SerpApi.Org
By Mike DiGirolamo
On this week’s episode of the Mongabay Newscast, I speak with travel writer Noo Saro-Wiwa. She has documented the violence and natural destruction that the presence of oil companies have brought to the people of the Niger Delta in her latest book, The Burning Ground: Oil and Militancy in Nigeria.
Saro-Wiwa is also the daughter of the late activist Ken Saro-Wiwa, who was executed by the Nigerian government in 1995. Her father led a peaceful resistance against the oil companies’ presence in the Niger Delta by mobilizing 300,000 people from Ogoniland in 1993. It is fair to say his activism started the movement against the destruction and exploitation led by oil companies in the nation. While peaceful at first, Noo Saro-Wiwa says many people gave up hope on peaceful resistance when the government failed to hold the companies accountable, and men turned to forming violent militant groups.
“Oil has been literally the worst thing that’s happened to the Niger Delta. If I could go back in time and I had the power, I would never have allowed oil to have been discovered,” she says.
“ The amount of instability, political, economic instability it causes. And the damage to the environment … that goes without saying. So we really need to shift to solar power … oil companies do not have this kind of leverage over people, and governments will have no incentive to go in and destroy people’s lives.”
While her latest book chronicles the harm of oil and the resulting violence, I put it to her that it’s also a story about how the absence of women’s rights is destroying societies. Saro-Wiwa explains how Nigeria isn’t unique in this regard, but rather a stark example of how this dynamic plays out.
“ Going around the Niger Delta and talking to activists like Emem Okon … I could see very clearly how women’s rights directly affects the environment … and society, and how the absence of those rights feeds into this militancy which ultimately hurts men.”
In reading Saro-Wiwa’s book, she doesn’t push a solution upon you, but I do believe one reveals itself in her conversations with civic leaders and ex-militants. Many of them tell her, in so many words, that if the government cared less about supporting oil companies and more about supporting the people — especially women — who are actually trying to restore the region’s livelihoods, farms, nature and peace, then the delta could truly develop.
Her conversations with ex-militants now reformed and working in agriculture, such as a man named Mac-Eteli, reveal a sentiment that the government’s priorities are askew. Instead of supporting the people working to bring sustainable development to the region, the Nigerian government started providing financial incentives to militants to leave violence behind in 2009. Ironically, this has only seemed to beget more violence as disaffected men turn to militancy — and the promise of a government stipend to give it up.
“ The government has done things completely the wrong way round. It’s having to spend billions of dollars in monthly stipends to pay off these to pacify militants, when really … those billions should have gone towards promoting farmers like Mac-Eteli. It should have gone towards educating the young people of the Niger Delta so that they can then go on and create job opportunities for themselves and for other people,” Saro-Wiwa says.
Much of the work that Saro-Wiwa says the government should be doing is done by women, and in her conversations with them, it swiftly becomes apparent that they are not just undervalued, but marginalized, to the detriment of Nigerian society. All the while, oil continues to propagate in the region, polluting the delta, and giving little back to the people it is harming.
“A lot of women are farming the land. But the problem is that when there is an oil spill, the government … if they’re gonna give any money or compensation, they’ll give it to the men, not the women,” she says. “But it’s the women who are looking after the children. It’s the women who are farming the soil.
“ If the women are taken care of, the children are taken care of. And if the children are taken care of, then you don’t have these young boys going off and wanting to become militants. So everything boils down to looking after women. That is how you fix society.”
The Burning Ground is a harrowing read, but of all the books I’ve read for this podcast, it might be the very first one I suggest you pick up.
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Mike DiGirolamo is the host & producer for the Mongabay Newscast based in Sydney. Find him on LinkedIn and Bluesky.
Banner image: A man fishes in the Niger Delta near the village of Diebu, Nigeria, Saturday, May 18, 2013. Image by Jon Gambrell / AP Photo.
This article was originally published on Mongabay
