Teaching Comparative

Conflicts in the south-south

Frank Franz, who teaches at James Madison High School in Vienna, Virginia, recommended One Reason Gas Is Emptying Your Wallet: Nigeria to the AP Electronic Discussion Group.

The New York Times article does a good job of describing the conflict in the Niger Delta.

"Nigeria’s vast reserves of oil are being held hostage by a conflict that at best is little understood in the West. It is a three-way struggle, involving a government charged with negligence and corruption, oil companies blamed for terrible environmental damage that afflicts the region and an impoverished people.

"Some of these people are acting on genuine grievances that they are not getting their fair share of the billions in oil wealth pouring into the country. But others are little more than violent thugs who see a lucrative opportunity among the rusting pipes and plants that dot the creeks and swamps of southern Nigeria not only to steal oil and smuggle it out of the country, but to kidnap foreign oil workers for ransom...

"How does Nigeria — and the world, facing a $140 barrel of oil — get out of this mess?...

"According to J. Stephen Morrison, director of the Africa program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, the government led by Nigeria’s new president, Umaru Yar’Adua, must break with decades of neglect and pay attention to the troubles of the southern delta region by promoting development but also cracking down on the rebels and 'demonstrating that these guys cannot operate with impunity.'

"He’s not very optimistic, however. 'When you look at the delta, the overwhelming picture is that the situation has very little promise of being fixed,' he said.

"The government controls oil revenues and it gives only a fraction back to the desperately poor regions that produce the oil. Even then, according to Chris Albin-Lackey of Human Rights Watch in Nairobi, most of the money is “squandered on white elephant projects...

"But the problem, said John van Schaik, an oil analyst for Energy Intelligence, a publisher of industry newsletters, is that as long as oil prices remain high, the rebels recognize the power they have and are not likely to give it up. And the rebels are one reason prices are likely to remain high."

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Labels: cleavages, Nigeria, politics

posted by Ken Wedding @ 7:13 AM