In the Creeks of Fire

The rise and fall of apartheid in South Africa is well documented. Rwanda, as one of the world’s ugliest spectacles of man’s depravity, is also carved in infamy. And while Darfur cries out to the deepest recesses of man’s conscience, the world must also take a moment to reflect on the ongoing human tragedy that is called the Niger Delta.

Made up of a swathe of creeks, rivers, and swamps and about the size of Scotland, the region is home to Nigeria’s multi-billion-dollar oil and gas industry. Unfortunately, the Niger Delta has also been converted to the bread basket for Nigeria’s cabal of corrupt and diabolical political leaders. In the wake of this feeding frenzy and madness, the people of the region have been left as the most brutalized, oppressed, and marginalized in the country. Perhaps, with the exception of South Africa during the reign of Apartheid, there’s hardly anyplace in the world where the people are more disenfranchised and brutalized in the past half a century than in the Niger Delta.

Until crude oil was discovered in the Niger Delta more than fifty years ago, the indigenes of the region enjoyed a land blessed with the abundance of life. The creeks, rivers, and swamps that form the tributaries of the Niger Delta provided them a constant source of energy and the necessary provisions for life. The ecosystem was teeming with a variety of wildlife. Fresh water, game, fish, and bumper crops enriched the simple agrarian lifestyles of the communities. It was said that in those days in the Niger Delta, a man went hungry only because he spent too much time deciding what to eat! Unpolluted, rich, and seductively beautiful, the region was the pride of Nigeria and perhaps the unheralded paradise of Africa.

However, just about half a century later, the story is different. The once seductive and rich land is gone. The land is massively polluted, infected with diseases, and strewn with untold poverty, hardship, and simply, it has become the face of apocalypse. It’s ironic that while the discovery of crude oil in the region has magically transformed distant parts of Nigeria and made the ruling elite multi-billionaires, the region remains desperately poor and underdeveloped, and provides a sad reflection of times gone by, and the reality of a people trapped in a vicious cycle of human tragedy. There is nowhere in Nigeria where the people are more oppressed, brutalized, and marginalized than in the Niger Delta.

After many decades of being enslaved by the government and foreign oil companies, the people of the Niger Delta have begun to fight back, much like the people of Southern Africa fought apartheid and their demons. In recent times the exponential rise in revolutionary or militant activity in the region is finally taking center stage in world geopolitics. And it doesn’t appear this clash of revolutionaries, freedom fighters, or militants on one side and the government and foreign oil companies and their vast network of agents on the other will end anytime soon. While Darfur continues to engage and challenge our collective human decency, it is equally imperative for the world to address, as a matter of urgency, the ticking time bomb called the Niger Delta.

&nbs