Daniel Balint-Kurti, December 2009, The World Today, Volume 65, Number 12
The story goes that Nigerian rebels have kidnapped three western expatriate workers and killed them in cold blood. It is the first time they have murdered hostages and the political and economic fall-out in one of the world's top oil-producing nations could be huge. Oil companies are under attack from the media for putting their workers at risk. The Nigerian government is threatening an all-out offensive, which could trigger full-scale civil war.
THE SITUATION IS FICTIONAL, BUT the issues raised about the Niger Delta in the upcoming prime-time television drama Blood and Oil are very real.
Despite their relevance to Britain, these matters are rarely discussed here.This country is home to a Nigerian community estimated by the Foreign and Commonwealth Office at anywhere from eight hundred thousand to three million, and is also the base, jointly with Holland, of Royal Dutch Shell, which produces over half of Nigeria's oil.
More than thirteen million Nigerians – about ten percent of the country's population – live in the Niger Delta, an area the size of Scotland which produces almost all its crude oil.Millions of homes are along creeks heavily polluted by the effluent of the oil industry, and most do not have access to even basic infrastructure such as clean water, electricity, education and healthcare. Increasingly violent militia groups have thrived in this situation, drawing their footsoldiers from the ranks of the poor.
This is the world that Blood and Oil, to be screened on BBC2 early next year, explores, as its two female protagonists try to discover who killed the oil workers and why. Claire Unwin, played by JodhiMay, is the distraught wife of Mark, one of the kidnapped men, and she has travelled to Nigeria to try to push for her husband's release.
Alice Omuka, played by Naomie Harris, is a British woman of Nigerian origin employed by the fictional oil services company Krielson International, for whichMark works. She is sent from London to Nigeria to deal with the publicity surrounding the kidnappings, but is caught in a web of intrigue as she joins Claire in investigating the truth behind the murders of the hostages.
REFLECTING REALITY
The drama is likely to prove highly controversial.Most probably, some will say its bleak picture of the Niger Delta is a typical western media portrayal of Africa: the continent shown in an overwhelmingly negative light.
However, Guy Hibbert, the writer of Blood and Oil, says he is simply reflecting reality and giving a voice to a marginalised section of the Nigerian population. Hibbert, twice a Bafta award-winner, has made a habit of treading through political minefields, whether it is tackling violence in Northern Ireland in the films Omagh and Five Minutes of Heaven, or exploring disaster on board the Russian nuclear submarine in Kursk. His research for Blood and Oil made him passionate about the need for greater awareness of the Delta's problems.
'When I went there in 2006 to research it in Port Harcourt I was shocked by the level of corruption on all strata of society and how it impoverished people,' he said. 'I got more and more angry about the political situation. I got more and more angry about how these people had been abandoned.' The Delta should, he says, be 'as wealthy as Dubai and [it] is actually one of the most deprived areas of the world.'
Little has changed there since 2006, when Human Rights Watch published a report on Rivers State – where Port Harcourt is located – detailing the astonishing level of corruption.
The report notes that the State had a budget of $1.3 billion – larger than that of many countries in West Africa – but many of the local governments spent more on new government offices and lavish construction projects than on healthcare and education.
The report describes examples of what appeared to be blatant theft: for example, how a local government chairman spent vast sums on non-existent projects, 'including a "demonstration fish pond" with neither water nor fish and a "football academy" that has never been built'.
Such corruption and the flaunting of wealth by regional governors, who serve visiting journalists champagne and travel in private helicopters, has helped fill the ranks of The Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta (MEND) – the rebel group portrayed in Blood and Oil – with angry fighters.
NO LONGER NO 1
The Niger Delta has figured little in the British media since the 1995 crisis over the hanging of Ken Saro-Wiwa and eight other activists from the Ogoni tribe who led campaigns which forced Shell out of their oil-rich region. The issue galvanised public opinion in Britain, leading to protests against the oil company – seen by many as complicit in government repression – and helping to bring about Nigeria's suspension from the Commonwealth.
The situation in the Delta has since become far worse. The executions convinced many in the region that little could be achieved by nonviolent protest. The focus of unrest shifted from Ogoniland to areas inhabited by Ijaws,
Nigeria's fourth largest ethnic group.Militant groups took to kidnapping expatriate workers and received arms and funds from powerful politicians, who used them to help rig elections.
