|
|
NIGERIA: Delta Violence Classic Example of 'Resource War' - Report
By Jim Lobe
WASHINGTON, Dec 17 (IPS) - Violence that has regularly convulsed a key oil-producing state in Nigeria over the past six years offers a ''classic example of a 'resource war','' and is unlikely to be curbed in the absence of new elections and an end to impunity, says a new report by Human Rights Watch (HRW).
The 29-page report, released here Wednesday, says the past year's violence in Delta State, which was greatly fuelled by last spring's elections - denounced as fraudulent by international observers - has resulted in hundreds of deaths and the displacement of thousands more.
Although private, ethnic-based militias were responsible for most of the mayhem, dozens of people have also been killed by government security forces, according to the report, 'The Warri Crisis: Fuelling Violence'.
''The people of the Niger Delta have suffered horribly from living amid the source of Nigeria's wealth,'' said Bronwen Manby, the report's author. ''And the perpetrators get away with these crimes without even the faintest chance of being brought to justice.''
The bloodshed also produced serious financial losses, both for the local population and the rest of Nigeria, Africa's most populous nation. Forty percent of Nigeria's oil - which earns well over 90 percent of the country's total export earnings - flows through Warri. Fighting has forced the port to close there several times during the past year.
Both the state and the country are also losing hundreds of millions of dollars from illegal ''oil bunkering'', the practice of siphoning off oil from pipelines outside the port into barges hidden in the Delta marshlands, adds the report which endorsed recent proposals by Shell that Nigeria's oil exports be ''certified'' as coming from legitimate sources as one way to curb theft.
Illegally bunkered oil accounts for perhaps 10 percent of Nigeria's total oil production, or between 750 million dollars and 1.5 billion dollars a year, and, in Delta State often the same interests and militias control bunkering rackets.
The common denominator of both illegally bunkered oil and elections results, HRW said, is control over the Delta State government, whose officeholders often enjoy virtually unchecked control over resources and state security forces.
Not only can incumbents get a leg up on rivals in the battle for illegally bunkered oil, but they also reap major financial benefits from a 1999 law that, ironically, was designed to improve relations between oil-producing states and the central government.
That law provides that 13 percent of the revenue from state oil production will be returned to the state government - in Delta State's case, a major bonanza.
''Although the violence has both ethnic and political dimensions,'' said Manby, ''it is essentially a fight over the oil money - both government revenue and profits of stolen crude".
"Efforts to halt the violence and end the civilian suffering that has accompanied it must therefore include steps both to improve government accountability and to end the theft of oil.''
But the interests involved are not just confined to the state; they also have national connections. Last month, for example, three Lagos-based journalists were arrested by police, detained for two days, and charged with sedition and defamation for an article that alleged the country's vice president and President Olesegun Obasanjo's national security adviser were involved in large-scale theft of crude oil.
According to the report, the major contending forces in Delta State are organised along ethnic lines. Three major groups claim Warri, the largest town, as their homeland: the Itsekiri, a group of just a few hundred thousands whose language is related to the much larger Yoruba to the west; the Urhobo, which consists of several million people related to the Edo-speaking people of Benin City; and the Ijaw, the largest single Delta group, whose 10 million people are spread out over several states.
The question of the ''ownership'' of Warri was already in dispute in colonial times because it was linked to office holding at both the local and state government levels.
In 1991, when Delta State was created, the Itsekiri, despite their relatively small population, were recognised as the ''true indigenes'', giving them a disproportionate advantage over the other two groups in gaining certain offices and other perquisites, such as scholarship awards and contracts with foreign oil companies.
This naturally raised the hackles of the other two groups. They have long demanded the creation of new wards and local government areas that they could then dominate, demands that began translating into violence in 1997, as militias of the different ethnic groups raided villages or neighbourhoods inhabited by others, often killing scores of residents and forcing others to flee.
The conflict also quickly involved foreign oil companies themselves, as militia groups or local residents took over or occupied key oil installations to press their grievances, often disrupting the flow of crude to off-shore terminals and beyond.
Despite the violence and oil interruptions, the federal government has failed to investigate the situation since 1997, and, when government security forces were involved, they have either shot dead alleged assailants or let them go, reportedly after the intervention of higher officials, according to HRW.
The elections last April and May re-intensified the inter-ethnic conflict, although, says the report, Ijaw militia members were particularly well organised in attacking Itsekiri communities living in the creeks of the mangrove forests, where much of the oil is found.
Federal government forces have also become more involved in the fighting, according to the report, which noted several naval attacks on Ijaw villages.
Fighting became so great that oil companies like ChevronTexaco and Shell were forced to close several facilities last March, and thousands of people were displaced from their homes throughout the region, including in areas that had previously been left alone.
In spite of the mayhem, the Nigerian government, adds HRW, has given little if any assistance to those who have been displaced by the fighting, while its security forces have not only failed to protect civilians but also to carry out arrests, let alone prosecutions of those responsible for the violence.
HRW also charged that the government's efforts to negotiate an end to the fighting have been ''inadequate'', even though military and security officers have insisted publicly that a political solution is the only way of resolving the conflicts.
At a minimum, it added, fresh elections should be held in Delta State to ensure ''equitable representation of all those living in the state regardless of ethnic origin''.
(END/2003)
|
|
|
|
|
| |
|
|
What is RSS?
