Calabar/Port Harcourt — Roy Mog-Appia's attention is focused on a sheet of white paper, where he scribbles hastily. A few minutes later, he slides the notepad across the table.
"My Village," reads a carefully crafted ten-stanza poem. "…Where farmlands are overtaken/By pipelines and poverty pitch/Brothers at each others' throats…"
Mog-Appia's quiet disposition gives no hint of the daunting struggle faced by his organization, the Ijaw Environmental Monitoring Association, and countless other non-governmental organizations (NGOs) from Nigeria's troubled Niger Delta region. His colleagues talk of healthcare, governance, and environmental standards. Mog-Appia talks of another problem plaguing his region: internal conflict and how to combat it.
Nigeria is Africa's largest producer of oil and the third largest supplier of crude to the United States. Since the country's independence in 1960, its oil industry has operated in close proximity to communities in the Delta—sometimes within meters of their homes and farms. But despite the wealth flowing under the soil, the 1,500 communities that host oil facilities remain infamously poor.
Years of pollution and government neglect have been hard on the agricultural and fishing communities in the region. As livelihoods and agricultural land have evaporated, anger has grown, and many youths have taken up arms.
"The average person from the Ijaw group is angry," says Mog-Appia. "Even a child knows that there is a problem—he can't go to school but he sees pipelines. There is no light but he sees lit-up ships at night. As he is growing, he becomes more aware of it. It is not because he wants to become a militant, but when he keeps asking questions [and receives]… no answer, it's the only option."
The combination of economic decline and militancy, of years of poverty juxtaposed with overwhelming wealth, did something else to communities across the region: it set them against one another, turning once-quiet villages into places wracked with violence, according to community leaders.
Scarce resources and drying agricultural incomes put pressure on families and communities to scramble for land and resources. Disputes and violence sprung up in competition for space and survival.
As a result, the struggle in the Niger Delta today is as much internal-communities against themselves as it is against oil companies and the government.
Oil companies have tried to address the poverty. Through "memoranda of understanding," companies and communities decide upon policies and aid projects for the villages.
The oil companies say the agreements follow discussions with community leaders about people's priorities. But from the outset the memoranda have been contentious.
Bari-Ara Kpalap, a spokesperson for the Movement for the Survival of the Ogoni People, says oil companies, rather than relying on traditional or voted-in leaders, have often hand-picked local negotiators. "Shell creates its own leadership in communities," he says.
In recent years, under pressure to provide more jobs for local workers, oil companies have begun awarding contracts to community members—to help clean oil spills, guard oil facilities ("surveillance contracts"), or simply to keep young men out of the lucrative business of sabotaging or tapping into pipelines to steal oil ("stay-at-home" contracts).
The contracts are highly sought-after in communities with vast youth unemployment. "There is a way that young men reason—because of the oil boom, they believe that every oil firm has to take care of the host community," says Victor Egbe, youth leader of Akalu-olu village outside Port Harcourt.
The lucky youths who win bids are laden with wealth—often more than that enjoyed by traditional rulers. The contracts give them a reason and the means to challenge community leaders for power and influence in the villages.
"The oil company used the youth against us," says Amstel Monday Ebarakpor of Kedere village. "When they [the youth] win surveillance contracts, [they]… are dissident to the leadership, but loyal to Shell. [Oil companies] are looking for someone who can challenge the local leader—they award contracts on that level."
Local politicians become part of the mix too. Surveillance contracts, for example, are awarded through the chairperson of the local government, and some say the wealth is spread among only a select few.
During years of internal violence, several ethnic groups in the region have tried to organize and unify. The Ogoni, Ijaw, Itsekiri and other groups have NGOs or political congresses representing them.
Roy Mog-Appia says that bringing back Ijaw culture to unify villages is the key to community peace and the end of the crisis.
"Our cultural roots—from where we are coming—are dropping," he says. "For us to reverse that, we want to use photographs, culture, and the environment."
In addition to poems and photos, the Ijaw Environmental Monitoring Association hopes to record oil spills, gas flares, and other environmental damage. "We want a data bank somewhere where communities can access it," Mog-Appia explains.
But his ethnically-centered approach is controversial, cutting to the heart of Nigeria's very existence.
The Niger Delta is home to a range of ethnic groups spread along the coast. Ethnic nationalism led to the Biafra civil war in the late 1960s, when the Igbo people struggled for their own sovereign state. Today, associations with links to Ijaw, Ogoni, Itsekiri and other ethnicities in the region have similar ideas.
Some have gone so far as to suggest that the 1999 Nigerian constitution be rewritten. That is the position of the Niger Delta People's Salvation Front, an Ijaw association pushing both on the streets and in court for more autonomous ethnic regions.
"We want autonomy for the regions—even beyond the Niger Delta. We know that we are part of a Nigerian nation based on certain conditions, but that sense of belonging and patriotism is absent today," says Mark Olise, a spokesman for the movement.
Ethnically organized groups have taken up arms against the government and oil companies in the past and Olise says this time may be no different.
"It was armed uprising in the past that brought these issues forward," he says. "But the government today realizes the strength of the agitation and they are asking for dialogue…When there is a breakdown in discussion, then there will be violence."
Olise's Salvation Front has an armed sister organization, the Niger Delta People's Volunteer Force, to make his a credible threat.
But Roy Mog-Appia says the Delta needs an alternative to violence. His hope is that poems like his might just quell the fighting in the villages:
My Village
This is my village
Where gas flares extinguishes night
Where we defecate and drink from
Squalid creeks with eroding coastlines
And floods overrun homes
Leaving diseases with a fist
Where we lit our beating thatched
Huts with lamps and scramble for
Space with mice and cockroaches
My village
Where women are condemned to prostitution
Children to tears
And anger banish youths to the creeks
Where death flares its embers
On vulnerable people
And manhood and faith lost to fate
My village
Never before famished
Now in lassitude
Never before languished
Now razed
Never before enslaved
Now god-like ram of sacrifice
Oh let the heavens thunder
The graves rumble
The lands and adjoining
Creeks roar
And reject this poverty that
Denigrates our people
Reject these obnoxious laws
That deny our children
Education and information
And say no to environmental
Degradation that threatens our existence
Shout no!
Dance them down!!
And silence the drums of
The wicked in darkness!!!
And day is dinted by dynamite
Where farmlands are overtaken
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By pipelines and poverty pitch
Brothers at each others' throats
Where we defecate and drink from
Squalid creeks with eroding coastlines
And floods overrun homes
Leaving diseases with a fist
Where we lit our beating thatched
Huts with lamps and scramble for
Space with mice and cockroaches
My village
Where women are condemned to prostitution
Children to tears
And anger banish youths to the creeks
Where death flares its embers
On vulnerable people
And manhood and faith lost to fate
My village
Never before famished
Now in lassitude
Never before languished
Now razed
Never before enslaved
Now god-like ram of sacrifice
Oh let the heavens thunder
The graves rumble
The lands and adjoining
Creeks roar
And reject this poverty that
Denigrates our people
Reject these obnoxious laws
That deny our children
Education and information
And say no to environmental
Degradation that threatens our existence
Shout no!
Dance them down!!
And silence the drums of
The wicked in darkness!!!
