Debut II: A Rainy August Week in the Niger delta

A day on Brass Island in Nigeria's oil-producing Niger delta:

So it finally happened. Me, physically in the Niger delta. The last three years of theorising, opinions, perspectives, analysis and forecasting had finally come to fruition. I was given a week-long opportunity and perhaps long-overdue priviledge to get a feel (by no means exhaustive) of what everyday life was like for the inhabitants of Nigeria's swampy, creeky, marshy, rainy yet beautiful, and highly impoverished oil rich region. To say I came away, mesmerised, humbled and disturbed would be understating the extent of my experience in the Niger delta and Brass Island; a tiny and roughly 100,000 strong Island of 3 Nembe-speaking communities in Bayelsa state. The Nembe are a  sub-group of the ethnic Ijaw ( or Ijo), the largest group in the Niger delta and number around 10million. The helicopter flight to Brass from Port Harcourt (Nigeria's main oil city in adjacent Rivers state) was awesome, you could see miles and miles of swamp, the random odd fisherman's canoe and smoke-spewing huts on stilts. Lifestyles so immersed in the terrain and landscape, that it seemed like they were created together, and at once. Suddenly from out of the blue, I spot a single flare – a gas flare to our west, and the reality of life here dawns on me. Nigeria burns more gas from oil exploration than it flares. It's a terrible waste of resources, and a serious health and environmental hazard. Despite efforts to regulate this act and get companies to convert associated gas for commercial use rather than burn them into the air, enforcement has been poor, and the practice continues. On the 40 minute helicopter flight, I was joined by 5 expatriate ('expat' henceforth) and local oil workers, in orange 'jumpsuits' and boots. Hard, gritty men, who seemed like they'd been working the pipelines and oil platforms for most of their lives. One of the expat passengers, who sounded like he was Dutch, I noticed, had lost an arm, and I wondered how that happened. I could only imagine that he'd been on the frontlines of a war, somewhere had been sent back home, only to find himself plunged into the deep dark world of oil exploration. Perhaps his home government thought it'd compensate his sacrifice in military service by rewarding him with an oil job. Still the expats and locals sat unmoved throughout the bumpy flight. I for one, was extremely nervous. I was trying to take in the sights below, and rein in my fear of heights. Worse still, we were flying through a terrible storm, and I thought my introduction to the delta was part of a sick baptism of fire, intended to prepare me for a more sordid reality upon landing. My fellow passengers chukled at the way I winced when the helicopter bounced up and down with the rain, wind and clouds. When we eventually landed on Brass, someone later told us that the helicopter pilots had actually momentarily lost his bearings during the flight but hadn't wanted to scare us by telling us.

Nevertheless, we were told we couldn't stay overnight on Brass, and would have to make daily trips to the Island, because it was too unsafe for expats. Me? An expat? No kidding. As black and as Nigerian I was, I was still an expat! Anyway, my first task was to conduct interviews with several villagers. A women's group, a youth group and environmental action group. It seemed like an adventure for me, but for the people I would be speaking to, this was no joke. I had my first taste of delta swamp life, when we had to hold one of the women's meetings in total darkness. No lights. Parts of the delta are still not connected to Nigeria's national grid even in the 21^st century. The oil companies, and only a handful of them are doing their best, but the hard fact is there's a stark absence of government. One of my escorts told me that the Brass Island local government chairman doesn't even reside on Brass Island, but in Port Harcourt. The chairman only turns up once a month to receive and 'distribute' the monthly allocation of central government revenue to the lower tiers of government. It's a persistently sore point with Brass Island residents. And for the improverished Islanders, all they see are oil and gas companies, who become pseudo-public service providers, and who unfortunately can't keep up with community expectations. But perhaps the most revealing aspect of my interview-round, was finding myself in the house of one of the community leaders. It was fair to say the environment surrounding the house was a run-down melting pot of corrugated iron shacks, pot-holed roads, and grimy alleyways of poor communities and pot-bellied children. My heart sank at these sights, which were right on the door step of mega-oil and gas exploration. But alas, all that was to change when I was taken into the house or should I say, decked-out-pad, of one of the youth leaders of these communities. By the way, 'youth' in Nigeria, and the delta in particular can mean anywhere from 18-45 years of age. So the fact that many of the men sitting in the parlour of this house looked like they could be my dad, was a secondary issue. In the throes of conversation with the youth leader (who I will call 'Papi' for anonymity's sake), my eyes darted around the room to the furnishings; flat screen TV, looked almost 50-inch, leather sofas, air-conditioners, and sleak looking sound-system. Papi thanked me for coming, and politely but firmly asked my escort to leave the room so he could talk “frankly” as he put it, about how the oil industry was “stealing” their resources. In any case, his major gripe was that his boys, some of whom were standing around him, weren't getting jobs. ('boys' in this context, refers to anyone who indirectly or directly benefits from your patronage). Papi wanted to regain control of allocation oil and gas jobs to members of his own community, and he wasn't happy that there were not enough jobs to go round. So I listened, and took notes, nodding in apparent sympathy, but still slightly confused that a youth leader who claimed to represent the interests of Brass' poor and marginalised communities, could live in such luxury. As you can imagine, I wasn't convinced by his story, since the proof is always in the pudding. Papi and his boys had a lot of complaints, and at one point when they raised their voices in anger at the oil companies' alleged neglect, my escort knocked on the door to ask me if I was okay, and I responded with a quick yes, so the men in the room wouldn't think I was uncomfortable. I wrote down as much as I could, and left, saying a polite thank you. But yet I didn't let it blur my view on the general plight of the ordinary delta who does really live on less than a dollar a day. I later left Brass Island feeling drained and overwhelming. On the way back to the helicopter station, we passed a polluted river flow. An oil spill had languished there for several weeks, and there was still no clean-up exercise. I came back to Brass Island the next day and the day after, and it was pretty much the same story of accusation and counter-accusation between oil companies, security forces, and communities. The entire experience was perplexing. So who's really telling the truth. Then it dawned on me that the utter complexity and depth of the delta's challenges would take years to unravel and solve. So as I finally flew over this, at once rich and deprived, melée of mangrove swamps and creeks, I realised that my life was much better than I ever thought. So many people have written about oil and the Niger delta that I wondered whether it was possibly that burden of unending global attention and media interest, and the resulting influx of researchers, academics, environmental and human rights activists, development consultants and random adventurers that was part of the problem.