Sokari Ekine opinion In an extensive piece examining the reactions of Niger Delta women towards the militarised violence of the Nigerian state and its
multinational oil company allies, Sokari Ekine discusses the iniquitous contrast in wealth visible in the abject poverty of the Delta region’s locals and the hugely profitable resource extraction of external players. Amounting to an estimated US$30 billion in oil revenues over a 38-year period, this plundering of resources has become progressively rooted in the institutionalisation of violence directed towards dissenting local groups. Though suffering terribly at the hands of government forces, local women, Ekine writes, have spearheaded the defence of local livelihoods through organised protests which cut across regional ethnic divisions. +++ Nigeria has for the past 39 years been a militarised state, even when so-called civilian governments, including the present one, have been in power. Militarisation consists of the use of the threat of violence to settle political conflicts, the legitimisation of state violence, the curtailment of freedom of opinion, the domination of military values over civilian life, the violation of human rights, extrajudicial killings and the gross repression of the people (Chunakara, 1994). Turshen describes the militarised state as one in which ‘violence becomes a crisis of everyday life, is disenfranchising and politically, physically and economically debilitating’ (Turshen, 1988: 7). The Niger Delta is a region of Nigeria that has been subjected to excessive militarisation for the past 13 years, where violence is used as an instrument of governance to force the people into total submission (Okonta and Douglas, 2001 Na’Allah, 1998). It is where, by far, the majority of the people live in abject poverty and where women are the poorest of the poor (Human Rights Watch, 2002 2004 2007). This region has little or no development, no electricity, no water, no communications, no health facilities, little and poor education. In contrast, the region generated an estimated over US$30 billion in oil revenues over a 38-year period in the form of rents for the government and profit for the multinational oil companies (Rowell, 1996). The multinational oil companies – mainly Shell, Chevron/Texaco and Elf – have treated both the people and the environment with total disdain and hostility (Okonta and Douglas, 2001). They have worked hand in hand with a succession of brutal and corrupt regimes to protect their exploitation of the land and people by providing the Nigerian military and police with weapons, transport, logistical support and finance. In return the Nigerian government has allowed the oil companies a free hand to operate without any monitoring. In fact, the oil companies in the Niger Delta have one of the worst environmental records in the world.[2] DESTRUCTION OF THE ECOLOGICAL SYSTEM
The Niger Delta has become an ecological disaster zone, a place where rusty pipelines run through farms and in front of houses (Rowell, 1996). Day and night huge gas fires rage in massive pits and towers, spewing noxious gases and filth into people’s homes and farms. Oil spills and fires are a regular occurrence, often causing the death of local people as well as the destruction of wildlife and property. Michael Fleshman of the New York-based Africa Fund describes what he saw at the site of one oil spill: