Niger Delta communities in ‘great danger’ as month-old oil spill continues

Niger Delta communities in ‘great danger’ as month-old oil spill continues

This article originally appeared in Mongabay.

Featured image: Barge transporting oil drums in the Niger Delta. Image by Stakeholder Democracy via Flickr (CC BY-NC-ND 2.0).

  • Oil has been spilling from a wellhead in Nigeria’s Bayelsa state for a month now, with the local company responsible unable to contain it.
  • Experts say the scale and duration of the spill is so severe that it’s imperative that local communities be relocated for their safety.
  • Oil spills and other forms of pollution caused by the industry are common in Bayelsa, the heart of the oil-rich Niger Delta.
  • Companies, including foreign oil majors, are largely left to self-declare the spills that frequently occur, but face only token fines for failing to respond quickly.

Crude oil from a blowout has been pouring into creeks in the Niger Delta since Nov. 5, with the well’s owner, Nigerian energy firm Aiteo, unable to contain the spill and specialists called in to help.

The blowout, at a non-producing well in the Santa Barbara field in Bayelsa state, has caused extensive pollution of rivers and farmland in the Nembe local government area, according to the state governor, Douye Diri. According to the News Agency of Nigeria, he said Aiteo should not think that “this criminal neglect of its facilities and disregard for human life and the environment, as demonstrated by its conduct, will not be accounted for.”

In a statement released Nov. 22, the company blamed the incident on sabotage. “Aiteo remains committed to ascertaining, immediately the well head is secure, the immediate and remote causes of the leak which will be driven by a [joint investigative visit] that will follow,” it said.

The oil industry in Nigeria attributes many oil spills to sabotage by people trying to steal crude. Nigeria’s National Oil Spill Detection and Response Agency (NOSDRA), which relies almost entirely on the industry itself for access to on- and offshore oil facilities, reports that around 75% of spills are caused by sabotage and theft.

The joint team initially despatched to the Nembe spill was unable to determine the cause of the spill, as the wellhead could not be accessed “due to hydrocarbon fumes that saturated the atmosphere in the area.” A video of the spill site, captured Nov. 29, showed a high-pressure stream of brownish liquid spraying through the creeks from a wellhead as technicians worked on the site.

The scale of the spill has overwhelmed local disaster response capabilities, and U.S.-headquartered oil-well control specialist Halliburton Boots and Coots has been drafted in to “kill the well,” a process that involves injecting cement into the well to plug it.

“Work is still ongoing at the site to stop the spill,” NOSDRA director-general Idris Musa told Mongabay last week, but all activities around the well were temporarily suspended Nov. 29 to allow the well-kill operation to proceed.

Decades of destruction

The Niger Delta is rich in biological diversity and natural resources. Its creeks, swamps and mangrove forests are home to fishing and farming communities as well as threatened species including manatees (Trichechus senegalensis), chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes ellioti), and the Niger Delta red colobus (Piliocolobus epieni).

But decades of oil production have made the region one of the most polluted places on Earth. NOSDRA recorded 639 oil spills in just the past two years, resulting in 28,003 barrels spewed into the environment, according to the agency’s data.

Bayelsa is where oil was first discovered in Nigeria, in 1956. In the decades since, oil spills from wells and pipelines have contaminated farmland and water bodies, and exposed residents to toxic chemicals. Flaring of gas has led to acid rain falling on the area, while contributing to making Nigeria the 17th largest producer of greenhouse gas emissions in the world.

This environmental destruction has been caused by oil majors including Shell, Chevron and Eni. The Nembe well was bought from Shell by Lagos-based Aiteo in 2015.

“It is extremely disturbing because the trend we are seeing now is that international oil companies know that their equipment are dilapidated, and to avoid responsibility, they move offshore and sell to gullible local companies who think they can make profit and are not ready or equipped to [deal with] this kind of emergencies,” said Nnimmo Bassey, an environmentalist and founder of the Health of Mother Earth Foundation (HOMEF), a prominent green NGO in Nigeria.

