Justice in Nigeria Now is excited to announce a new partnership with Sweet Crude, an acclaimed documentary that captures the realities of the Niger Delta. Directing attention to a region devastated by oil, Sweet Crude movingly portrays the strength, beauty, and resilience of communities in the Niger Delta while unpacking myths about the region, particularly by exposing actual distortions in reporting by international media. JINN joins Sweet Crude as the official activist partner of the film team, enabling engaged viewers to take action in theaters and beyond.

At the screenings, viewers will find JINN ready to provide them with ways to call for much-needed constructive action and attention to the Niger Delta. Examples include urging Secretary of State Clinton to support international mediation and peace talks in the Niger Delta, and asking  senators to support legislation requiring transparency in oil companies’ payments to foreign governments.

JINN and Sweet Crude’s common goals of respect for human rights and environmental justice, along with our common objectives of peace talks and corporate accountability in the Niger Delta, make us—alongside our friends on the ground in Nigeria—natural partners in working toward a peaceful resolution to decades of injustice in the Niger Delta.

Check back here to find out when and where you can Sweet Crude in the coming months.

[Photo Credit: Kendra E. Thornbury for Sweet Crude]

As Secretary of State Hilary Clinton and her entourage arrives this week in Abuja, the bright new capital of the Nigeria, their hosts will try to put the best face on what is the gravest political crisis the country has faced since their civil war ended almost four decades ago.  The uninspired government of President Musa Yar’ Adua, who took office in 2007 on the back of elections massively fraudulent even by Nigeria’s appallingly low standards, faces a dual political crisis.  In the oil-producing Niger delta a long simmering military insurgency has crippled the oil and gas industry which accounts for over 80% of government income and virtually all of Nigeria’s export revenues.  A counter-insurgency by federal forces launched in May 2009 produced a ferocious response by the insurgents including in July an audacious attack on key oil installations in Lagos, the economic capital of the country.

In the north of Nigeria, the Muslim heartland and the home-base of the powerful ruling northern oligarchy, a Taliban-styled Islamist group – Boko Haram – was brutally repressed by government security forces in early August.  Heavy bombardment of the movement’s compound resulted in large numbers of casualties, and culminated in the extra-judicial killing of the movement’s leader Mohammed Yusuf in Maiduguri at the hands of the police.  Two key economic and political regions of the Nigerian federation are in effect under lockdown.   After two years of drift and serial ineptitude, Nigeria now stands at a tipping point.

Nigeria is an oil-rich petro-state but its developmental record in one of catastrophic failure.  According to IMF, the $700 billion in oil revenues since 1960 have added almost nothing to the standard of living of the average Nigerian. More than three-quarters of oil revenues accrue to one percent of the population; a huge proportion of the country’s oil wealth, perhaps 40% or more, has been stolen.

The coastal waters of Nigeria, according to the International Maritime Bureau, are a pirate-haven, comparable to the lawless seas of Somalia and the Maluccas.  A new report Transnational Trafficking and the Rule of Law in West Africa by the UN Office for Drugs and Crime estimates that 55 million barrels of oil are stolen (‘bunkered’) each year from the Niger delta. Amnesty International’s report Petroleum, Pollution and Poverty in the Niger Delta released in June 2009 grimly inventories the environmental disaster caused by 1.5 million tons of spilled oil, describing the results of the slick alliance between international oil companies and the Nigerian state as a “human rights tragedy”.

The turn from peaceful non-violence of the sort advocated by the famous Ogoni activist Ken Saro-Wiwa to armed struggle, culminated in the dramatic appearance in late 2005 of  a new group – the Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta (MEND) – who launched a frontal attack on oil installation in the name of ‘resource control’ and a ‘new federalism’.  In three years they have in effect brought the oil industry to a standstill. Oil production has collapsed, (at least a million barrels a day are shut-in). Shell, the largest single operator, has closed its Western operations entirely, and its Eastern operations are barely functional. The head of Nigeria’s Central Bank recently concluded that the country’s economic future now turns on the resolution of the Niger delta crisis.

The federal government has failed conspicuously to grasp the gravity of political sentiments across the multi-ethnic oilfields. A 2007 World Bank study discovered that an astonishing 36.23% of youth interviewed revealed a “willingness or propensity to take up arms against the state”. Government sees the problem almost wholly in term of criminality. But history teaches us that any insurgency is a complex mix of greed and grievance – and one person’s criminal or terrorist is another’s liberation fighter. A 2009 survey poll reveals that local communities have no faith whatsoever in state and local governments. Their experience is one of exclusion, neglect and organized theft. This is no less the case with Haram Boko, a movement whose anti-Western sentiments speak powerfully to a generation of young Muslims for whom modern development and education has brought poverty, unemployment and a radical souring towards secular national development.

