Nigeria Content Online

The oil business
has not been the same since April 20th this year for BP, American
president, Barack Obama, the American people and the entire world,
reason being that BP’s equipment in the Gulf of Mexico where they drill
for oil malfunctioned and started spewing oil into the water, in very
large quantities. BP has not slept neither has Obama, the oil company’s
misdeed (accident or no accident) is synonymous with murder.

Environmentalists
are huffing and puffing, rightly so; lawyers are analysing and getting
ready to sue the living day lights out of BP, and the ordinary people
whose livelihoods have been disrupted are screaming blue murder. Water,
sand, birds, fauna, people are being tested and analysed by biologists
and scientists to ascertain damage. America is a country that does not
lie low when it comes to environmental issues like oil spillage. They
are holding their president accountable and Obama is holding BP
responsible and accountable.

Sadly and
interesting though, what is going on in the Gulf of Mexico right now is
a daily occurrence in our Niger Delta. There is a conservative estimate
of about 10 million gallons of oil spilling into our water annually for
the past fifty years. One cannot even begin to imagine the
environmental degradation and death this constant unchecked spillage
has brought on our waters and the surrounding creeks. Not once have we
seen the oil companies in this country held responsible or accountable
by our government. We have never seen our president or any government
official visit disaster sites in the Niger Delta.

Obama has made two
trips to Louisiana already. He knows what is at stake politically and
otherwise for his young administration. The American people will speak
loudly come next election, and hold him responsible for whatever is
happening now. This is why he is shaking BP and its executives. So far
he has made BP Chairman Carl-Henric Svanberg apologise and own up to
the spillage. “I would like to take this opportunity to apologise to
the American people on behalf of all employees of BP, many of whom are
living on the Gulf Coast, and I thank you for your patience…we care
about the small people”.

Not only has
Svanberg apologised, he has also committed $23. 2 billion into a
compensation fund and the America government is not even done with BP
yet. That is what a functioning government does for its citizens; help
the “small” people. Our government has never forced the big careless
oil companies in this country to care about the “small” people of Niger
Delta.

Nigerian
governments have always colluded and collaborated to continue the
onslaught in Niger Delta. Whenever the ordinary fishermen whose
livelihoods have been taken away rise in unity to demand justice, the
Nigerian Army mows them down. Most villages have been completely wiped
out of existence for daring to raise their voices against oil spillage.
The oil companies who have operated on our shores for more than half a
century know how corrupt the system is and have wasted no time in
exploiting it. They know we have no government to hold them responsible
for their criminal activities, like Obama is doing right now with BP.
So, the spillage continues and the Niger Delta ebbs away.

Oil companies here know Nigeria is a no man’s land, if you have ‘big money’ you can get away with practically anything.

The question we should be asking now is, what is our new President
(who by the way has a firsthand experience on the devastating nature of
oil spillage in the Niger Delta) learning from his American
counterpart’s experience? Since we seem to imitate a lot, will he learn
to hold errant oil companies spilling oil in his homeland accountable?