Dead and dying trees near the site of a previous Niger Delta oil spill in 2020. Image by Sosialistisk Ungdom (SU) via Flickr (CC BY-ND 2.0).

Consequences — just not for oil companies

The impact of the Nembe spill on local communities and the environment is still to be determined, but Samuel Oburo, an environmental activist affiliated with Friends of the Earth, who lives about 50 kilometers (30 miles) from Nembe, says villagers in the area have been badly impacted.

“I can tell you that the people there face great danger. They have started crying out. They have started experiencing strange illnesses due to the unfriendly atmosphere this spill has exposed the community to,” he told Mongabay over the phone.

But getting oil firms to clean up or pay for environmental crimes in Nigeria is difficult. Legal claims for compensation can take years, even decades, and companies are expected to pay relatively little in fines when they err.

NOSDRA’S regulations say oil companies have 24 hours to respond to the discovery of a spill. A joint visit by government agencies, company officials and community representatives should take place as soon as possible. But a 2018 study by Amnesty International found frequent delays, with some spills continuing for months after they were reported.

Shell, one of the largest operators in the country, visited spill sites within 24 hours on just 26% of occasions, Amnesty said. The slowest response time recorded was when Eni took 430 days to respond to a spill in Bayelsa state. “These delays point to serious negligence. Shell and Eni are wealthy, powerful multinationals: why can’t they act faster? Why can’t they do more?,” the report said.

But the penalties for noncompliance are negligible: 1 million naira ($2,400) for an initial default, and an additional 500,000 naira for every day after that.

“How much is N500,000 to an oil company?” NOSDRA’s Idris Musa said. An amendment increasing the fines is in progress.

Speaking to the ongoing spill at Nembe, HOMEF’s Bassey said that considering the apparent scale and duration of the latest spill, the safest option for residents of the area is to be relocated. “This area does not have pipe-borne water, and when the river is covered with crude oil, it means they have to depend on imported water,” he said. “Some may drink from that river because these areas are permanently polluted and they have no option. Children will swim in that river and people will drink from that river.”

“Crude oil contains very toxic heavy metals like lead; you know, lead affects a lot things concerning people, the nervous system, causes cancer. You have mercury in oil, you have cadmium, you have arsenic and benzene and many others,” he told Mongabay.

“So anybody eating fish from that river is in trouble already. So the relief that they are giving, I believe they should actually evacuate people from that territory at this time.”

Oburo agreed: “So long as the spill continues, there is nothing that can be done to restore the air quality. The only solution is to evacuate those people from there because their lives are precious.”

Bayelsa government spokesperson Dan Alabrah said the state is providing relief materials to communities, but had no plans to relocate them.

Deep Green Resistance embraces the necessity of political struggle

Deep Green Resistance embraces the necessity of political struggle

Excerpted from the book Deep Green Resistance: Strategy to Save the Planet — Chapter 15: Our Best Hope by Lierre Keith.


2. Deep Green Resistance embraces the necessity of political struggle.

DGR is not a liberal movement. Oppression is not a mistake, and changing individual hearts and minds is not a viable strategy. Political struggle must happen on every level and in every arena if we’re to avert the worst ecological disasters and create a culture worth the name. By political struggle, I mean specifically institutional change, whether by reform or replacement or both. It’s institutions that shape those hearts and minds. A project of individual change would take lifetimes, if it worked at all. The individual has never been the target of any liberation movement for the simple reason that it’s not a feasible strategy, as our previous chapters have explained.

Fighting injustice is never easy. History tells us that the weight of power will come down on any potential resistance, a weight of violence and sadism designed to crush the courageous and anyone who might consider joining them. This is what abusive men do when women in their control fight back. It’s what slave owners do to slaves. It’s what imperial armies do to the colonized, and what the civilized do to the indigenous. The fact that there will be retaliation is no reason to give up before we begin. It is a reality to be recognized so that we can prepare for it.

