Poverty and chronic underdevelopmentAccording to Amnesty International 70% of the six million people in the Niger River Delta live off of less than 1$ US per day. For many people this means finding work in a labour market, which is in many instances hostile to them. Much of the labour in the past has been imported. To a growing degree the labour force for the oil companies is more and more coming from Nigeria. But discrimination is rampant and for the most part locals are discriminated against. This leads to a situation where the men in the community have to search for temporary employment.

Most of the villages do not have electricity or even running water. They do not have good access to schools or medical clinics. For many, even clean drinking water is difficult to come by. The deterioration of the infrastructure in the delta states is so severe it is even a problem in the more urban areas. One example of this is the airport at Port Harcourt. Part of a fence was not properly maintained and an Air France flight hit a herd of cattle on the runway. The airport was closed and is still not open.

The leadership of the Niger Delta region are responsible for most of the underdevelopment in the region. There is large scale corruption amongst the elected leaders especially governors and the leaders have helped sponsor the militants groups kidnapping innocent people and sabotaging efforts by the federal government for any infrastructure development. Indicted corrupt leaders are also cheered by the Niger Delta people.

OBIOKU, Nigeria - At first glance, it is hard to imagine anyone fighting over this place.

Approached by a creek, the only way to get here, a day's journey by dugout canoe from the nearest town, it presents itself as a collection of battered shacks teetering on a steadily eroding beach.

On Sunday morning, the village children shimmy out of their best clothes after church and head to a muddy puddle to collect water. Their mothers use the murky liquid to cook whatever soup they can muster from the meager catch of the day.

Yet for months a pitched battle has been fought between communities that claim authority over this village and the right to control what lies beneath its watery ground: a potentially vast field of crude oil that has caught the attention of a major energy company.

The conflict has left dozens dead and wounded, sent hundreds fleeing their homes and roiled this once quiet part of the Niger Delta. It has also laid bare the desperate struggle of impoverished communities to reap crumbs from the lavish banquet the oil boom has laid in this oil-rich yet grindingly poor corner of the globe.

"This region is synonymous with oil, but also with unbelievable poverty," said Anyakwee Nsirimovu, executive director of Institute of Human Rights and Humanitarian Law in the Niger Delta. That combination is an inevitable recipe for bloodshed and misery, he said. "The world depends on their oil, but for the people of the Niger Delta oil is more of a curse than a blessing."

Even though Nigeria elected a democratic government in 1999, which raised hopes for the long-suffering delta region, almost none of the enormous wealth the oil creates reaches places like this. The isolation of Obioku is total. With no fast boats available, the nearest health center or clinic is a day's journey away. No telephone service exists here. Radio brings the only news of the world outside. Nothing hints that the people here live in a nation enjoying the profits of record-high oil prices.

"It is like we don't exist, as far as government is concerned," said Worikuma Idaulambo, chairman of Obioku's council of chiefs.

Nigeria is a longstanding OPEC member that exported nearly $30 billion of oil in 2004, the United States Department of Energy said. Nigeria sends 13 percent of revenues from its states back, a hefty sum for the underdeveloped ones where oil is produced.

Much of that is siphoned off by corrupt regional officials who often pocket the money or waste it on lavish projects that do little, if anything, for ordinary people.

A result has been a violent struggle over the jobs, schools and other aid that oil companies have offered to encourage local residents to cooperate. Here in Obioku, as in many towns in the delta, an oil company, in this case a subsidiary of Royal Dutch Shell, has brought the only signs of modernity. In 1998, Shell bought the rights to drill for oil near a small fishing settlement at the edge of Obioku, no more than a handful of rough shelters made of grass and wood.

Shell signed agreements with the chiefs of Obioku and with leaders in the nearest town, Nembe-Bassambiri, to help develop Obioku. In time, Shell built a water tower, gave the village a generator and built a primary school. In return, the village agreed to allow Shell and its contractors to work freely.

For years Shell did nothing with the field. Then, early last year, a Shell contractor arrived to begin work, and trouble started.

Officials in a nearby town, Odioma, laid claim to the land, and demanded that the oil company pay tribute if it wanted to drill.

