Nigeria's child labour

In the past, children worked with their families, learning skills they would need as adults. But today, children are forced to work for their own and their family’s survival. Child labour is so widespread in Nigeria that it has been accepted by many as part of normal life. The end of the oil boom in the 70s, coupled with mounting poverty, has driven millions of children into labour.

Recent studies and reports, especially from the International Labour Organization show that child labour has been made worse in recent times because some of these children have no solid background, no education and no parental care. In the circumstances, they become street hawkers. They work in the streets during the day, and work even at night in some cases. Such lifestyles become very dangerous and nomadic types of life. There is little wonder therefore, that the future of these children is very dark and bleak. There are many children in Nigeria who work under inhumane conditions hidden from public view. The conditions of some of these children are compounded by the fact that they do not receive any kind of formal education. Because of the ramifications and consequences of child labour, it is no wonder that it is actually illegal in Nigeria, although the sheer scale of the activity gives the impression that it is legal.

In Nigeria quality education is no longer free. The ‘free education’ available in many local and state governments across the country does not provide the desirable tools for future freedom from ignorance or even preparation for work after education. Child rights activists also submit that lack of access to education is a major reason for the child labour quagmire. Statistics shows that these working children lose out on education because they have no time, money or energy to go to school. It also shows that about six million children, comprising of boys and girls, do not attend school at all, while one million children are forced to drop out of school due to poverty or because their parents demand for them to contribute to the family’s income. Over eight million children manage to stay in school and work at their spare time to pay school fees. But due to high demand at work, these children normally skip classes.Rabiu Musa, UNICEF Communications Officer stated 10 million children were not in school in the country. Missing out on education makes it impossible to break the cycle of poverty and exploitation.

The Looting of Africa

In terms of natural resources, Africa is the most abundant continent on earth.

BP has stated that Africa holds 127 billion barrels of untapped oil, almost ten per cent of global reserves.Oil was first drilled commercially in Africa in Oloibiri in the Niger Delta, in 1956 by the Anglo-Dutch oil giant Shell. There are now ten oil exporting nations in Africa, with another three soon to join that list.

There are ten major diamond producing nations in Africa, the largest being Botswana, where the industry is worth $158bn a year.Diamond production remains a major source of revenue for Africa. In Sierra Leone, income from the diamond trade rose by a quarter to $35m in the first six months of the 2010.

Coltan or "colombo-tantalite ore" is a mineral used to make electric capacitors in computers, gaming consoles and mobile phones. One of the world's largest reserves is in the Democratic Republic of Congo.

But rather than a blessing, most of Africa's commodities have proved a burden; allegedly stoking conflict, funding wars and leading to rampant labour market abuse.

Africa's largest single oil exporting nation is Nigeria. While no official figures exist, Standard Bank estimates the country has made $6 trillion in oil revenue over the last 50 years. The International Energy Agency says Nigeria holds 37 billion barrels of reserve oil, dwarfing that of Norway which has just 6 billion. Yet 70% of Nigerians live under the poverty line and the country has consistently been ranked among the most corrupt on earth by international observers.Despite its oil wealth, Nigeria has to import 60% of its own fuel.

The portability and high value of diamonds have made them a favourite source of funding for rebel groups across the continent. Angola, Congo and the Cote D'Ivoire have all been subject to the trade in so called "blood diamonds"..During the brutal 10 year civil war in Sierra Leone, the diamond mines in Kono were controlled by the rebel RUF forces, led by Foday Sankoh. Diamonds smuggled from the region were allegedly passed on to Charles Taylor, president of neighbouring Liberia, who in turn helped arm the rebel movement.Diamonds from blacklisted countries like Zimbabwe are still routinely being traded on the international market.

Most of the coltan mines in the DRC are in the remote South Kivu district. In 2001 a report by the United Nation Security Council claimed that rebel forces, regrouping in the country after the Rwandan genocide, had taken control of the mines and were using coltan to fund their operations, often using forced or child labour. These groups included the CNDP, a Tutsi rebel force led by General Laurent Nkunda, and the Democratic Forces for the Liberation of Rwanda, a Hutu rebel group responsible for the Rwandan genocide of 1994, which had the backing of the Congolese government under President Mobutu.The report concluded that the DRC was suffering a "systemic and systematic" looting of natural resources, with the CNDP alone raising $250m over 18 months by selling coltan.A follow up report by the UN in 2008 claimed the looting of the mineral in the DRC was still rife. Rwanda is estimated to have made $19m from coltan sales in 2008, a rise of 72% on the previous year, even though no coltan is mined within Rwandan borders.