The necessity of political struggle especially means confronting and contradicting those on the left who say that resistance is futile. Such people have no place in a movement for justice. For actionists who choose to work aboveground, this confrontation with detractors—and some of these detractors reject the idea of resistance of any kind—is one of the small, constant actions you can take. Defend the possibility of resistance, insist on a moral imperative of fighting for this planet, and argue for direct action against perpetrators. Despite what much of the left has now embraced, we are not all equally responsible. There are a few corporations that have turned the planet into a dead commodity for their private wealth, destroying human cultures along with it.

As we have said, their infrastructures—political, economic, physical—are, in fact, immensely vulnerable. Perhaps the gold standard of resistance against industrial civilization is MEND, the Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta. The oil industry has earned literally hundreds of billions of dollars from taking Nigeria’s oil. The country currently takes in $3 billion a month from oil, which accounts for 40 percent of its GDP. The Niger Delta is the world’s largest wetland, but it could more readily be called a sludgeland now. The indigenous people used to be able to support themselves by fishing and farming. No more. They’re knee-deep in oil industry waste. The fish population has been “decimated” and the people are now sick and starving. The original resistance, MOSOP, was led by poet-activist Ken Saro-Wiwa. Theirs was a nonviolent campaign against Royal Dutch/Shell and the military regime. Saro-Wiwa and eight others were executed by the military government, despite international outcry and despite their nonviolence.

MEND is the second generation of the resistance. They conduct direct attacks against workers, bridges, office sites, storage facilities, rigs and pipelines, and support vessels. They have reduced Nigeria’s oil output by a dramatic one-third. In one single attack, they were able to stop 10 percent of the country’s production. And on December 22, 2010, MEND temporarily shut down three of the country’s four oil refineries by damaging pipelines to the facilities. Their main tactic is the use of speedboats in surprise attacks against simultaneous targets toward the goal of disrupting the entire system of production.

According to Nnamdi K. Obasi, West Africa senior analyst at the International Crisis Group, “MEND seems to be led by more enlightened and sophisticated men than most of the groups in the past.” They have university educations and have studied other militant movements. Their training in combat is so good that they have fought and won in skirmishes against both Shell’s private military and Nigeria’s elite fighting units. They’ve also won “broad sympathy among the Niger Delta community.” This sympathy has helped them maintain security and safety for their combatants as the local population has not turned them in. These are not armed thugs, but a true resistance. And they number just a few hundred.

Understand: a few hundred people, well-trained and organized, have reduced the oil output of Nigeria by one-third. MEND has said, “It must be clear that the Nigerian government cannot protect your workers or assets. Leave our land while you can or die in it.… Our aim is to totally destroy the capacity of the Nigerian government to export oil.” I can guarantee that 98 percent of the people who are reading this book have more resources individually than all of MEND put together when they started. Resistance is not just theoretically possible. It is happening now. The only question is, will we join them?

Featured image: Degradation of the Niger Delta via Wikimedia Commons

Civilization on the March

Civilization on the March

A series of headlines from around the world, compiled by Max Wilbert and Mark Behrend. Featured image by Max Wilbert.

2019 Was the 2nd Hottest Year on Record

Global average temperature reached the 2nd highest annual level ever recorded, according to preliminary data for 2019. While the data is not yet finalized, it’s almost certain 2019 will go down as the 2nd hottest ever. The hottest five years on record have been the last five years, and we are in the final days of the hottest decade in the record.

https://twitter.com/ClimateOfGavin/status/1206608106819661826

70,000 Children Have Been Detained at the U.S. Border in 2019

As climate crisis and ecological collapse drives ever more migration, abuse at the southern border of the U.S. is escalating. One recent report finds that nearly 70,000 children have been detained in 2019:

The story lays out in excrutiating detail the emotional pain of victims of President Donald Trump’s child separation policy, focusing on, among others, a Honduran father whose three-year-old daughter can no longer look at him or connect with him after being separated at the U.S. border and abused in foster care.

“I think about this trauma staying with her too, because the trauma has remained with me and still hasn’t faded,” the father told AP.