MEND began its campaign of violence in early 2006 with a spectacular series of attacks and kidnappings targeting western oil companies. Security experts noted that they had been better trained and kitted out than any of the previous militant groups. The attacks slashed Nigerian oil exports from 2.6 million barrels a day in 2006 to between 1.6 and 1.7 million in October, causing it to lose its place as Africa's No 1 oil producer to Angola.Over one thousand people were killed in fighting in the Delta last year.
Despite its violent methods,MEND is portrayed in an essentially sympathetic light in Blood and Oil. Hibbert's depiction is based on his meeting in Port Harcourt with militants from a related group, the Niger Delta People's Volunteer Force.
He describes the fighters as angrymen, who compete to shout about their grievances, including the malevolent British, Nigeria's former colonial masters, and how little of Nigeria's oil money is used to develop the Delta.
'I found the best way to deal with them was to be as passionate as they were and raise my voice,' he continued. 'We ended up both kind of shouting at each other but the shouting got more animated and friendly as it went on.'
'The piece I've written is not anti-MEND. I'm sympathetic towards those people who are trying to get justice, who are trying to get what should be given to them,' says Hibbert.
Explaining his sympathy, Hibbert relates a trip he made to a fishing community in the Delta's mangrove creeks.
'There was an oil leak in their waters in 1975 and you put your hand in and you could still see the oil in the water ... You realise they have been fishing in oily water their entire lives and no one has done anything to clear it up. You start thinking if somebody said "OK, here's a gun, here's a little bit of money"; you'd think "What have I got to lose?" I would probably do the same thing if I was in that situation.'
One of the reasons the militants can elicit such sympathy is because MEND has never murdered its hostages.Money and politics drive the campaign, and the former often seems the more important. The oil companies never admit to paying ransoms but industry security consultants readily admit that cash is handed over. How much is paid is a tightly-guarded secret. Some say millions of dollars for an expatriate worker, but tens of thousands may be more typical.
There is another racket which earns the militants probably much greater sums: 'oil bunkering', or the siphoning off of oil from pipelines. The militants have been known to carry out this illegal business in connivance with the security forces and, it is widely believed, with highly-placed Nigerian politicians. The drama explores these blurred lines between rebels, soldiers, politicians and businessmen, painting a picture of a society exploited by a multitude of predators.
Krielson International, the western oil company in the drama, and the British High Commission are portrayed as willfully ignoring the Delta's problems. It could be argued they got off too lightly.
When I was working as a journalist in Nigeria in 2006, I discovered that some of the country's most violent militants – men who launched a 2003 uprising in which at least two hundred were killed and forty percent of oil exports were shut down – had gone on to form 'security companies' which were paid over $100,000 by Shell to guarantee the security of oil pipelines. It looked very much like the company was buying off the militants, although it did not respond to this suggestion. It is widely suspected that there have been many more such arrangements by oil companies, but industry secrecy means it is virtually impossible to know for sure.
END TO AGITATION?
With money from oil company 'security contracts', ransom payments and oil bunkering, the militants have become steadily richer and better armed. Nigeria's President, Umaru Yar'Adua, believes his policies have drawn a line under the violence; notably by giving rebels the chance to hand-in their weapons in return for an amnesty and an array of incentives: including retraining programmes for a return to civilian life, partially backed by Shell and over $1 billion to build roads, schools and hospitals. Niger Delta villages are also to be given a ten percent stake in the national oil company. The most well-known militants all gave in their weapons, leading Yar'Adua to declare on October 15 that 'Agitations are now over.'
The schemes are vague, however, and it is unclear whether the government has the capacity to carry out its promises.
MEND has flip-flopped in its response, warning first of an escalation in its attacks, then declaring an 'indefinite ceasefire'. Henry Okah, one of MEND's top figures, has rubbished claims by the government to have disarmed over eight thousand fighters, saying only five hundred or so were 'real fighters' and the rest were 'rent-a-crowd'.
The government claimed by early October to have collected three thousand weapons and eighteen gunboats but Okah, speaking on Al Jazeera, said there are thousands more weapons in the hands of militants who are ready to continue fighting.
'If the government doesn't start speaking to the right people, addressing the real problems, there will be a resumption of the violence very soon,' he warned.
But with the government and MEND negotiating, such threats should be treated with some scepticism, at least for now.
For Hibbert, the Niger Delta needs its own Mandela figure, 'A guerrilla leader if you like, but someone who had the potential to be a statesman-like leader.' As the Delta waits for such a saviour, trouble continues to fester in its oily swamps.
