Nigeria Content Online

In
the last few months headlines around the world have devoted
considerable attention to the issue of oil spills. The most significant
of course has been the BP oil spill, following the explosion in April
of a drilling rig in the Gulf of Mexico. Following that was a
noticeable attempt by the international media to divert some of the
world’s attention from the Gulf of Mexico to a much older tragedy: the
Niger delta.

On May 30, the UK Guardian published a piece by
John Vidal, its environment editor, titled “Nigeria’s agony dwarfs the
Gulf oil spill. The US and Europe ignore it.” Vidal’s piece was based
on a trip to the Delta. “We could smell the oil long before we saw it –
the stench of garage forecourts and rotting vegetation hanging thickly
in the air,” he wrote. “The farther we travelled, the more nauseous it
became. Soon we were swimming in pools of light Nigerian crude, the
best-quality oil in the world.” Two weeks later the New York Times took
the baton, publishing on June 16 an article by Adam Nossiter, “Far From
Gulf, a Spill Scourge 5 Decades Old.” The piece opens with the
heartrending words: “Big oil spills are no longer news in this vast,
tropical land. The Niger Delta, where the wealth underground is out of
all proportion with the poverty on the surface, has endured the
equivalent of the Exxon Valdez spill every year for 50 years by some
estimates.” A few weeks later it is the turn of Reuters, in a story
with the headline,

“Gulf spill a familiar story in oil-soaked
Nigeria.” The gory details are the same: “While the world is transfixed
by the BP disaster in the Gulf of Mexico, oil spills have become a part
of everyday life during the 50 years that foreign firms have been
pumping out Nigeria’s easily refined fuel. Environmentalists estimate
as much as 550 million gallons of oil have poured into the Niger River
Delta during that time – at a rate roughly comparable to one Exxon
Valdez disaster per year.” Only last week, Julie Baird, deputy editor
of Newsweek, was on America’s National Public Radio (NPR), to talk
about “the environmental and social impact” of the Niger Delta’s spills.

And then Omoyele Sowore, Nigerian
citizen-journalist and publisher of online news medium Sahara
Reporters, wrote an article for the Huffington Post, titled “The Oil
Spill No One’s Talking About.” In it he focused on one oil giant:

Exxon Mobil, accusing them of importing to Nigeria
an aged, leaking oil platform from Angola; “a platform even Angola’s
government regulators rejected.” Sowore says this platform is leaking
5,000 barrels of oil daily, and that Exxon Mobil has been making it
impossible for journalists to gain access to the site, as well as
bribing government officials.

The UK Guardian’s John Vidal also implicated
Exxon Mobil in a May 1 Akwa Ibom spill in which, over the course of a
week, more than a million gallons of oil leaked into the Delta.

In the face of such damning accusations, Exxon
Mobil’s grudging responses amount to no better than a loud, arrogant
silence. Nigerian history is littered with evidence of the nonchalance
of oil giants in a country where people – officials and even victims –
can easily be silenced with cash.

The Nigerian government has also been acting in its customary tardy manner.

“Exxon Mobil needs to show more caution in terms
of the management of oil spills,” Minister of the Environment, John
Odey, told journalists in June. No word from President Jonathan.
Compare that ministerial finger wagging with the American response to
the BP fiasco.

Nigeria’s news organisations also appear to be so
overwhelmed with news of kidnappings and constitutional amendments that
there is little time left for Niger delta spills.

The country’s biggest tragedy is that there are
too many tragedies competing for attention. With the election season
approaching fast, and politicians and government officials scheming for
the spoils of office, we wonder how long it’ll take before President
Jonathan realises that armed youth are not the only militants in the
Delta; that the most dangerous militants may very well be
blackberry-clutching corporate executives.