President Yar ‘Adua announced an amnesty plan for Niger delta militants on June 25 and released  Henry Okah, an important leader MEND leader, on July 13, 2009.  Good news in principle.  But the amnesty is simply an opportunity to address root problems as Okah put it. And there is precious little in the offing right now.  Secretary Clinton arrives, therefore, at a crucial moment.  Another failure of will by the government could prove to be catastrophic. MEND’s ceasefire ends on September 15th.  Something bold has to happen soon.

Secretary Clinton should highlight two important opportunities.  First, the Nigerian senate is in the middle of debating a new petroleum bill capable of addressing some of the core concerns of Niger delta activists.  Already there are signs that the new bill will ignore the voices of the oil communities.  Second, the government commissioned a forty-three person Technical Committee to provide a strategy for the future of the Niger delta.  The report has languished since its release in November 2008 in spite of the fact that it contains a clear blueprint for moving forward.  Here at least is a place to start.

Michael Watts is Class of 63 professor at the University of California, Berkeley and author with Ed Kashi of Curse of the Black Gold: Fifty Years on Oil in the Niger Delta (2008).

Nigeria is known for its fraudulent elections and politicians who employ armed thugs to ensure votes are cast in their favor. The Nigerian government faces a crisis of credibility that has the potential to become volatile, if members of minority communities and residents of the politically disenfranchised economic engine of the Delta continue to feel that they do not have any real power or say in their own governance. In fact, the armed insurgency that gained world attention by disrupting oil operations in the Delta has its roots in the gangs armed by political candidates. Electoral integrity and the ability for all citizens of Nigeria’s democracy to participate meaningfully should be high on Secretary Clinton’s agenda.

Legendary for its high levels of corruption, Nigeria must institute real reform. For those living in the Niger Delta, corruption means that the majority live in poverty while the approximately $700 billion in oil revenues earned over the last fifty years was split between the Nigerian government and the oil companies, with which the government partners. Although the Nigerian government claims to send a small percentage of its oil revenues to the communities where it is extracted, and although oil companies claim to provide local community benefits, the majority of those living in the Delta’s oil producing communities live on less than $1 per day and have seen their living standards decline over the years. Secretary Clinton must insist that the Nigerian government institute measures to ensure greater transparency and accountability, which are critical to ensuring that the country’s revenues benefit the many and don’t just line the pockets of a few. Ultimately, U.S. businesses will also find it easier to operate in a less corrupt environment.

The Niger Delta and its oil resources fuel the Nigerian treasury, which depends upon oil for 80% of government revenue. The oil of the Delta is important to both countries. In 2006 more then 40% of Nigeria’s oil was exported to the U.S. and it represented 15% of the U.S. supply. However, a political militancy has reduced Nigerian output for the last few years. Output has been even more dramatically reduced since May of this year when militants began blowing up oil installations in reprisal for an ongoing series of attacks by the Nigerian military claiming to be rooting out militants, but destroyed local villages and displaced, killed and injured innocent civilians who still cannot return home. The political militancy of the last five years arose after 45 years of peaceful protest by villagers yielded no major improvements for local communities whose quality of life was decimated. When Secretary Clinton meets with President Yar’Adua it is imperative to U.S. economic and energy security, to the stability of Nigeria and to the lives of those who live in the Delta that she urge President Umaru Yar’Adua to:

• Withdraw the Nigerian military forces from the Niger Delta and institute an official ceasefire;
• Initiate third party monitored diplomatic talks that include all stakeholders;
• Allow free and unfettered access to all parts of the Delta by journalists, humanitarian aid groups and human rights organizations;
• Make real investments in the development of the Niger Delta and rebuild villages destroyed by the recent military attacks.

Electoral integrity, transparency and accountability and addressing the root cause of the troubles in the Niger Delta are interconnected issues that we applaud the Obama administration for publicly stating are on its agenda. JINN hopes that in her discussions regarding the Niger Delta that Secretary Clinton recognizes the imperative of seeking long term solutions that will meet the real needs of villagers in oil producing communities while once again increasing production output and oil revenues.