Niger Delta Solidarity Group

Gas Flaring: ERA Flays arrest of activists, Journalists

Press Release

September 2, 2008

The Environmental Rights Action/ Friends of the Earth,
Nigeria(ERA/FoEN) has condemned Tuesday's arrest
and detention of its officers,community elders and some
journalists at Iwherekan community, DeltaState by soldiers
guarding gas flaring sites operated by Shell. The group
demands their immediate release and an apology from the
military and Shell.

In a statement issued in Benin yesterday, ERA said some
of its officers, community elders, women, children and
journalists from national newspapers and televisions stations
including the Federal Government- owned Nigeria Television
Authority (NTA) were arrested during a community interactive
forum on the impact of gas flaring .

According to the group, about 25 persons including ERA/FoEN
project Officer, Chima Williams, the plaintiff in the suit against
gas flaring, Jonah Gbemre and a member of the Host
Communities Network (HOCON), Comrade Che Ibegura were
arrested and detained by the soldiers while the camera of the
NTA crew was seized and confiscated.

Niger Delta - 50 years of oil and this is what we end up with

Photos and Report from "Curse of the Black Gold: 50 Years of Oil in the Niger Delta

The lure of oil is its cheapness. What we mean is that oil is a cheap source of energy. It is cheap partly because oil’s costs of extraction—in the Niger Delta and much of the tropical world—are not reflected in the price at the pump, and what Calvino called the “puny power of paper money,” .

One consequence of the unfettered and wreckless exploration and exploitation of oil in the delta is that the poor people continue to subsidize the costs of crude oil through the losses they suffer in environmental services, quality of life, and extreme environmental degradation. In turn, opportunistic groups— oil bunkerers, gangs, militants—find space to extract (and extort) financial gains from the system.

Rather than getting better, the crisis in the Niger Delta appears to be getting more intractable. Meetings, programs, projects, and commissions multiply—yet the many-headed hydra that is mass poverty in the Delta simply grows more appendages. The path of crude oil development is strewn with skeletons and soaked in human blood across the world.

Sokari Ekine

A Photo Gallery of Oill Spills, Oil Fires, Fire Images, Gas Flares, and Other Environmental Damages in Nigeria's Niger Delta

A Photo Gallery of Oill Spills, Oil Fires, Fire Images, Gas Flares, and Other Environmental Damages in Nigeria's Niger Delta

There is no region of the world that is as much subject to environmental abuses as Nigeria's Niger Delta. The main source of these abuses comes from oil exploration. This profitable enterprise began more than forty years ago and is in the hands of powerful multinational oil companies. In the 1970s, the Federal Government of Nigeria opened up its own operations in the oil industry. Unregulated, there are no controls on the behaviours of the companies and corporations handling the exploration of oil in the Niger Delta.

Many of the equipments and tools used by the oil companies and the Federal Government's own companies are poorly maintained and are in need of repair. Gas flaring was never regulated. The appetite of Nigeria's government for oil is infinite, as it has emerged as virtually the sole source of its income. It cannot control the oil companies. Its own oil concerns are poorly run. The result has been a series of disasters in recent years. Many of the scenes of these disasters are not photographically recorded because they occur rapidly, usually in fiery explosions. Occasionally, they have been so recorded. We will feature as many of these scenes that have been recorded in pictures as we can get.

 

Sokari Ekine

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