The 3-year-old Honduran girl was taken from her father when immigration officials caught them near the border in Texas in March 2019 and sent her to government-funded foster care. The father had no idea where his daughter was for three panicked weeks. It was another month before a caregiver put her on the phone but the girl, who turned four in government custody, refused to speak, screaming in anger.

“She said that I had left her alone and she was crying,” said her father during an interview with the AP and Frontline at their home in Honduras. “‘I don’t love you Daddy, you left me alone,'” she told him.

https://www.commondreams.org/news/2019/11/12/causing-profound-trauma-trump-administration-detained-record-breaking-70000-children

Koalas Declared “Functionally Extinct” After Fires Destroy 80% of Remaining Habitat

Experts believe the long-term outlook for the species is bleak, after centuries of habitat destruction, overhunting, and culling.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/trevornace/2019/11/23/koalas-functionally-extinct-after-australia-bushfires-destroy-80-of-their-habitat/#4dfb62fc7bad

Light Pollution is Key ‘Bringer of Insect Apocalypse’

Light pollution is a significant but overlooked driver of the rapid decline of insect populations, according to the most comprehensive review of the scientific evidence to date.

Artificial light at night can affect every aspect of insects’ lives, the researchers said, from luring moths to their deaths around bulbs, to spotlighting insect prey for rats and toads, to obscuring the mating signals of fireflies.

“We strongly believe artificial light at night – in combination with habitat loss, chemical pollution, invasive species, and climate change – is driving insect declines,” the scientists concluded after assessing more than 150 studies. “We posit here that artificial light at night is another important – but often overlooked – bringer of the insect apocalypse.”

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2019/nov/22/light-pollution-insect-apocalypse

Sea Ice Update:

Arctic sea ice extent for November 2019 ended up at second lowest in the 41-year satellite record. Regionally, extent remains well below average in the Chukchi Sea, Hudson Bay, and Davis Strait.

October daily sea ice extent went from third lowest in the satellite record at the beginning of the month to lowest on record starting on October 13 through October 30. Daily extent finished second lowest, just above 2016, at month’s end. Average sea ice extent for the month was the lowest on record. While freeze-up has been rapid along the coastal seas of Siberia, extensive open water remains in the Chukchi and Beaufort Seas, resulting in unusually high air temperatures in the region. Extent also remains low in Baffin Bay.

https://nsidc.org/arcticseaicenews/

Gemeni Solar Project Threatens Important Habitat in Nevada

The US Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS) recently released a document identifying the severe impacts that would be inflicted on the Mojave desert tortoise (Gopherus agassizii) from the Gemini Solar Project, located in southern Nevada. The agency, tasked with recovering rare species headed for extinction, wrote a Biological Opinion for the Bureau of Land Management (BLM), the agency in charge of permitting the 7,100 acre Gemini Solar Project which will be located on public lands near Valley of Fire State Park, as part of its consultation process. BLM is reviewing an Environmental Impact Statement for the project.

Although the document claims that mitigation measures will make up for the impacts, the FWS claims that the Gemini Solar Project could kill or injure as many as 1,825 federally threatened desert tortoises in its 30-year operational lifespan. While the Biological Opinion assures us that the project would be heavily mitigated, it still raises dire concerns about these impacts.

The Mojave desert tortoise had declined so drastically decades ago that in 1990 the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service listed the species as federally threatened. In the year 2000 the FWS began systematically surveying desert tortoise population numbers across its range using the latest scientific methods. What they saw was continuing declines of tortoise numbers, and even population crashes. Based on these surveys the Desert Tortoise Council has recently recommended up-listing the status of the Mojave desert tortoise from a threatened status to a higher endangered status–which means an emergency to stave off extinction.

The vegetation would be mowed using 23,000 pound Heavy Duty mulchers. Because not all individual tortoises will be detected by biologists or project staff, the agency is concerned that death and injury of desert tortoises could result from excavation activities such as clearing of vegetation, and entrapment in trenches and pipes during construction. Tortoises could be crushed by heavy vehicles. The FWS claims tortoise burrows would be avoided during all this constriction and maintenance activity with equipment and vehicles over years, but we have seen tortoise home burrows crushed and caved in by such activities on other development projects.

