ENG-1140
September 10, 2007
Blessed Oppression
The Niger Delta is a region located in the southern part of Nigeria. This community is a lush of mangrove, rainforest and swamp land that has been blessed with abundant amounts of natural resources. It’s the backbone to the whole country’s financial stability. One of the most important natural resources that come out of this region is oil. It accounts for more than 80 percent of the government export and 90 percent of its revenue, which is estimated in the billions of dollars a year and a lot more when converted to the country currency. Anybody would expect this region which is abundant in natural gas and oil and generates so much income to be modernized and well taken care of but that’s far from reality. What seemed liked a blessing fifty years ago due to the discovery of oil in the Niger delta has turned into oppression.
The northern area of Nigeria is mostly rugged and mountainous which doesn’t contribute much to the country’s income, however this area is a lot more modernized, beautiful and well taken care off than the delta region in the south. This is because there are oil pipelines that run underground from the delta region to northern states to be refined and sold abroad. The northerners are people of a different ethnic group; they hold power in the federal government and don’t care about people from a different region or ethnic group. The income that comes from the natural resource is used to update and modernize the northern states while the delta region is left to deteriorate with unsafe drilling practicing and exploitation of the environment both by the oil companies and the federal government. Despite the enormous wealth that the Nigerian government makes every year from the Niger delta land, the citizens continue to live in post-modern conditions with unreliable electricity, a lot of unpaved roads and unfurnished school buildings without up to date technology.
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I have also witnessed the exploitation of my community land first hand. As I was being driven to school everyday I see the unsafe practice of gas flaring and the oil pipelines that run through the farmland, people’s gardens and the oil spillages into the river that general public use for swimming and washing their clothes. In school we’re told that Nigeria is ranked fifth in exporting oil and generates a lot of income from it, however when I look through the wooden school windows and take a good look at my surroundings I wonder where all of the income goes. It wasn’t until I got older and moved to the United States that I fully understood the level of corruption in the Nigerian government.
Whenever there was an oil spillage onto people’s farm land or a river stream, the response was always very slow, sometimes it took the oil companies up to three months to show up and clean the spillage and most of the time they do a bad job in cleaning up the mess. The Nigerian government does nothing about it because it happened in my community located in the Niger delta however should a similar oil spillage happen on U.S soil today, the same oil company responsible shows up within hours and its headline news but not when it happens in the Niger delta. Majority of the income that is generated from our land oil could be found in different foreign banks especially in Europe and the rest is used to furnish the northern states with the Niger Delta region left with the little leftovers.
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The Niger delta community has been demanding for an equitable distribution of the oil wealth and privileged treatment from the federal government but that has fallen on deaf ears. We have been protesting this injustice peacefully for decades before I was born but instead the federal government rethinking its unjust practices, they continue militarizing the area by sending the military whenever they sense a threat to the disruption of the oil supply and publicly executing anybody that stands out as a threat in their way. Ken Saro-Wiwa an environmentalist was publicly executed for his protest against the exploitation of the Niger delta lands and rivers without any regards to the citizens’ health and their means of survivable.
The situation in the Niger Delta involves a struggle for the equal distribution of a community wealth among the nation. This unrest in the delta region has caused the oil production to decrease dramatically causing a huge loss in profit due to oil pipeline sabotages and the restriction of oil workers by the company because of abduction. The hostages are never hurt in anyway instead they are held for a couple days just to create headline news and draw attention to the injustice that they face everyday by the federal government. As long as the people are forced to endure a government that takes them politically and economically hostage then there will be no peace of mind among the citizens of the delta region towards the federal government,
