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By Oronto Douglas

November 20, 2009

Reposted from NEXT

Militancy and amnesty aside, the challenge of resolving the puzzle that has denied the many communities and clans of the resource rich Niger Delta has reached emergency levels. Although the crisis was easily predictable, successive governments had treated the anger and protests as mere irritations that can be brushed aside with warning shots, arrests or in extreme cases, devastating attacks on communities.

For scholars and survivors, there is something new that should worry all lovers of peace and livelihood – the completed project of the regionalization of anger and the now emerging nationalization of grievances anchored on stubborn defiance.

In the early days of the struggles by our people against the corporations and governments, the focus of mobilisation remained in islands of clans with small numbers of dedicated individuals and rarely was cross clan collaboration involved. In the renewed agitations of the 1990s, the idea of clan collaboration began to take firm root with the emergence of the Chikoko Movement and several groups worked like this.

The Chikoko Movement played a critical role in bringing the youths of Urhobo, Ibibio, Oron, Ogoni, Isoko, Ikwerre, Ijaw, and Etche together in the late 1990s.

Many conferences of ethnic nationalities were to follow and in a rotational way, hosted by the Ijaws (through the INC), Ikwerre (through Ogbakor Ikwerre) among others.

Present day agitation now cuts across states and nationalities, with broad based groups including the Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta (MEND) with its advocacy of armed struggle, insisting on justice. The anger across the region is now also noticeable, even among children. The story is told of a 13-year-old boy in Port Harcourt who can identify the sounds of the different guns – be it Pump Action; AK47; GMG and so on – and would warn his friends about when to be on the lookout. We cannot afford to ruin the future by inaction. We have to do something now.

It is important that we constantly remind ourselves what the struggle is all about.

The struggle of the people of the Niger Delta is about respect for our human dignity. The undemocratic seizure of the resources of the people of the Niger Delta by the military regimes following the civil war; the relentless assault on the environment by the uncaring activities of resource hunters otherwise known as transnational oil companies; the destruction of communal governance traditions , are all part of the fallout of the disrespect for our humanity. Our struggle is aimed at reversing these degrading acts and we must not be mistaken about this.

On this day, in this hour, there is a call to all patriots to rally round to resolve the issues of the Niger Delta because the implications of a non-resolution are unthinkable and unacceptable. On the shoulders of the Niger Delta rest Nigerian and West African regional stability. As we all know, our oil and gas based energy needs are mostly domiciled in the region so also is a majority of our maritime and fishing resources. Should the tide turn and tourism take a greater focus, the Niger Delta with its bounties of beaches and nature will play a critical role in further stabilizing the polity and bringing needed revenue and happiness to our country.

It is in the interest of all that we give unto the Niger Delta what the people of the Niger Delta want within, of course, the limits of justice, fair play and equity. The window of militancy and amnesty is an arithmetic indication of how much the situation had degenerated and a clarion call to all that we prevent a further slide to anomie.

Nigerians are good people. There is nothing complex about our togetherness. It is true that all the nations within our country had no hand in our coming together in the 1914 initiative of the British. Yet, our unique stories and identities add great beauty to the good and running story of our union in the making. It can only get better.

Therefore, we can begin from the very beginning by initiating policies that will protect the haves from the have-nots, enshrine rights, duties and obligations that protect the minorities from the majorities in our unifying constitutional documents. Our yearning for democracy, development and peace will constantly be delayed if not denied except and until we can settle those unsettling issues of our togetherness.

Oronto Douglas writes from San Francisco, California

From The Vanguard (Nigeria Newspaper):

AMNESTY ENDS: Uncertainty persists

Hector Igbikiowubo
MORE than 90 days after the amnesty package for militants in the Niger Delta came to a close, an air of uncertainty persist over the effectiveness of the initiative, especially against the backdrop of threats by the Movement for Emancipation of the Niger Delta (MEND) to call off its cease-fire and reports that government has been busy acquiring fast attack helicopters and flat bed speed boats for a final showdown with militants.  Read Full Article

From the BBC:

Will amnesty bring peace to the Niger Delta?

