Even amid record oil prices, Niger Delta struggles with its 'curse'
Sunday, 23 March 2008
AGBARHA-OTOR, Nigeria, March 22 (AFP): Record high oil prices have done little for the people of the oil-rich Niger Delta, where many earn a dollar a day if they can find work at all and rundown villages sit neglected.
The ramshackle houses covered in corroded metal and the abandoned fishing boats in the Delta in southern Nigeria belie the fact that the country is Africa's biggest oil producer and the world's eighth biggest oil exporter. Some say oil wealth has been the Delta's curse.
Dying vegetation, infertile farmlands and blackened rivers are coupled with unrest, bitter power struggles and worsening poverty levels.
Located south of the port city of Warri, Agbarha-Otor is home to some 500,000 people scattered in many villages, according to local officials.
Many of them try to eke out a living on less than a dollar a day.
The men of this one-time fishing community now spend much of their time drinking palm wine and complaining about the lack of development. Oil, they say, has turned the water black and killed off all the fish.
Felix Onoro, a 65-year-old father of five, can talk at length about the quantity of fish his late father used to catch.
"My father was a great fisherman before his death. He made so much money that he sent two of his children abroad for study," he reminisced.
Now Onoro gets by on the money his children send him and on vegetables he manages to grow behind his two-bedroom house. Fishing, his first love, has long been abandoned and his house, like several others in the community, paints a picture of neglect and decay.
"With the commencement of exploration activities, the waters became polluted and the fishes died one after the other," Onoro told AFP, wiping palm wine from his moustache.
The ramshackle houses covered in corroded metal and the abandoned fishing boats in the Delta in southern Nigeria belie the fact that the country is Africa's biggest oil producer and the world's eighth biggest oil exporter. Some say oil wealth has been the Delta's curse.
Dying vegetation, infertile farmlands and blackened rivers are coupled with unrest, bitter power struggles and worsening poverty levels.
Located south of the port city of Warri, Agbarha-Otor is home to some 500,000 people scattered in many villages, according to local officials.
Many of them try to eke out a living on less than a dollar a day.
The men of this one-time fishing community now spend much of their time drinking palm wine and complaining about the lack of development. Oil, they say, has turned the water black and killed off all the fish.
Felix Onoro, a 65-year-old father of five, can talk at length about the quantity of fish his late father used to catch.
"My father was a great fisherman before his death. He made so much money that he sent two of his children abroad for study," he reminisced.
Now Onoro gets by on the money his children send him and on vegetables he manages to grow behind his two-bedroom house. Fishing, his first love, has long been abandoned and his house, like several others in the community, paints a picture of neglect and decay.
"With the commencement of exploration activities, the waters became polluted and the fishes died one after the other," Onoro told AFP, wiping palm wine from his moustache.