Environmental Racism ? Or Capitalism ?

We read that Shell's Opolo-Epie facility gives the lie to claims from oil multinationals and the Nigerian government that they are close to bringing an end to the destructive and wasteful practice of gas flaring.The Opolo-Epie plant is set to join at least 100 other flares burning across the swamps, creeks and forests of this oil-producing region, filling the atmosphere with toxins, seeding the clouds with acid rain and polluting the soil. The process of burning off unwanted "associated gas" brought up when oil is pumped out of the ground has been illegal in Nigeria since 1984. The government has set three separate deadlines for stopping the practice – the latest of which falls due at the end of this year – but still it continues. Medical studies have shown the gas burners contribute to an average life expectancy in the Delta region of 43 years. The area also has Nigeria's highest infant mortality rate – 12 per cent of newborns fail to see out their first year.
"This is environmental racism," said Alagoa Morris, an investigator with a local group, Environmental Rights Action. "What we are asking for is that oil companies should have to meet the same standards in Nigeria that they do operating in their own countries."

In a country where more than 60 per cent of the people have no reliable electricity supply the gas flares, some of which have been burning constantly since the 1960s ,is equivalent to more than one third of the natural gas produced in the UK's North Sea oil and gas fields and would meet the entire energy requirements of German industry.( Worldwide, the gas lost to flaring could meet one third of the EU's natural gas needs each year.) Making use of the gas being burned could produce 8,000 megawatts of power – three times Nigeria's current output. A single small- to medium-sized flare could power up to 5,000 homes, shops, schools and clinics as well as pumps and filters for drinking water.

The pollution generated from this flaring has been measured at up to 50 million tonnes of carbon dioxide, with unknown quantities of the far more damaging greenhouse gas: methane. According to Chris Cragg, an independent oil and gas expert. "It is one of the largest single pointless emissions of greenhouse gas on the planet, with obvious implications for climate change that will not only affect Nigeria, but also the rest of the world."

Little changes -Little change

Socialist Banner reads

Every government claims to be in place for the purpose of making life more pleasant for its people, through poverty alleviation or eradication programmes. But government after government has consistently failed to truly alleviate the poverty of the masses.Despite the enormous wealth of Nigeria , poverty still has a strong grip on a large chunk of the populace. It shows that the anti-poverty programmes have largely failed.Every year, huge sums are appropriated for the purpose of fighting poverty yet, the malaise still manages to widen its reach on the Nigerian people

Rating agencies have continued to show that the indices of poverty in Nigeria are even worsening, with over seventy per cent of the population said to be living below poverty lines-living on less than a dollar a day. With many still having great difficulty affording three square meals a day, or unable to attend to health challenges, or even a decent accommodation, the Human Development Index (HDI) of Nigerians is bound to be low. Rather than improving, the poverty level of Nigerians is rather increasing. One thing that this shows is that all claims to poverty alleviation in the country are sheer sloganeering.

Bodies like the Ministry of Social Development and Welfare, which used to impart skills on the populace, are no longer visible. The National Directorate of Employment (NDE) which ought to train school leavers in various skills to enable them be self-employed and self sufficient has not been empowered to play its role. The NDE, over the years has been starved of funds to carry out its functions. Anti-poverty projects and programmes have consistently failed to achieve their goals.

Aside from the obvious fact that extreme poverty engenders widespread hunger, malnutrition, lack of clean water, death from easily preventable diseases, lack of access to healthcare, inadequate shelter, illiteracy and general lack of education, the poor also suffer from a plethora of other, less obvious inequalities. They have no influence decisions which affect their lives and livelihoods. They have no bargaining power. They have no lobbyists. They have no importance alongside corporations. They are there to be ignored, discounted.

The marginalisation of the masses is no accident, no simple mistake or miscalculation but an inevitable consequence of the deliberate policy of those who hold the power; those whose aim is to accumulate more and more of the land, resources, wealth of any kind or just money, because this is what the capitalist system from which they benefit requires of them and deliberate policy, too, of those in governments who do their utmost to assist, sometimes in the hope of gaining a few steps on the ladder. Those at the top has no will to fix the system except to their own advantage .