Analysis by Daniel Volman,  Director of the African Security Research Project

Reprinted from Inter Press Service
WASHINGTON, Sep 13 (IPS) – There is mounting evidence that the government of Nigerian President Umaru Musa Yar’adua is set to launch a full-scale offensive in the Niger Delta when a ceasefire declared by rebels ends on Sep. 15.

And this time, Nigerian military forces will be using special warships, helicopter gunships and troop transports, and unmanned drone intelligence planes and ships sold to Nigeria by Israeli, Malaysian, Singaporean, Dutch and Russian companies.

Israeli and Russian instructors have been providing specialised training to Nigerian Navy and Air Force sailors and pilots in how to operate the ships and helicopters over the past few months, and some of these instructors may help operate them during the offensive.

On Jul. 15, President Yar’adua declared a 60-day amnesty for members of the Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta (MEND), the armed group that has been conducting an insurgency campaign in the Delta for the past five years. The amnesty offer is set to expire at midnight on Oct. 4.

The insurgents say that they are fighting to protect the rights of the people who live in the Delta and to get them a fair share of Nigeria’s massive revenues from the sale of oil produced in the region.

Nigeria is Africa’s largest oil producer and currently exports some 1.7 million barrels of oil per day. The United States imports 44 percent of Nigeria’s oil production, making the country the U.S.’s fifth largest foreign source of oil.

The Energy Information Administration of the U.S. Department of Energy estimates that if the insurgency ended, Nigeria’s effective oil production capacity could quickly be raised to around 2.7 million barrels per day.

When Pres. Yar’adua announced the amnesty, government officials said that they expected between 8,000 and 10,000 insurgents to accept its terms. But only a few hundred of the estimated 12,000-15,000 rebels have handed in their weapons.

Most members of MEND say that the government’s amnesty was not made in good faith and that they have no confidence that that the government will honour its promises to improve the lives of the Delta’s impoverished residents or to fix the massive environmental damage caused by decades of unregulated oil production.

One reason that MEND does not trust Pres. Yar’adua is that the Nigerian government has recently been buying hundreds of millions of dollars worth of sophisticated weaponry and military hardware in preparation for a new offensive in the Niger Delta.

These include deals worth 25 million dollars for two 24.8-metre Shaldag MK-2 patrol boats from the Israeli firm, Israel Shipyards – one has already been delivered and the other is on its way – and another deal involves air and sea drones from Aeronautica Ventures, another Israeli company.

Shaldag MK-20 patrol boats are generally armed with artillery guns and machine guns. Eighty Nigerian sailors are presently being trained in counterinsurgency operations at the northern Israeli port of Haifa.

Nigeria recently bought a surveillance system for the Delta that uses Aerostar unmanned drones and Seastar vessels produced by Israel’s Aeronautics Defense Systems/Aeronautics Ventures. Nigeria acquired 20 troop-carrying catamarans from the Dutch firm, TP Marine, to transport soldiers up the creeks and small rivers of the Delta region.

The Nigerian Navy also recently took delivery of two 38-metre Manta-class patrol boats built by the Nautica Nova Shipbuilding yard in Malaysia. These ships were officially commissioned on Apr. 12. Four additional 17-metre Manta-class patrol boats have also been delivered to Nigeria from Singapore Technologies Marine.

The Nigerian Navy also recently procured 35 new machine gun-equipped fast patrol boats in a deal that was paid for by the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation, reportedly on the instructions of Pres. Yar’adua. . The Nigerian Air Force has also received at least 15 Mi-24, Mi-34, and Mi-35 helicopter gunship and troop transport helicopters from Russia. Some of these were reportedly delivered just before Pres. Dimitri Medvedev’s visit to the country in June. These helicopters are armed with Gatling guns, machine guns, bombs, rocket launchers, and rockets, and can also carry up to eight soldiers at the same time.

Russian instructors are currently in Nigeria training Nigerian pilots how to operate these helicopters. The training is reportedly not going very well, raising speculation that the Nigerian government may ask the Russian instructors to operate the helicopter gunships during the impending military offensive.

These helicopter gunships were used extensively by the Soviet Union during its invasion and occupation of Afghanistan and have been used more recently for counterinsurgency operations by the governments of Sierra Leone, Guinea, Sudan, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Ethiopia and Chad.

