Occupy Nigeria

What a way to kick off the year. Barely has 2012 reared it's youthful head, when the announcement of a fuel subsidy removal sends Nigerians out into the street calling for the figurative (or perhaps literal) "head" of President Goodluck Jonathan.  If 2011 was the year of Revolution, 2012 may well be the year of Unfinished Business.  I've always felt like the future of the African continent would be told in the streets, storefronts, board rooms & polling places of Nigeria.  Africa's most populous nation is both an economic and cultural giant - one that has struggled with challenges across virtually every area of society, and overcome more than she is often given credit for.

In looking at the current tumult in the nation, I can't help but feel in some ways this has been a long time coming.  I'm no Nigeria expert, but as a fellow West African I've long felt a vested interest in the success of our Easterly neighbor.  I wrote during the BP Oil Spill about how the global community has largely ignored the ongoing destruction of the Niger Delta by the 11 million gallons of oil spilled there every year.  I find it both sad & ironic that Africa's largest exporter of oil is beset by strife at the reduction of a petrol subsidy - a subsidy that represents a significant investment by the govt in importing refined petrol, while billions of barrels of crude swell in the nation's bosom.  So typical an African story - we send our resources abroad, that they may be made palatable for us.  Whether those resources are material or human, the re-importation of Africa's riches inevitably comes at a price... 

I look at the situation of Nigeria and I can't help but ask "who has benefitted from the nation's oil wealth?" You can only sustain so much inefficiency and inequality before the proverbial "other shoe" tumbles from on high, in search of a head of state's cranium.  Is Goodluck Jonathan entirely to blame for the current state of the nation?  I don't know if anyone's shoulders are broad enough to carry that much blame.  But I will be following this story not only for the sake of my own edification, but for a sign as to what it might augur for the rest of the continent.  Other nation's around the globe would do well to pay attention as today's Unfinished Business across the waters may well be tomorrow's domestic Headline.

D.N.A

Shake Baby Shake

Jane Hahn for The New York Times 

"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...As many as 546 million gallons of oil spilled into the Niger Delta over the last five decades, or nearly 11 million gallons a year" - NY Times 

I read the above in the NY Times yesterday and my stomache turned.  I've known for years about the struggles of the people of the Niger Delta in pursuit of social, economic & environmental justice from Shell, but I had no idea just how much oil had and was continuing to despoil their environment.  This is what Nigerian environmental activist Ken Saro-Wiwa fought & died for.

It's amazing to think that the worst environmental disaster in American history is dwarfed by the scope of 50 years of ongoing destruction in Nigeria.  And American politicians like Congressman Joe Barton (R-TX) want to claim that BP is the victim of a "government shakedown" because they are being required to commit $20 billion to cleaning up the mess they've made.

I wonder who's getting the shakedown in Nigeria...

I've said it time & again, those who rail incessantly against the scourge of Big Govt suffer from a conceit of privilege. Anyone who has ever lived in a nation where the government cannot (or will not) act in defense of it's citizenry in the face of oppression, will tell you that it is a necessity to have checks & balances between public and private interests, between elites and the working class, between the rights of the individual and the interests of society.  Government plays a critical role in establishing and defending these checks and balances - for proof we need only look so far as the difference between the position that BP finds itself in today, with a $20 billion bill sitting on the chairman's desk, and the position of Shell which continues to plunder the Niger Delta unabated after 50 years of indifference.

According to MSNBC Congressman Barton is the House's biggest recipient of $$'s from the Oil & Gas Industries, which may explain better than anything where his allegiances lie.  It may be that the sympathies of the Nigerian government have also been long since bought out by Big Oil.  The American people should decide at what price we're willing to sell ourselves short.  A shakedown is a terrible thing to take...if you're on the wrong end of the shake.