African or American's oil ?

Barack Obama accepts the Nobel Peace Prize and in his speech asserts through war we can achieve peace . He has made similar claims for Africom ."...we stand ready to partner through diplomacy, technical assistance, and logistical support, and will stand behind efforts to hold war criminals accountable. Our Africa Command is focused not on establishing a foothold in the continent, but on confronting these common challenges to advance the security of America, Africa and the world." 11 July 2009 Obama speech in Accra, Ghana.

from here we read

Yet all the available evidence demonstrates that he is determined to continue the expansion of US military activity on the continent initiated by President Bill Clinton in the late 1990s and dramatically escalated by President George W. Bush from 2001 to 2009. While many expected the Obama administration to adopt a security policy toward Africa that would be far less militaristic and unilateral than that pursued by his predecessor, the facts show that he is in fact essentially following the same policy that has guided US military involvement in Africa for more than a decade.

The Obama administration is now considering providing even more military support to the Nigerian government for use in the Niger Delta if the current amnesty programme collapses, as many analysts expect, and the government resumes military operations against insurgent forces in this vital oil-producing region (which produces 10 per cent of America's total oil imports).

And with regard to America's growing dependence on African oil supplies, President Obama understands the danger of relying upon the importation of a vital resource from unstable countries ruled by repressive, undemocratic regimes and the necessity of reducing America's reliance on the use of oil and other non-renewable sources of energy. But, for understandable reasons, he has concluded that there is simply very little that he can do to achieve this goal during the limited time that he will be in office. He knows that it will take at least several decades to make the radical changes that will be necessary to develop alternative sources of energy, particularly to fuel cars and other means of transportation (if this is even technically feasible). And he knows that - in the meantime - public support for his presidency and for his party depends on the continued supply of reliable and relatively inexpensive supplies of gas and other petroleum-based energy to the American people, more than any other single factor. In the event of a substantial disruption in the supply of oil from Nigeria or any other major African supplier, he realises that he will be under irresistible political pressure to employ the only instrument that he has at his disposal - US military forces - to try to keep Africa's oil flowing.

Professional military officers also know that the repressive, undemocratic regimes upon which the United States relies to maintain oil production are likely to fail and that they are almost certain to find themselves sent into combat in Africa - whether they like it or not - if this leads to a major disruption of oil exports, and are already working on plans for direct military intervention in Africa. Thus, in May 2008, the Army Training and Doctrine Command, the Special Operations Command, and the Joint Forces Command conducted a war game scenario for Nigeria during war game exercise that it conducts each year at the US Army War College in Carlisle, Pennsylvania.

The scenario - set in the hypothetical year 2013 - was designed to test the ability of the United States to respond to a crisis in Nigeria in which the Nigerian government fragments and rival factions within the Nigerian military begin fighting for control of the Niger Delta, creating so much violence and chaos that it would be impossible to continue oil production. The participants concluded that there was little the United States could do to bring about a peaceful resolution of the conflict and that, in the end, they would probably be ordered to send up to 20,000 American troops into the Niger Delta in what the participants clearly recognised would be a futile attempt to get the oil flowing again. The fact that the participants in the Nigerian war games decided to go public with this information suggests that they believe that this scenario is likely to become a reality in the near future and that their only hope of avoiding this is to tell the public in the hope that this will prevent the order from being issued.

nigerian shakara

Most of Nigeria's 150 million citizens may live in desperate poverty, but the West African oil giant also has an elite that revels in "shakara" — the flaunting of success.

"Nigerians who have money like to splash it," explains Naomi Okaja, whose company imports goods into Lagos, the commercial capital.
At the Megaplaza mall, a flat-screen TV taller than a man sells for $53,000, a crystal chandelier for $10,000. The wealthy import everything from refined gasoline for their Mercedes-Benzes to their children's favorite foods.
Restaurants post armed guards; the homes of the wealthy have walls with razor-wire, floodlights, cameras and security guards. Newspaper ads for luxury armored Hummers.An island and the connecting peninsula jutting into Lagos Lagoon offer the best real-estate. At night the rich neighborhoods become the ultimate gated communities, reachable only by bridges and checkpoints guarded by police with rifles. There are yacht moorings and helipads for the super-rich.