It is clear that the Nigerian government is getting ready to mount a massive military offensive in the Niger Delta, either when the MEND ceasefire ends on Sep. 15 or when its own amnesty programme ends on Oct. 4. However, despite all the firepower and sophisticated weaponry that it has acquired in recent months, there is no reason to believe that this offensive will be any more successful in bringing the insurgency to an end than any of its previous military operations.

Moreover, by demonstrating that the Yar’adua government is committed to a military solution to the political, economic and environmental crisis in the Niger Delta, the offensive is very likely to lead to an explosion of violence not just in the Delta, but also throughout the country.

Tensions in other parts of the country have been mounting in recent months, most notably in the predominantly Muslim states in the north.

The repression of violence by an Islamic extremist group in the north, which was marked by indiscriminate attacks that killed many innocent people and by the extrajudicial murder of the group’s leader in police custody, alienated many moderate Muslims who previously constituted the government’s base of support.

They are sure to be further alienated by the growing involvement of Israelis in supporting the government’s offensive against the people of the southern part of Nigeria, even if the victims of this offensive are predominantly Christian.

All this serves to confirm the assessment of U.S. military officers, who increasingly have come to believe that the principal obstacle to a resolution of Nigeria’s continuing crisis is the Nigerian government itself and that the Nigerian elite is bent on committing suicide by continuing its efforts to hold on to power by military force.

*Daniel Volman is the Director of the African Security Research Project in Washington, DC. He is the author of numerous articles and reports and has been studying U.S. security policy toward Africa and African security issues for more than 30 years.

In mid-August, while Secretary Clinton was in Nigeria meeting with the President and the Foreign Minister she pledged to explore ways that the U.S. can provide additional military assistance to Nigeria. This disturbing promise signals that that the Obama administration’s foreign policy with regards to Nigeria is headed in the wrong direction. We need you to sign a letter that will send a strong message demanding that Secretary Clinton and the Obama administration rethink the U.S. role in bringing peace to the Niger Delta. Support diplomatic negotiations, not military assistance.

Nigeria is the one of the largest producers of oil in Africa, and is an important strategic partner for the U.S. – Nigeria is the fifth largest exporter of crude oil to the U.S., Africa’s most populous country, and a key country in maintaining regional security in West Africa, making Nigeria one of the most important stops on Secretary Clinton’s 7-country trip to Africa.

During her visit, Secretary Clinton rightly highlighted the importance of electoral reform, the need for transparency and the concern regarding widespread corruption, however her comments indicating the U.S. would explore military assistance for Nigeria is not the right approach to supporting Nigeria in resolving the crisis in the oil producing Niger Delta. Residents of the Niger Delta have struggled for decades to demand their share of the oil wealth which makes up 80 percent of the Nigerian government’s revenues. Since oil was discovered in the late 1950’s the region has become poorer, with most villagers living on less than a $1 a day. In addition, the people have suffered mass human rights violations at the hand of the Nigerian military (sometimes at the behest of U.S. oil companies) when they have spoken up to demand clean water, electricity, and access to healthcare, education and jobs; and environmental destruction by the oil companies including oil spills, water contamination and gas flares that burn 24 hours a day 7 days a week contributing to respiratory illnesses, cancer and significant Co2 emissions. Civil society groups and armed political militant groups alike have called for diplomatic negotiations as the way toward peace. They seek a say in their own governance and a genuine investment in the development of the Niger Delta. Ask Secretary Clinton to support diplomatic negotiations.

View and Sign the letter

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.

by Jean Herskovits

reprinted from Foreign Policy originally published on August 3, 2009

Nigeria’s latest spate of violence — which began with attacks on police stations in four northern states — is not what it seems. Superficially, the story looks similar to (though it was not connected with) outbreaks of Islamist fanaticism elsewhere in the world: An Islamist sect run amok, threatening a town’s security, demanding an end to Western institutions, and seeking to impose a strict religious code. But instead, the clashes are a northern Nigerian version of what is happening in another (mostly Christian) region of the country, the Niger Delta. Both are violent reactions to the flagrant lack of concern on the part of those who govern for the welfare of the governed.