After solar project construction is complete and hundreds of tortoises are dug up and raided out of their burrows, the agencies are proposing to then release them back on to this disturbed habitat. The presence of re-occupied desert tortoises on the solar site, with vehicle traffic, may result in injuries or death during routine maintenance of facilities such as vegetation trimming. Tortoises outside of the fenced solar site may also be injured or killed due to truck traffic along the transmission lines and associated access roads.

Capture and translocation (moving) of desert tortoises may result in death and injury from stress or disease transmission associated with handling tortoises, stress associated with moving individuals outside of their established home range, stress associated with artificially increasing the density of tortoises in an area and thereby increasing competition for resources, and disease transmission between and among translocated and resident desert tortoises.

Translocation has the potential to increase the prevalence of diseases, such as Upper Respiratory Tract Disease (URTD), a major mortality factor for desert tortoises. Stresses associated with handling and movement could exacerbate this risk in translocated individuals that carry diseases. Equally, desert tortoises in quarantine pens could increase their exposure and vulnerability to stress, dehydration, and inadequate food resources.

The Gemini Solar Project represents an unacceptably large threat to tortoise populations, connectivity, and high-quality habitat in the northeastern Mojave Desert. FWS appears to us to be minimizing the threat of this project and recommending mitigation measures that will fail to halt tortoise mortality and further cumulative habitat degradation.

http://www.basinandrangewatch.org/

Australia Bushfires Rage

3900 square miles of Australia (an area more than 3 times the size of Yosemite National Park) were burned during a single week of November.  – New York Post, 11/26/2019

Rice Farming is Major Source of Methane Emissions

Rice farming, long believed responsible for 2.5% of carbon emissions, is now believed to emit up to twice as much — due to new farming methods that only burn the fields intermittently, rather than annually. Leaving the fields in standing water has been found to stimulate bacterial growth that adds the equivalent of 1200 coal-fired power plants in carbon emissions.  – Independent (online news magazine), 09/10/2018

The Plastic Pollution Explosion

A deer found dead in rural Thailand recently had 18 pounds of plastic in its stomach.  – CNN, 11/26/2019

Consumer Culture Metastasizing Across the Globe

France says that Black Friday is the worst ever American import, topping Halloween and McDonald’s. The one-day shopping frenzy is said to produce the equivalent of a truckload of textiles being dumped every second, across France.  – France 24, 11/30/2019

E-Waste is Growing Fast

Electronic waste worldwide is expected to exceed 50 million tons annually by 2020. Before it becomes e-waste, producing a single computer and monitor requires 1.5 tons of water, 48 lbs. of chemicals, and 530 lbs. of fossil fuels.  – “The Balance SMB (balancesmb.com), 10/15/2019

Amazon Deforestation Accelerating Under Bolsonaro

Amazon deforestation in 2019 (so far) is estimated at more than 1130 square miles, an area equal to 97% of Yosemite.  – CNN, 11/14/2019

Another estimate puts Amazon deforestation at 3700 square miles thus far this year.

Sea of Okhotsk Warming Rapidly

Parts of the Sea of Okhotsk, between Siberia and Japan, are now 3° C. warmer than in pre-industrial times. Oxygen levels in the sea are down, and the Okhotsk salmon population has declined 70%, just since 2004. With colder areas of the planet reacting fastest to climate change, scientists fear that what is happening around Okhotsk is a warning for seas and sea life globally.  – Washington Post, 11/12/2019

Air Pollution in India

Forty percent of school children in four of India’s largest cities have lung capacity described as “poor” or “bad,” following breathing tests. Air quality in Indian cities is consistently rated among the worst in the world.  – India Times.com, 05/05/2015

