Nigeria : Tensions High on Niger Delta’s Oily Waters

WARRI, NIGERIA — Environmental damage from oil spills in Nigeria's Niger Delta region has reached epic proportions and continues to threaten the stability of Africa’s most populous nation.  Locals say people are dying young or fleeing the region while oil companies and corrupt officials get rich on their resources.  However, oil companies say sabotage of their facilities accounts for 75 percent of the spills.   Before the war and before there was oil, the Niger Delta must have looked like paradise.  Even today it’s beautiful.  One of the most bio-diverse parts of Africa, the creeks and rivers are like a spider web on top of a lush swampy jungle. Only now if you look closely, you see that black oil coats the roots of the mangroves and floats in the water.  For local residents, the consequences are disastrous.

These people are standing on a dock by their village.  All of them and all of their ancestors fish for a living-or at least they used to, before the oil killed the fish.  In the past five years, they say, their catches have reduced about 80 percent. Decent Victor lives in another village on the riverbank.  She says the children here are constantly sick from drinking water polluted with oil and the nearest hospital in the city of Warri is five to six hours away in a dug … continued