Ten years of supposed democracy have yielded mounting poverty and deprivation of every kind in Nigeria. Young people, undereducated by a collapsed educational system, may “graduate,” but only into joblessness. Lives decline, frustration grows, and angry young men are too easily persuaded to pick up readily accessible guns in protest when something sparks their rage. Meanwhile, those in power at all levels ignore the business of governing and instead enrich themselves. Law and order deteriorate. The Nigerian police, which are federal, are called on, but they have grievances of their own. Ill-trained, ill-paid, and housed in squalid barracks, they are feared for their indiscriminate use of force. The military, though more professional, is not prepared for dealing with unrest — and unrest has proliferated more and more.

Of course, this most recent eruption — which left 700 dead, more wounded, and thousands displaced — had its own peculiarities. Not all uprisings in diverse Nigeria are the same, though usually they are predictable. This time, the principal player was an Islamist sect based in Maiduguri in Borno state and led by 39-year old Mohammed Yusuf. Its name, Boko Haram, translates more or less as “Opposition to Western Education.”

Even established leaders of Islam in the north, who condemn Yusuf’s preaching, are aware of how government has failed Nigeria’s young. What has Western education done for them lately? For that matter, what have other Nigerian institutions, all easily seen as Western-inspired, done for them? Boko Haram was demanding something its members believed would be better.

The attacks on police stations last week were triggered by different events in different states. In Maiduguri, just weeks before the first attack, the police had opened fire on a funeral procession of Yusuf’s apparently unarmed young followers. People in Maiduguri were expecting retaliation, and Yusuf himself had declared that if he were arrested, his followers would fight back.

The outbreak of violence, then, should not have surprised the security services; certainly it did not surprise the people of Maiduguri or anyone else in Nigeria. After clashes in nearby Bauchi state a week earlier, Yusuf was widely reported as vowing to avenge police killings of his followers there. Nonetheless, those in charge of security were clearly unprepared. The police were overwhelmed, and the Army, once deployed, called in 1,000 more troops as reinforcements. The intelligence system was aware of Boko Haram and since 2007 had been advocating measures to stop its growth. The government simply ignored the advice.

Last Thursday, after a ferocious battle at Yusuf’s heavily fortified Maiduguri compound, from which he had fled, police caught up with him at the home of his father-in-law. They took him into custody and then shot him dead. Yusuf’s body has been displayed on state television. The first official story was that he was killed in a shootout and not at police headquarters. When the military produced photographs showing that they had handed him over alive to the police, officials offered a new story: that he was shot while trying to escape. Either way, his death is unlikely to bring a lasting end to this crisis. Meanwhile, the excessive force of the military response has compounded the misery of people in Maiduguri. As one bitter resident said, “They used a sledgehammer to kill an ant.” There is now growing anger at the indiscriminate killing of guilty and innocent alike.

And so it goes. Nigeria’s far north has a history of charismatic leaders who preach unorthodox Muslim beliefs and rally large numbers of young men in clashes with traditional Islamic and political authorities. In the early 1980s, a major wave of violence spread from Kano to Maiduguri. A smaller outbreak in 2004 in Yobe and Borno states was a forerunner to the present clashes. Then, a rebellious group of young men who called themselves “Taleban,” having no doubt heard the name (but not the spelling) on the Hausa service of the BBC or Voice of America, demanded the imposition of full sharia law. That same plea was sweeping all the far northern states, thanks in part to strong popular feeling that Nigeria’s secular institutions were not delivering justice. Sharia, it was hoped, would do a better job.

Boko Haram, which by some accounts evolved from the “Taleban,” judged that sharia did not help: Ironically, the four states where last week’s death and destruction occurred are all states that did adopt sharia criminal law. It is said loudly and frequently by those who live there that not only has sharia law been quietly set aside, but that now these are among the worst governed states in the country.

Meanwhile, Nigerians note that as the violence last week was escalating, their president — who is himself from the far northern state of Katsina — chose to leave the country on a visit to Brazil. (An attack on a police station in Katsina followed.) Newspaper columnists contrasted this unfavorably with the Chinese president’s decision to skip the G-8 meetings in Italy last month when unrest enveloped Xinjiang province.