Meanwhile, four-fifths of Nigerians live on less than $2 a day.

The rich at Megaplaza think, a growing middle class will push for better governance and a better government will provide better services.

For Okuro and other stall holders around him, such visions provoke bitter laughter.

"When will it come? Tell me when," Okuro demands "We are tired of waiting."

horror tours

The historic slave port ,Badagry, Nigeria , is to be transformed through the bizarre combination of a $3.4bn (£2.4bn)slave history theme park and a museum dedicated to double Grammy-winning pop-soul group the Jackson Five. The idea is that the band will help attract African-American tourists keen to trace their roots back to Nigeria.

The African-American history trail is worth billions of dollars, the developers say. Ghana and Senegal have successfully turned slave ports into tourist attractions. The developers say the Badagry Historical Resort will be marketed to African-American tourists as a mixture of luxury tourist attractions and historical education.
Visitors will be able to see the route their ancestors walked, shackled together as they were whipped toward the "point of no return". They can then retire to their five-star hotel to drink cocktails by the pool.

But critics have dismissed the project as a cynical money-making scheme, inappropriate for the subject of such seriousness as the transatlantic slave trade.

"It's like dancing on the graves of dead people and telling them you're honouring them" C Don Adinuba Writer

Nigerian royalty

The Emir of Kano strolls regally along the red carpet with a silver-tipped staff and a jeweled turban that looks like a disco ball, as commoners bow and scrape in his wake. Kano's streets are strewn with trash, and schools and clinics are run down. In northern Nigeria, the emirs have no control over mechanisms of the state such as the police, taxation or criminal justice. But they receive five percent of all funds given to local government.
At the same time, the emirs wield considerable power as the top Islamic figures in their regions.The emirs also oversee the Shariah court system, which rules based on Islamic civil law. In northern Nigeria, governors have imposed the Shariah system in a bid to harness their political fortunes to religious sensibilities.

Nations vy for Nigerian gas

The EU is proposing to help the Nigerian government develop a trans-Saharan pipeline which would take gas from Nigeria through Niger and Algeria, direct to Europe.

But Russia also has realised Nigeria's importance too .A week before the EU offer, the Russian gas giant Gazprom signed a deal with the Nigerian government for gas exploration and transportation, and has clearly stated its interest in the proposed pipeline. Gazprom can offer huge investment in infrastructure as an inducement to do deals.

Europe is increasingly worried about its dependence on Russian gas, especially after Russia's action in Georgia increased its influence over European energy supply routes through the Caucasus.

Watch this space as Nigerian resources once more becomes the focal point for world capitalism competition .

Nigeria has the world's seventh largest gas reserves.

A New War for Oil

Gordon Brown will offer British help to the Nigerian government – to fight rebels in the oil-producing Niger delta.
The Prime Minister's official spokesman said the focus will be on providing training for the Nigerian military. He said: "Oil supply from Nigeria has been undermined by insecurity in the Niger delta...and to achieve levels of production that Nigeria is capable of"

Major unrest in the impoverished Niger Delta region has cut the country's capacity to pump oil by one-quarter in recent months, helping to drive oil prices to the record high of $145 per barrel.
A series of attacks on installations and the kidnapping of oil workers by the main militant group, Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta (Mend), has cut Nigerian oil production by one-quarter. The group is demanding a greater share of oil revenues be given to local people as the Niger Delta is among the poorest regions in Africa, despite the immense oil wealth it produces. Britain is one of the largest investors in Nigeria. About 4,000 Britons live in the west African country, many working for large companies, including the oil and gas companies Royal Dutch Shell and BG Group

A spokesman for Mend, Jomo Gbomo, told The Independent that the UK offer was tantamount to a return to colonial policies of divide and rule:
"They ought to know better than any other country [not] to involve themselves in any other area aside from development. They [the British] are getting frustrated and we will continue frustrating the oil-dependent markets until justice is offered."

Nigerian government's health neglect

In Nigeria , 59,000 women die during or soon after childbirth every year.

Nigeria's maternal mortality rate is the second highest in the world, after India -- 1,100 maternal deaths per 100,000 live births. The country is home to 2 percent of the global population, but 10 percent of all maternal deaths take place there.