Niger is Desertifying Rapidly

In Niger, an area of grasslands equal to 110,000 football fields is lost every year to desertification and erosion. Nomadic herdsmen, who have followed this lifestyle for centuries, blame climate change. Some report losing half of their herds in recent years, and say they are now being driven into cities to look for work.  – France 24, 12/05/2019

30-40% of Food is Wasted for “Cosmetic Reasons”

Thirty to forty percent of American farm produce never makes it to market, due to inefficient distribution, and to discarding for cosmetic reasons.  – France 24, 11/30/2019

Alaska Temperatures Caused Salmon to Have Heart Attacks

Record high temperatures across portions of Alaska caused thousands of salmon to have heart attacks and die last summer.

Skills for Resistance “Special Forces” Units

Skills for Resistance “Special Forces” Units

Nigeria is the largest oil producer in Africa. In the Niger River Delta, offshore oil platforms, drilling rigs, and processing facilities dot the landscape. As a formal colonial vassal state to the British Empire, oil extraction is headed by Shell Oil, which has extracted billions in value from the country.

Nigeria has been called “the world capital of oil pollution.” It is estimated that the Niger Delta has absorbed oil spills equivalent to an Exxon Valdez (~20 million gallons) every single year for more than half a century. The land, air, and water is highly poisoned. Acid rain from gas flaring is a major issues, killing crops, poisoning land, and destroying building. And the revenues from the extraction have accrued almost entirely to Shell and a few hand-picked colonial lackeys.

In the wake of decades of this industrial devastation of the largest wetland in Africa, nonviolent resistance movements arose, led by people such as poet and activist Ken Saro Wiwa. These movements were violently destroyed by the Nigerian state in cooperation with Shell’s private military. Saro Wiwa who was executed by the Nigerian military dictatorship in 1999 on blatantly false charges.

Following this unsuccessful resistance campaign, the people of the Niger River Delta decided to escalate. Some went underground and formed The Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta (MEND) in 2005. Using sabotage, speedboats, and surprise attacks, MEND was at one point able to destroy 40% of the oil export capability of Nigeria, the largest oil exporter in Africa.

You may be thinking, what does this have to do with me?

Regardless of where you live in the world, there is much to learn from MEND. Here in United States, where I write this article on occupied stolen land, the environmental movement has been unable to stop even the growth of oil production. The U.S. is now the leading oil producer globally (14.46 million barrels per day). The environmental movement has failed to stop this, let alone reverse it.

New research released yesterday shows that Shell Oil and other major producers are expected to ramp up oil production by 35% in the next ten years.

Meanwhile, a few hundred poor Nigerian people, with limited training and funds, were able to stop 40% of their nation’s oil production. They did this by acting as a liberation movement and attacking the colonizing force’s ability to maintain war. In other words, they targeted infrastructure.

In 2016, we published an article calling for serious resistance in the form of “ecological special forces”—trained, small units of activists operating clandestinely to sabotage and otherwise stop industrial capitalism, civilization, and empire.

This article will expand on that piece by looking at skills and techniques that serious underground resistance actionists would require to be more effective.

Skills for Serious Resistance

Knowledge of industry operations

To be effective, ecological commandos need to study the industries they are fighting. They need to understand factors such as:

  • Type of equipment necessary for a given operation
  • Basics of mechanics
  • How to identify critical and vulnerable components of heavy machinery and infrastructure
  • Common security measures taken at industrial sites
  • Work rotations and scheduling

Basic physics and engineering

To effectively dismantle and/or sabotage larger infrastructure, resisters will need to understand the applied principles of force, mass, momentum, pressure, structural integrity, and so on.

Chemistry

It goes without saying that the ability to use common substances to create demolitions charges is essential for effective underground resistance work. This includes how to access the necessary raw materials without exposing your identity.

Electrical

Knowledge of circuits and timers is essential for clandestine resistance fighters and relatively easy to learn.

Security

This includes digital security (such as the ability to conduct digital research anonymously), operational security, stealth, and social engineering (acting). It should also include knowledge of the forensics and research tools (both physical and digital) used by law enforcement, and a mastery of basic activist security culture.

