from the rising price of crude oil.

Oil prices are at two-year highs in part because of the civil war raging in Libya, Africa's top oil producer.

Officials at the Nigerian Financial Derivatives Co. told Nigerian newspaper Next that tensions in the Middle East were a "blessing" for Nigeria.

Libya holds around 44 billion barrels of oil reserves, the largest in Africa.”

The sudden change in Libya, a fallout of the democratic fervour blowing across North Africa and the Middle East, now meant that Libya oil supplies are in jeopardy, pushing the supply pressure on Nigeria and Angola.

Comments :   Now Nigerians,Africans & all the world can see the reason why IMF wants SANUSI TO DEVALUE NIGERIAN NAIRA so that the WESTERN WORLD will gain.SANUSI MAY THE GOD ALMITHY continue to strenghten u $ MR PRESIDENT never to listen to those animal impersonators.They thought u wiil be like IBB & others. Posted by: wyclef kojak , on Sunday, February 27, 2011 Report this comment This is a great opportunity for our country to make profits and use them for infrastructural development. I hope our government has the right sense to invest and appropriate this. Instead of diverting them for selfish and political purposes. Posted by: OgaFatai , on Saturday, February 26, 2011 Report this comment

. More than 20 million people depend on the freshwater lake for their survival.

But it's been shrinking over the past 50 years and satellite images show it is now just a twentieth of its former size.

Huge expanses of water are now nothing more than a series of ponds and islands, and the once-fertile land that surrounds the lake is now dusty and barren.

"The lake is in the process of disappearing and the lake feeds many people, not just here but in other countries like Nigeria, Cameroon and Niger," he continued. "They are all people who live on Lake Chad."

Locals report that they are catching less fish and the ones that they do catch are smaller than they used to be.

A declining stock could have devastating consequences far beyond the water's edge, says Yakowra Mallom, from UNICEF.

There are no more fish. There's no more milk, no maize, no vegetables or cereal."

Local communities say the changing weather is the biggest reason for the shrinking of the lakes shores. The necessary irrigation of farming land has also been a factor.

A small local group is trying to save the surrounding land by planting trees in the villages that have been worst affected by desertification. If they cannot bring back the lake, they hope there will at least be workable land.

That accounts for about 10 percent of Nigeria's current daily output of about 2 million barrels per day - already significantly down from the amount produced before years of militant attacks on oil infrastructure.

The militant leader said the militants were considering using the kidnapped American as a bargaining chip in their effort to free a militant leader who is in prison on charges of arms dealing and terrorism.

Attacks against offshore facilities are exceedingly rare.

Militant attacks on oil infrastructure have reduced by about a quarter the total oil production in Nigeria, which is Africa's biggest producer and a member of OPEC.

Despite being the home of almost all of Nigeria's petroleum reserves, the country's south is as desperately poor as the rest of Nigeria, Africa's most populous country with 140 million people.

2011 Budget Proposal: $27.6bn Ministries: $12bn Other government bodies: $350m Parliament: $707m Pensions and gratuities: $1bn Transfers to statuary bodies: $1.3bn Debt payments: $3.5bn Other expenses: $2.6bn TOTAL RUNNING COSTS: $21bn CAPITAL EXPENDITURE: $6.5bn

"You can't provide education, health or security without resources generated from a robust economy," he said.

The president's proposal for this year's national budget, which is currently before parliament, shows that nearly 75% of the $27.6bn (£17bn) would be spent on running government and its agencies.

Only $6.5bn is proposed for spending on capital projects, such as investment in vital infrastructure.

The diplomatic cable quotes Uranta as blaming "no more than 15 percent" of oil thefts on militants operating in the delta, a tropical maze of creeks and waterways about the size of South Carolina. Instead, politicians, retired admirals and generals and others in the country's elite profit from the thefts. Typically, thieves solder or cut into oil pipelines running through the mangrove swamps of the delta. Some refine the crude into kerosene or diesel in crude refineries, while other oil sails out to foreign ports for sale.

The large-scale theft, compounded by anger over unceasing poverty and pollution in the delta despite 50 years of oil production, led to an uprising of militants in the region beginning in 2006. Military-grade weapons funneled into the region, turning gunrunners into militant leaders who espoused political ideas — but kept their eyes on the profits from stolen oil.

Islamists in turn killed more than 100 Christians.

Among the Christians killed was Joseph Yari of the Evangelical Church of West Africa (ECWA), who died helping other Christians repel Muslim fanatics bent on burning down Christ Baptist Church.

the pastor's widow, said she had forgiven the killers.

In 2004, an estimated 700 people died in Yelwa, also in Plateau state, during Christian-Muslim clashes.