The Center for Reproductive Rights places blame squarely on the "government's lack of political will" to implement policies and allocate funds to improve women's health and prevent maternal deaths.

It also points to widespread corruption in the oil-rich country as a fundamental problem undermining health care for women.

For example, one study found that 42 percent of Nigerian health care workers went unpaid for as long as six months, although the funds had been provided by the federal government. As a result, these workers began demanding "contributions" from women seeking maternity-related care.Similarly, the report notes that public health facilities demand that women seeking care provide many of the needed supplies (disinfectant, bandages, etc.), and require the women to purchase a particular brand.Women who deliver in hospitals must pay immediately or risk detention. One informant told CRR researchers of a woman who fled the hospital in the night after undergoing a birth by Caesarian section, even before her stitches were removed.

"I have seen women who after delivery had to come round the wards begging for money."

The government has also failed to provide access to information on family planning and contraception, two issues very closely related to maternal death. Early marriage is common in Nigeria, and young women are often required to conceive immediately and frequently, endangering their health.This failure, CRR charges, means that the government "violates its duties under international human rights law, namely its obligation to ensure the right to health, the right to access family planning services and information, the right to decide on the number and spacing of children, and the right to equality and non-discrimination."

Nigeria - Higher Education ?

From the BBC

Nigerian universities used to rate among the best in Africa.
In the 1960s students would regularly go on exchange programmes to top British universities. A degree from a Nigerian university was highly regarded.
“All this has changed,” said one professor at the University of Abuja. “The students are bright, but the system lets them down,”

The problems start with crumbling infrastructure.
Around 10 students sleep in a hostel room. When it’s hot they take the mattresses and sleep outside. Despite the poor conditions pupils queue up at the beginning of term to be allocated a room. The kitchens and toilets in the men's hostel are disgusting.

“It’s difficult for some girls to get an education because of pressure from society not to educate women,” . Sexual harassment of female students, lecturers demanding sex for passing grades, is common.

If every student took out three books from the library, the shelves would be empty. Science labs are particularly bad. Their classroom does not have any microscopes or proper laboratory equipment.

Who are the criminals ?

From the BBC

A fully-equipped hospital that lay unused for two years has burned to the ground in northern Nigeria. The General Hospital in Maiduguri was built in 2006 but the state government refused to open it until the president came to cut the ribbon.
The governor had refused to open the hospital, which was ready for patients in June 2006, until former President Olusegun Obasanjo came to the state. His visit was postponed several times, the last being just two months before the election in 2007. His successor Umaru Yar'adua was due to visit later next month.

Borno was recently hit by a measles outbreak that killed hundreds of children across three states. Existing hospitals in Borno are poorly equipped and overcrowded.

Angry residents of Bulunkutu, where the hospital was situated, gathered around the burned hospital and shouted abuse at the alleged arsonists, local papers reported.
The governor addressed the arsonists through the media.
"There is not one hospital in the country owned by a state government that has the type of world class equipment we had in there. It is their people that would have benefitted," he told reporters at the scene.

Socialist Banner acknowledges the counter-productive result of burning down a hospital but , surely , this Nigerian state governor must stand condemned for placing party politics before peoples welfare - leaving a modern fully equipped sophistacated hospital empty for two years while people around it died from lack of medical attention . He and his suppoerters are no better than the actual arsonists .

Niger Delta Video

Fire in the Delta

I thought this may be of interest to some although it does not fully represent the views of Socialist Banner .

Nigeria, Biafra and Oil

Nigeria is a country that was created artificially by British colonialism. It has a complex ethnic mixture of groups, with a division between the North, inhabited by Muslim Fulani Hausas with a rigid feudal system, and the South where the a number of different ethnic groups co-existed loosely, the largest of these groups being the Christian Igbos and Yorubas. The trick of British colonialism was the divide and rule system. They knew the nature of Nigeria; it is a country that doesn’t have the same climate, not the same religion, not the same mentality, not the same food, not the same dress, not the same dialect, and not the same culture. They used their military might to force Nigeria to be one by the amalgamation of the southern and northern protectorates of Nigeria. They gave the Fulani emirs political prominence at the expense of the Southern population and left a time bomb with the fuse burning.