Physical fitness

There are scenarios in which physical fitness can make-or-break success for resistance groups. Ecological commandos take their health and fitness extremely seriously.

Money

As a ballpark figure, a continental-scale resistance movement might need a budget between $100,000 and $1 million to gather supplies, maintain cover stories, and for basics like food, lodging, and transportation. Funding is critical for ecological commandos. Additionally, they should have secure methods for buying materials (preferably with cash).

Logistics

The military maxim goes “Amateurs talk tactics, dilettantes talk strategy, professionals talk logistics.” Mastering logistics—supplies, equipment, transportation, sleeping quarters, food, maintenance, etc.—is essential.

Networks

Much of the above will depend on networks of support. These networks need to be prepared to maintain an “underground railroad” where no questions are asked. They should also know and use secure/anonymous communications channels, preferably offline.


Featured image: Jared Rodriguez / Truthout, CC BY-NC-ND 2.0

Resistance Profile: Movement for the Emancipation for the Niger Delta (MEND)

Resistance Profile: Movement for the Emancipation for the Niger Delta (MEND)

Editors note: this material is excerpted from a Deep Green Resistance  database called “Resistance Profiles,” which explores various movements, their strategies and tactics, and their effectiveness. Image credit: public domain.

Movement for the Emancipation for the Niger Delta (MEND)

  • Active: 2005 – 2013
  • Location: Nigeria
  • Type: Underground Resistance Movement
  • Success: Medium

Goal

Majority or total control of oil production/revenues in the Niger Delta (for the Ogoni people) and withdrawal of the Nigerian military from the Niger Delta.

Strategy

Totally destroy the capacity of the Nigerian government to export oil in the Niger Delta, force the multinational oil companies to discontinue operations, and likely precipitate a nationwide budgetary and economic crisis.

Tactics

  • sabotage of oil infrastructure
  • bombing near military, government or oil industry infrastructure or buildings
  • theft
  • guerrilla warfare
  • kidnapping of foreign oil workers for ransom (MEND has a very good record of returning them unharmed)

MEND uses speed boats in swarm-based maneuvers to quickly attack targets in succession. Multiple highly maneuverable, well trained and armed units have kept the government and Shell’s defensive systems off-balance defending their sprawling networks (1,000 oil wells, 6,000 km of pipeline over 70,000 square miles).

Very effective use of system disruption: targets have been systematically and accurately selected to completely shut down production and delay and/or halt repairs.

Organization

MEND, an umbrella organization, has evolved into a conglomeration of distinct militant groups with constantly shifting alliances and loyalties. Command and control is believed to be hierarchical. Leaders are frequently deposed or replaced by rivals, due to internal conflicts over proceeds from criminal and political activities, and due to Ijaw tradition of choosing tribal leaders on a rotational basis

Above/Underground

Underground cells with a few spokesmen that communicate with the international media

Security

Leaders are always on the move and extremely cautious. They do not take telephone calls personally, knowing that soldiers hunting for them have electronic devices capable of pinpointing mobile phone signals. During raids, fighters wear masks to protect their identity. All communication with the media is conducted using aliases. MEND does not reveal identities of its rank and file and conducts all recruiting clandestinely. The fluid and contradictory organization structure may or may not be by design but is very effective at obscuring the leadership and increasing the operational security of key individuals

Recruitment

Draws its fighters from communities across the delta: ethnic militias in the west and from cults (criminal gangs) in the east

Effectiveness

Has not yet achieved its goal, but its strategy and tactics have been effective, resulting in a cut of more than 28 percent of Nigeria’s oil output from 2006 to 2009. In August 2009, the government offered a 60 day amnesty: militants who handed in their weapons were pardoned for their crimes, given job training and were paid US $410 per month until they found work. But the ceasefire and amnesty ended in December when MEND attacked a Shell/Chevron pipeline amidst questions about President Yar’ Adua’s health and impatience with the slow pace of job growth.

Further learning

Articles