The MSNBC photo blog posted dramatic aerial images of illegal refineries in Ogoniland outside Port Harcourt in Nigeria’s Delta region March 24, 2011.

Emem Okon, quoted below, will be JINN’s special guest at a screening of Sweet Crude Wednesday 3/23 at 7pm, and at a brown bag discussion Thursday 3/24 at noon. Both events are in San Francisco; read here for event details.

Niger Delta Demands for Justice Undaunted by Decades of Violence, by Ebrima Sillah and Sam Olukoya, Inter Press Service, Feb 11, 2011, Posted on February 11, 2011 by The Global Realm

DAKAR and LAGOS, Feb 11, 2011 (IPS) – Nigerian environmental rights groups have been making the case for the expulsion of oil companies from the Niger Delta in the southeastern part of the country at the World Social Forum in Dakar.

Speaking at a meeting organised by a group of Nigerian women’s environmental rights activists, Goodison Jim Dorgu, the Executive Director of the NGO Environmental Health and Safety Network, based in the oil-producing state of Bayelsa, said Nigerian civil society has come to the united conclusion that oil companies responsible for severe environmental degradation should leave without delay

“We feel that the oil companies should leave the shores of the Niger Delta. There have to be fresh negotiations if there has to be oil extraction and communities should be at the dialogue to represent themselves in the negotiations,” said Dorgu.

Dorgu was speaking at a Feb. 9 session at the World Social Forum in Dakar, organised by Nigerian environmental justice activists, mostly women from the oil-rich Niger Delta. Other speakers outlined how the oil industry has provoked violence in the Delta, with women bearing the brunt of the assault.

Emem Okon, the head of the Women’s Development and Resource Centre in the city of Port Harcourt, alleged that the oil companies’ own security personnel have been involved in attacks on women. She also said the Nigerian army had committed grave violations of human rights.

“There are specific cases in Akwa-Ibom State, where Shell brought in a Shell crew and they attacked women. A pregnant woman was shot dead. There are also cases in Ogoniland where the government set up Rivers State Internal Security Task Force, and what these soldiers did was to use women as a weapon of war,” said Okon.

“A lot of women were raped, a lot of young girls were taken into sexual slavery.”

Sow the wind, reap the whirlwind

The Nigerian army’s operations in Ogoni peaked in the mid-1990s, in a brutal response to powerful mobilisation of people which had attracted international attention. Hundreds were killed and tens of thousands displaced; charismatic Ogoni leader Ken Saro-Wiwa and eight others were arrested and later executed by the government. The army carried out similar attacks elsewhere in the oil-rich southeast of the country.

The military campaign shattered non-violent resistance, but gave rise to armed groups whose activities – a mixture of progressive demands and profiteering from kidnapping oil workers and the sale of stolen crude – badly disrupted the country’s oil output.

Speaking to TerraViva from her home in Port Harcourt, Debbie Effiong of the NGO Gender and Development Action, said environmental degradation, poverty, activism and violence are intertwined.

“The environment is part of the livelihood of women; the land sustains them as farmers. Their farmlands are destroyed through oil pollution. So the violence by the military to suppress the people’s cause for environmental justice has prompted a lot of awareness among the women.”

She said that women are keen to take part in the struggle for environmental justice. But the growing role played by armed groups in the Niger Delta complicates matters.

“The violence by militants [the armed groups] affected women’s participation in the struggle for environmental justice at the stage when criminality took over the activities of the militants. The criminal aspect of it did not favour the struggle of women. Some of them lost their husbands, some lost their children, and it affected them emotionally in their quest to continue the struggle.”

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Lethal illegal refineries dot Nigeria’s oil delta, by Samuel Tife, Reuters
Africa, Sun Mar 6, 2011 8:21am GMT

ODIGBO, Nigeria (Reuters) – A Nigerian soldier opens fire into drums of gasoline stacked among the mangroves, then runs back to a safe distance.

His colleagues set light to rags on the end of a stick and fling them into the liquid seeping from the bullet holes. The heat forces them to look away as orange flames roar into the air, billowing thick, black smoke.

Smoke rises from an illegal crude oil refinery site in an Ogoni community in Nigeria's Niger Delta July 7, 2010. REUTERS/Akintunde Akinleye

Destroying illegal oil refineries dotted among the creeks of the Niger Delta is almost as dangerous for these soldiers as working here was for the young men who turned stolen crude oil into home-made gasoline.

Crude oil thieves — known locally as “bunkerers” — have been a fact of life for years in Africa’s biggest oil and gas industry, puncturing pipelines and costing Nigeria and foreign oil firms millions of dollars in lost revenues each year.

A government amnesty two years ago for gunmen in the Niger Delta, where
dirt-poor thatch-roofed villages sit among some of Africa’s biggest industry installations, brought some respite.

But rising world oil prices have pushed the cost of gasoline in Nigeria up by a third to 150 naira a litre over the past three months, increasing demand on the black market and making the illegal refineries as profitable as ever.

“The local communities raised the alarm because of the devastating effects on their waterways and farms, and complaints have also started coming from the oil majors,” said Timothy Antigha, military spokesman in the Niger Delta.

“We are winning the battle. The situation would have been worse if we were not around,” he said.

A hundred soldiers backed up by gunboats and two helicopters were involved in Saturday’s operation, which targeted three illegal refineries around Odigbo, a village near the border between Bayelsa and Rivers states.

By the time the soldiers arrived, abandoned barrels of gasoline, blackened earth pits and scorched foliage were all that remained — these are close-knit communities and the bunkerers knew the military were coming.

The army seized equipment including home-made pumps and welding machines, but no arrests were made.

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Emem Okon and Stella Chuku of Kebetkache Women’s Development and Resource Center were interviewed by Nicole Hummel of Free Speech Radio News on Tuesday, the centenary of International Women’s Day.

Listen to the interview here.

“We stood and said, ‘No more to violence, no more to conflict; We want peace.’ “   –Stella Chuku.

From the Free Speech Radio News Website:

Nigerian women lead the struggle against environmental and social problems caused by oil companies

The West-African nation of Nigeria is one of Africa’s largest oil producers, and while the industry has created billions of dollars in revenue it also has led to corruption, repression and devastated the health and environment of many communities. But in the Niger Delta, women are fighting back. FSRN’S Nicole Hummel files this report.

You also have a chance to meet Emem Okon in person at the upcoming JINN benefit event at ATA in San Francisco:

Wednesday March 23, 2011, JINN will screen Sweet Crude, the award winning documentary film, followed by Q&A with Emem Okon. Read here for  more details.

Ben Amunwa, Niger Delta activist and Platform researcher provides analysis of the conflict, politics and root causes of the Niger Delta crisis. Subjects include the struggle of Ogoni women who succeeded in seeing Shell withdraw from Ogoniland in 1993, the origin of MEND and the December bombings of Ayakoromo.

Watch the full video and join the discussion by adding your comments here.