"This is Odioma land," said Daniel I. L. Orumiegha-Bari, a member of Odioma's council of chiefs. "It belongs to us. Anyone claiming otherwise is an interloper wanting to revise hundreds of years of our history."

Chiefs in Nembe-Bassambiri, who were receiving payments on the premise that the land was theirs, rejected Odioma's claim.

Human rights and environmental groups have long criticized the practices of Shell, the oldest and largest of Nigeria's oil producers. As a result of a stinging internal report in 2003 that said Shell, whether intentionally or not, "creates, feeds into or exacerbates conflict," the company revamped its community relations strategy. Shell immediately withdrew from the Obioku area and referred the dispute to local government authorities to resolve.

Words soon gave way to action, and blood began to flow into the rivers and creeks. In February, a boat filled with local government councilors on a mission to broker a deal among the feuding communities was attacked, and a dozen people were killed.

Officials in Nembe-Bassambiri blamed a militant youth group in Odioma for the slaughter. The group is believed to be involved in bunkering: stealing oil by breaking into pipelines.

As is common here, group members had been hired by an oil company contractor to provide security on the waterways, chiefs in Odioma and other villages said. Such contracts are often a way to buy cooperation from youths who would otherwise attack oil installations and harass workers.

Contending that it sought to arrest the members of the youth group, a unit of the Nigerian military known as the Joint Task Force, charged with security in the Niger Delta, went to Odioma on Feb. 19.

Thinking that the task force was coming to help them, Odioma's chiefs had gathered in the village king's palace to receive it. But shots were fired, and the chiefs scattered.

"We thought they came in peace," said Mr. Orumiegha-Bari, the Odioma chief. "But they destroyed our village." The army flattened Odioma, residents said, leaving behind a barren moonscape covered with a carpet of ash, broken glass and burned concrete where an idyllic village once stood. At least 17 people died in the raid, including a 12-year-old boy called Lucky, Mr. Orumiegha-Bari said.

Ayebatari Silgbanibo had been sitting in the tiny office of his computer business, which he started with a grant from Shell, when the gunfire started. "I didn't want to leave my computer because it is all I have," Mr. Silgbanibo, 22, said. "But I was afraid."

When he returned, his computer and printer had been destroyed. He is a fisherman now, like his father and most of the men in this village, earning about a dollar a day. The computer, which he received because Odioma has its own oil wells, apart from Obioku, was supposed to lift him out of generations of poverty.

"How can I ever buy a new computer?" he said. "It is impossible."

It is hard to say who is to blame for the violence that has wracked this pocket of Nigeria. Some villagers and human rights groups blame the oil companies and their contractors, which pay for economic development and employ youths, creating an incentive for communal violence. Still others blame the federal, state and local governments, which collect and distribute millions of dollars in the names of local residents yet never seem to produce much benefit.

The communities fighting over the oil fields are in Bayelsa State, which produces a third of Nigeria's oil and has an annual budget of more than half a billion dollars to spend on its three million people. But most of it goes to white elephants like a mansion for the governor and his deputy.

Corruption is largely to blame. The state's governor, Diepreye Alamieyeseigha, was arrested in London on money laundering charges in September, then fled to Nigeria, where he enjoyed immunity even from prosecutors, in November. He is suspected of stealing hundreds of millions of dollars from the state since he was elected in 1999. He has since been impeached, and as a result charged with corruption and money laundering in Nigeria. After an inquiry in 2005, Amnesty International concluded, "As with many violent disputes within communities in the Niger Delta, access to oil resources is at the root of the Odioma incident."

August 25, 2005Few things are more startling about the Niger River Delta than rounding a curve and encountering an enormous flame ahead. Sometimes it pours out of a smokestack, which reminds you of anoil refinery. Sometimes it comes straight out of a hole in the ground, which makes you think of hell.

What's really happening is that companies are "flaring," burning unwanted natural gas that comes up when they drill for oil.

"Nigeria accounts for about 25 percent of the world's flaring," J. Stephen Morrisson, of the Center for Strategic and International Studies, told a Senate committee last year. "It's visible from outerspace."

