Killing "Rebels" in the Niger Delta

The people looking at you in this photo are Job Bebenimibo and his students in the Giraffe Service Club International in Oporoza, Nigeria.

Take a good look. They may all be dead. On May 16 the village of Oporoza was attacked by the Nigerian military. The villagers who survived fled into the bush, where there is no medical care and no food. There may be no homes to go back to if they survive.

The kids were inspired to do service by Giraffe Joel Bisina, who is a fellow Ijaw, and by the book Voices of Hope, a compendium of stories about people around the world who have stuck their necks out for the common good.

If you Google for news about the attacks in the Niger Delta you'll get a version that reads like it comes straight from the PR departments of multi-national oil companies and the Nigerian government: the military is re-establishing order in the oil-rich region by shutting down the rebel elements who have been disrupting oil extraction and exports. Order. Rebels. Oil. Sounds reasonable in a realpolitik sense, if that's your world view.

The makers of the film Sweet Crude are getting a different story. The team has been in the Delta repeatedly, filming a devastating picture of what oil extraction is doing to the people who belong to this land. The "rebels" have demanded that some of the wealth being taken out of the Delta must come to the Delta's people. Instead, extraction has impoverished the people, polluting waters and land that have always sustained them, and giving them none of the profits being made by the oil companies and the Nigerian government.

There are echoes here of the coverage of the Somali pirates - way too simple a picture was presented by the news media. It took online sources to point out that the pirates began as an ad hoc Coast Guard trying to stop first-world ships from extracting all the fish that had sustained Somalis, and dumping deadly chemical wastes in their waters. So much easier to present them only as self-serving privateers, never mind the outrageous provocations that started it all.

Nigerian friends of Sweet Crude have managed to get first-hand observations out via laptops and cell phones. What's really happening is the eradication of entire civilian populations, women, children, elders, school teachers and students included. Oporoza no longer exists. We don't know yet what has happened to Mr. Bebenimibo and the kids who teamed up to be of service to their community.

If this concerns you, link up with the Sweet Crudehttp://www.sweetcrudemovie.com team for ongoing reports. Try to get through to John Kerry, Chair of the Senate's Foreign Relations Committee. Send a message to your own Representatives and Senators.

Somewhere in all those offices there's got to be someone who cares more about kids and their teachers than oil company profits.

Comments

[dharmagal108]

Thanks Ann,
I think Hemiboso eloquently expressed how we all feel. I sent your info
to Rachel Maddow and hopefully she'll include it in her broadcast.
Please keep up all your good work! DG

[AnnMedlock]

Thanks for the relay to Maddow, dharmagal108. Six degrees of separation does sometimes work--one of the readers (not a Commenter--waaay more people read these things than leave comments) got the post to Kerry for the attention of his Foreign Relations Committee. He did answer. Said he'd get on it. And Giraffe Joel Bisina, got a meeting with him in DC. Bit by bit...

[phuyay]

I think the oil companies should pull out of Nigeria and every other place oil and politics result in death and destruction. Oil development needs to be brought closer to home where jobs can be created and it can be monitored and used as a bridge to alterntive fuels. The closing of the Nigerian pipe lines will cause a rise in oil prices, and as a source for oil, Nigeria has proven to be unreliable. When the recession ends, oil demand and prices will rise. The increase will fall hardest on the poor, the unemployed and cause all of us to pay higher prices. There must be a compromise between the economy and the environment. If we don't, all of us will suffer while the government fumbles to craft a brave new energy world for us of wind, solar and bio-fuels.

[Anne Osborn]

I pray your friends are safe.

[Anne Osborn]

I pray your friend and his kids survived. More reason than ever to cure ourselves of oil addiction.

[Hemiboso]

Thanks, Ann, for bringing this dire situation out from under the rock of big oil PR and political corruption at the expense of the Nigerian people. Bravo to the Giraffes who are standing tall to fight this exploitation and deadly poisoning of innocent locals. I will send a link to your blog far-and-wi­de--includ­ing to the media and my political representa­tives--and I hope that others reading this will do the same.

[Ann Medlock - Huffpost Blogger]

Thanks, Hemiboso. Yes, everyone who reads this, please send the link far and wide.

[Court Crawford]

Another case where we're not getting the real story through the corporate media.