NIGERIA: IRIN Focus on new security strategy in the Niger Delta
[This report does not necessarily reflect the views of the United Nations]
LAGOS, 7 November (IRIN) - As successive Nigerian governments itched
to employ military repression to quell the restiveness that progressively
overtook much of Nigeria's southern Niger Delta oil region in the last
decade, oil companies were the main restraining force.
Oil giants, including Shell, Mobil, Chevron, Elf, Agip and Texaco, which
together produce 95 percent of Nigeria's daily output of about two million
barrels, insisted without exception that they would not operate under a
military shield. They preferred to talk things over with host communities
and operate on some understanding.
As a result, communities that felt they had been denied access to the wealth
produced on their land took their protests to the oil companies. To press
their demands, they often forced oil facilities to shut down. More often
than not, the oil companies negotiated with community leaders. Settlements
were reached on what amenities or jobs the communities required. There was
minimal loss of lives.
But as the disturbances increased in recent years, with kidnappings,
hostage-taking and demands for ransom regular features of the frequent
disruptions that cost the government and its partners, the oil companies,
hundreds of millions of barrels of oil and dollars, a strategic rethink on
the use of force has become discernible among the oil majors.
An indication that things had reached a turning point came on 17 October,
when 51 youths from Olugbobiri community in Bayelsa State left in three
speedboats for a nearby facility of the Italian oil firm, Agip, to force it
to close. They were protesting against the alleged failure of the company to
adhere to a memorandum of understanding it reached with the communities a
few years before.
It had been a lingering problem. Similar protests on previous occasions had
resulted in the facility's closure. This time, however, the demonstrators
were confronted by armed troops stationed at the facility, who opened fire
and killed eight of them.
Activist groups in the region, including the Ijaw Youths Council (IYC),
which campaigns for local control of oil resources for the region's largest
community, the Ijaws, say the protesters were unarmed even if they had aimed
to close down the Agip facility.
''All the 51 people that went to try to close the flowstation were
unarmed. They were just approaching the place when the soldiers opened fire
on them, in cold blood,'' Isaac Osuoka, spokesman of the IYC told IRIN.
While AGIP officials claim they were besieged, they also admit that
something has changed about their attitude to using military force to create
an environment conducive to oil operations.
''It seems the government has finally realised that it is the owner of
the oil facilities and has decided to defend and protect its property,'' a
senior AGIP official told IRIN in Lagos to explain the Olugbobiri
incident.
Officials of Shell, which pumps nearly half of Nigeria's total output,
also admit that their major installations are now under military guard.
''We now have soldiers at the export terminals in Bonny and Forcados and
other key facilities. If the government says it wants to have soldiers there
to defend them, we cannot say no because it is the majority stakeholder,''
one Shell official said.
Under President Olusegun Obasanjo, Nigeria's government appears very
keen to protect and secure its main source of revenue, especially
since, in the last two years, disruptions have sometimes forced
cuts of up to a third of total production.
Some political analysts are also beginning to see the influence of the
United States, the leading buyer of Nigeria's highly rated light crude,
which is concerned about ensuring its supply. Local newspaper reports have
recently linked a US programme to train Nigerian soldiers for peacekeeping
operations in Sierra Leone to an alleged plan to militarily pacify the oil
region. The Ijaw Youths Council, in a recent statement, accused President
Bill Clinton's government of supporting the military suppression of the
Niger Delta people.
And there were a few raised eyebrows last week when a delegation from the US
Department of Transportation that visited the Nigerian capital, Abuja, said
the US government was going to help Nigeria set up its own coastguards to
protect the country's oil-rich coastal region.
Obasanjo's government has also increased military activity in the region,
with a new army division established in the city of Benin, apparently
to oversee the Niger Delta. Soldiers have been deployed to several
communities around the southern oil town of Warri, where pipeline
explosions killed more than 300 people this year. Already security forces
have been accused of burning down 25 houses in reprisals against local
people they suspect of collusion in the rupturing of pipelines to steal
fuel.
Captain Gabriel Onah, a new navy commander appointed to the oil-region
states of Rivers and Bayelsa early in October, explained the mission of the
security forces in his inaugural address to his troops in Port Harcourt.
"We are to ensure adequate protection of lives and property, the protection
of government interest, foreign companies and industries that invest in our
country to boost our economy," he said. "Any group or individual that raises
arms against us will face our superior firepower."
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