A July 2003 report on Nigeria by the U.S. Energy Information Administration noted that flaring "has not only meant that a potential energy source — and source of revenue — has gone up in smoke, but it is also a major contributor to air pollution and acid rain."

An executive for Shell, Nigeria's largest energy producer, pointed out to us that gas burns cleanly. Gas is indeed considered cleaner than other fuels, but a U.S. Energy Department official testified in 2002

that flaring is "generally unhealthy to humans and ecosystems" and produces carbon dioxide, which has been linked to global warming.

Why wouldn't the companies sell Nigeria's gas? Until recently, there was a limited market for gas in Nigeria, and there was no easy way to ship it to market overseas.

Today, that's changing. It's becoming common for gas to be chilled into a liquid and sent by tanker ship to major markets, including the United States. Oil companies, led by Shell, have invested billions to build a terminal to cool and ship the delta's liquefied natural gas, or LNG. A second LNG terminal is on the way.

Natural gas flaringNigeria flares more natural gas associated with oil extraction than any other country, with estimates suggesting that of the 3.5 billion cubic feet (99,000,000 m3) of associated gas (AG) produced annually, 2.5 billion cubic feet (71,000,000 m3), or about 70% is wasted via flaring. Companies operating in Nigeria harvest natural gas for commercial purposes, however prefer to extract it gas from deposits where it is found in isolation as non-associated gas. It is costly to separate commercially viable associated gas from oil, hence gas flaring to increase crude production.

Gas flaring in Nigeria releases large amounts methane, which has very high global warming potential. The methane is accompanied by carbon dioxide, of which Nigeria is estimated to have emitted more than 34.38million tons in 2002, accounting for about 50% of all industrial emissions in the country and 30% of the total CO2 emissions. As flaring in the west has been minimized, in Nigeria it has grown proportionally with oil production. While the international community, the Nigerian government, and the oil corporations seem to agree that gas flaring need to be curtailed, efforts to do so have been slow and largely ineffective.

Gas flares release a variety of potentially poisonous chemicals such as nitrogen dioxides, sulphur dioxide, volatile organic compounds like benzene, toluene, xylene and hydrogen sulfide, as well as carcinogens. Often gas flares are often close to local communities, and lack adequate fencing or protection for villagers who may risk nearing the heat of the flare in order to carry out their daily activities. Flares which are often older and inefficient are rarely relocated away from villages, and are known to coat the land and communities in the area with soot and damage adjacent vegetation.

Oil spillsOil spills in Nigeria are a common occurrence; it has been estimated that between 9 million to 13 million barrels have been spilled since oil drilling started in 1958. The government estimates that about 7,000 spills occurred between 1970 and 2000. Causes include corrosion of pipelines and tankers (accounts for 50% of all spills), sabotage (28%), and oil production operations (21%), with 1% of the spills being accounted for by inadequate or non-functional production equipment. A reason that corrosion accounts for such a high percentage of all spills is that as a result of the small size of the oilfields in the Niger Delta, there is an extensive network of pipelines between the fields. Many facilities and pipelines have been constructed to older standards, poorly maintained and outlived their estimated life span. Sabotage is performed primarily through what is known as "bunkering", whereby the saboteur taps a pipeline, and in the process of extraction sometimes the pipeline is damaged. Oil extracted in this manner can often be sold for cash compensation.

Oil spillage has a major impact on the ecosystem. Large tracts of the mangrove forests, which are especially susceptible to oil (this is mainly because it is stored in the soil and re-released annually with inundation), have been destroyed. An estimated 5–10% of Nigerian mangrove ecosystems have been wiped out either by settlement or oil. Spills take out crops and aquacultures through contamination of the groundwater and soils. Drinking water is also frequently contaminated, and a sheen of oil is visible in many localized bodies of water. If the drinking water is contaminated, even if no immediate health effects are apparent, the numerous hydrocarbons and chemicals present in oil represent a carcinogenic risk. Offshore spills, which are usually much greater in scale, contaminate coastal environments and cause a decline in local fishing production.

Nigerian regulations are weak and rarely enforced allowing oil companies, in essence, to self-regulate.