And in the Niger Delta, as in the north, the goverment’s indifference to life on the ground has had growing consequences. Protests there have escalated over the years to kidnappings, explosions, and armed combat. Successive governments, especially at the lavishly funded state level, have done little to develop the area and improve people’s lives. What is different, of course, is that the delta’s oil, which despoils the mangrove creeks but funds Nigeria’s government at all levels, has also produced criminal networks whose activities, with political and even military complicity, have made the tragedy there all the more intractable. And the massive importation of weapons into the delta has made guns of all kinds — particularly AK-47s — available cheaply throughout the country, notably now in the north.

The problems are not new. Nigerians and others who cared to look closely have seen the political venality, lack of concern, and flamboyant lifestyle of the corrupt rich and powerful who have made daily life for the vast majority of the population worse and worse, year after year. A decade ago, with the return of democracy, Nigerians had high hopes. But now, after rigged elections at all levels in 2003 and 2007, and the prospect of nothing different in 2011; with unclean drinking water, a failed electrical grid, unsafe roads, ever rising crime, and a host of other grievances, they have little hope left.

The world will misunderstand if it looks at the latest Nigerian tragedy through the lens of global radical Islam. If Nigeria’s leaders do not urgently start to address their country’s most basic, obvious needs, the only question is what will trigger the next spate of armed mayhem, and where. It could be anywhere. And its causes, with deep roots in corruption in high places, will be no mystery.

Jean Herskovits is research professor of history at the State University of New York, Purchase. She has been traveling to Nigeria for nearly four decades, most recently two weeks ago.

View the trailer:

Sweet Crude is the story of Nigeria’s Niger Delta – the human and environmental consequences of 50 years of oil extraction, the history of non-violent protest, and the members of a new insurgency who, in the three years since the filmmakers met them as college students, became the young men of the Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta (MEND).

Check out the film’s web site: www.sweetcrudemovie.com

Date and Times at the ArcLight Hollywood Theater in LA:

More info and tickets
Screening schedule:

Fri 7/31 5:15 PM & 9:30 PM; Sat 8/1 3:40 PM & 7:15 PM; Sun 8/2 3:15 PM & 9:15 PM; Mon 8/3 3:15 PM & 9:35 PM; Tue 8/4 2:00 PM & 5:40 PM; Wed 8/5 5:15 PM & 9:30 PM; Thu 8/6 3:40 PM & 7:15 PM

NYC Dates:

More info and tickets
Screening schedule:

Fri 8/14 3:30 PM & 9:50 PM; Sat 8/15 12:00 PM & 5:15 PM; Sun 8/16 1:30 PM & 7:15 PM; Mon 8/17 3:30 PM & 9:50 PM; Tue 8/18 12:00 PM & 5:15 PM; Wed 8/19 1:30 PM & 7:15 PM; Thu 8/20 1:30 PM & 7:15 PM

Now, more than ever before, third party negotiations involving all stakeholders are needed to secure any possibility of a lasting peace and a roadmap to develop the Delta that will benefit the millions who are living in absolute poverty and environmental destruction. Third party negotiations are essential because there is a credibility gap between what the Nigerian government has claimed it would do in the past to support earnest development in the Niger Delta and what has actually occurred: building up a military occupation in the region and responding to militant violence, not community voices. The oil companies also need to step up and work with local community groups and the government to provide for the millions living in poverty in the Delta.

JINN supports the demands of local community groups in the Delta calling for:

• A complete military withdrawal from the Delta and a permanent ceasefire
• Independently monitored third party diplomatic talks with all stakeholders in the Delta

• Free and unfettered access to all parts of the Delta by journalists, humanitarian groups and human rights organizations

• Implement the already existing plan to develop the Delta in earnest

• Rebuild communities destroyed by the current crisis

Read more about the crisis and possible recommendations for the way forward:

Foreign Policy In Focus: Postcard from…The Niger Delta by Andrew Blum

Foreign Policy Magazine: A Violent Window of Opportunity: Why troubled times are the perfect chance to calm the Niger Delta by Mark Schneider and Nnamdi Obasi