Impact of oil industry on human rights

Repression of protest and government corruptionOne of the greatest threats facing the people of the Niger River Delta has actually been their own government. The Nigerian government has total control over property rights and they have the authority to seize any property for use by the oil companies. A majority of every dollar that comes out of the ground in the delta goes to the government of Nigeria. Corruption in the government is rampant, in fact since 1960 it is estimated that 300 to 400 billion dollars has been stolen by corrupt government officials. The corruption is found at the highest levels as well. For example a former inspector general of the national police was accused of stealing 52 million dollars. He was sentenced to six years in prison for a lesser charge.

Nigerians have on many occasions engaged in protests against oil-related corruption and environmental concerns, but are frequently met with harsh suppression by government forces. An extreme example happened in 1994. The Nigerian military moved into a region called Ogoniland in force. They razed 30 villages, arrested hundreds of protestors, and killed an estimated 2,000 people.

One of the protestors they arrested was a man named Ken Saro-Wiwa. Ken Saro-Wiwa was a Nigerian TV producer, writer and social activist. In 1990 he founded the Movement for the Survival of the Ogoni People (MOSOP) because he wanted self-determination for the Ogoni people since he felt like the government had “hearts of stone and the brains of millipedes; because Shell is a multinational company with the ability to crush whomever it wishes; and because the petroleum resources of the Ogoni serve everyone’s greed.” Ken wrote and spoke out about the rampant corruption in the Nigerian government and he condemned Shell and British Petroleum. He helped organize an antigovernment rally for the Ogonis. He was arrested by the Nigerian Government and imprisoned for 17 months. Then in a show trial Ken and eight others were condemned to death. He and the others were hung in 1995 and he was buried in an unmarked common grave even though he received the 1995 Goldman Environmental Prize and was a 1995 nominee for the Nobel Peace Prize.

BackgrounderMEND: The Niger Delta’s Umbrella Militant GroupAuthor: Stephanie HansonMarch 22, 2007A hotbed of militant groups

MEND is the most renowned of the large number of militant groups in the Niger Delta, an oil-rich region of mangrove swamps and creeks in the country's south and one of the world's largest wetlands. The militants, like the Niger Delta's population at large, object to the environmental degradation and underdevelopment of the region and the lack of benefits the community has received from its extensive oil resources. While there is a revenue-sharing plan in which the federal government distributes roughly half of the country's oil revenues among state governors, these funds do not trickle down to the roughly 30 million residents of the Delta. In 2003, some 70 percent of oil revenues was stolen or wasted, according to an estimate by the head of Nigeria's anticorruption agency. Whereas many residents used to work as fishermen, oil installations and spills have decimated the fish population and now markets must import frozen fish, according to National Geographic.

Militant groups, which are primarily composed of young men dissatisfied at their inability to find jobs, proliferated beginning in the 1990s. Groups such as the Ijaw Youth Council and the Niger Delta Vigilantes, were organized at the village or clan level. Their attacks were designed to extort short-term funds or municipal development projects from multinational oil companies. Yet as an International Crisis Group report details, recently militants are more sophisticated and increasingly share a common goal of “resource control,” a share of the oil revenues their region produces.

Taking and releasing hostagesMEND's attacks have hurt Nigeria's oil exports—costing at least eight hundred thousand barrels per day, or over 25 percent of the country's oil output, according to Nigerian officials. A February 2006 attack on two Royal Dutch Shell oilfields accounted for some 477,000 barrels per day of the reduced output. Though the group regularly carries out attacks against pipelines and is responsible for at least two car bombings, its primary tactic is kidnapping foreign oil workers. It typically releases these hostages unharmed after a period of negotiations—via intermediaries—with oil company representatives and the government. Okonta writes that taking hostages allows MEND to focus international attention on the Niger Delta and “to exploit the blaze of publicity thus generated to announce their grievances and demands of the Nigerian government.”

Hostage negotiations can involve ransom money, though MEND denies this. The other major source of income for the criminal militant groups is oil bunkering, a complicated process of tapping an oil pipeline and filling plastic cans with crude oil. The oil is then sold to locals or transported to barges offshore for transport to a neighboring country.

Growing political aims

Since its inception, MEND has articulated three major demands: the release of a fellow militand (Asari) from prison, the receipt of 50 percent of revenues from oil pumped out of the Delta, and the withdrawal of government troops from the Delta.

Instances in which MEND has made specific demands have failed to produce lasting or substantial results. In April 2006, MEND demanded that Shell pay $1.5 billion in compensation for pollution in the Niger Delta, a sum previously mandated by the Nigerian courts. Negotiations between MEND and the government (brokered by an Ijaw political group) resulted in a brief truce, which broke in mid-August when Nigerian military units killed fifteen MEND militants on their way to negotiate the release of a kidnapped Shell worker. Since then, MEND's attacks have become more frequent and its rhetoric more incendiary.

Government Response to Militancy.

Adapted from “Nigerian rebels swap weapons for welding,” by Xan Rice. Published July 5, 2012.

The late president Umaru Yar’Adua started a $405 million-a-year amnesty program in June 2009 to have the militants hand over their weapons in exchange for a $400 monthly payment and a promise of training. Today oil output is between 2.4 million and 2.6 million barrels a day, the government says. While the militants were operating in the Delta, oil production was halved from more than 2 million barrels a day to as low as 800,000 a day in January 2009.

The $400-a-month stipend is nearly four times the minimum wage of local government workers. Together with the promise of training, it was enough to encourage most militants — and many nonmilitants, some allege — to renounce violence and join demobilization camps. Some 26,000 handed over their weapons.

The government says that about 11,500 of those granted amnesty have been placed in formal education or given training since 2009. Nearly half of those took courses abroad, mainly learning skills such as welding, electrical installations, mechanics, marine diving and entrepreneurship. An additional 600 nonmilitants were awarded scholarships to overseas universities as part of the program.

Paying and educating the former militants is expensive, costing $405 million in 2012 alone and well over $1 billion since the program started. While that represents less than three days’ revenue from the increased oil production, it has nonetheless drawn criticism from politicians outside the delta, who say that the cost of appeasing and pacifying the region is too great.

The government said that the end date for payments to militants would depend on the “threat and needs of the region” but that it was unlikely to extend past 2015. That means new jobs and opportunities will have to be created to keep the former militants as well as other jobless youths satisfied.

At present that is not happening, which could have serious consequences. Belema Papamie, an adviser to the president from the Ijaw Youth Council, an influential body representing the delta’s largest ethnic group, said the various militant groups held back some of their weapons when accepting amnesty and may have acquired more.

“You can traumatize a man by training him and then not giving him a chance at a job,” Papamie said.

States in Nigeria Between 1962 and 1992, the

Federal system comprised 3 Regions (1960), 4 Regions (1963), 12 States (1967), 19 States (1976), 21 States (1987) and since 1991, 30 States.

The Local Governments have also increased from 299 in 1970 to 301 (1979);

and then to 781 (1981) before they reverted again to 301 (1984) and increased first

to 449 (1987), 500 (1991) and to 589. As can be seen.....the Constituent units in the Nigerian federation had been tinkered with eleven times either at the State or Local Government level. With the increasing number of units, and, with what there is to be shared not varying much, greater pressure is put on available resources; hence the "national cake" is fragmented among many units.

Management of Oil Revenue …The current formula is: Federal Government 52.68%; states 26.72%; and local governments 20. 60%.

Currently, the management of oil revenue derivation is in the hands of governors of the oil producing states with little or no input from local communities in the management of such funds.

* State allocations are based on 5 criteria: equality (equal shares per state), population, social development, land mass, and revenue generation.

**The derivation formula refers to the percentage of the revenue oil producing states retain from taxes on oil and other natural resources produced in the state. World Bank

Oil revenue sharing formulaYear

Federal State* Loca

lSpecial Projects

Derivation Formula**

1958 40% 60% 0% 0% 50%

1968 80% 20% 0% 0% 10%

1977 75% 22% 3% 0% 10%

1982 55% 32.5

% 10% 2.5% 10%

1989 50% 24% 15% 11% 10%

1995 48.5% 24% 20% 7.5% 13%

2001 48.5% 24% 20% 7.5% 13%