Prior to independence, and afterwards, many threats of a Northern secession were made by the Northern politicians because they did not want to be part of Nigeria. But in realty these Northern political kangaroos called leaders did not want to lose the benefit of Southern oil and industries. Nigeria was supposed to get her independence before the Gold Coast (now Ghana) did in 1957 but, because of the Northerners were not prepared to be part of the new country, Nigeria lost many years in debate and compromise until the North agreed to be part of it.

But the new Nigerian constitutional framework did not resolve everything, it being clear that Nigeria was sitting on a time bomb that would explode and cause real dangerous harm to all Nigerians.

The constitution did not change the relative cultural backwardness of the North compared to the South. What the Northern leaders wanted was a guarantee that they would retain their dominant political position after independence. If not, they would pull out and form an "Arewa Republic" for the interest of the Fulani – Hausa. British imperialists taught that the North were fools to be used and stole the resources from the South. But, the North got their way in political domination in Nigeria.

In the mid-60s, the South had more doctors, lawyers and engineers than most other countries in Sub-Saharan Africa. There were 1.3m Igbos from the South East working in the northern region, many of them in skilled positions, particularly in the civil service. The Northern leaders were jealous of Igbos and other Southerners, accusing the Igbos of depriving northerners of good jobs due to their better education.

Military rule

In 1966, a group of young officers assassinated the Northern leader Bello, the federal Prime Minister Tafawa Balewa and the Western leader Akintola who had become discredited in the eyes of the population. The coup leader, Major Kaduna Chukwuma Nzeogwu (now dead) broadcast the following reasons for the coup on radio:

"Our enemies are the political profiteers, swindlers, men in high and low places that seek bribes and demand ten percent, those that seek to keep the country permanently divided so that they can remain in office as Ministers and VIP’s of waste, the tribalists, the nepotists, those that make the country look big for nothing before international circles".

In the North, jubilant masses ransacked the governor’s palace and cheered the coup leader, despite his Igbo origin.

The coup did not succeed. In Lagos, General Thomas Umunnakwe Aguiyi Ironsi had restored peace and order in the name of the old government with British backing. He placed himself as the first army general at the head of the federation and declared Nigeria under military rule.

Despite opposition from Northern politicians, General Ironsi announced his "Unification Decree" which although it changed little but names – regions became provinces, the federation became a Republic – caused a series of the most violent massacres of Southerners yet seen in the North.

"Armed thugs moved across the space between the city walls of Kano and the Sabon Garis where the Easterners lived, broke into ghetto and started burning, raping looting and killing as many men, women and children from the East as the could lay their hands on".

It is without doubt that these massacres were deliberately planned by Northern politicians using their own armed gangs to whip up local feelings against the Igbos and other Southerners.

General Ironsi then went on a tour to Ibadan, Western region, to promote "One Nigeria" ideal. While he was on this tour another coup was staged, by Northern army officers. General Ironsi and two of his commanding officers were stripped, beaten, tortured and then shot. With taking over command, the coup leader, led by a young British trained officer, General Gowon, issued instructions for Igbos in the army – many off them formed the majority of the technical corps – to be rounded up and imprisoned. And Gowon declared himself the supreme commander of the Nigerian armed forces.

The British High Commission in Lagos after meeting with the coup leaders came out in their full support – including their demand for recognition of the dominance of the North in any political process. All the regions except the South Eastern region – where the former governor, colonel Chukwuemeka Odumegwu Ojukwu, remained in command with his troops and refused to recognized the new dictatorship. This Ojukwu, son of a millionaire who had been knighted by the British, had been educated in Oxford Universty and Sandhurst college, saw the atrocities of Gowon and decided to lead the South-East to secession and war.

During September and October 1966, three months after Gowon’s takeover a large scale massacre of Southerners was reported again from the Northern region. To quote the Observer (17 October 1966):

"The Hausas in each town and village in the North know what happened in their own localities, only the Igbos know the whole terrible story from the 600,000 or so refugees who have fled to the safety of the Eastern Region – hacked, slashed, mangled, striped naked and robbed of their possessions; the orphan, the widows, and the traumatized. A woman, mute and dazed arrived back in her village after travelling for days with a bowl in her lap. She held her child’s head, which was killed before her eyes….after a fortnight the scene in the Eastern Region continues to be visible of the ingathering of exiles into Israel after the end of the last holocaust."

The killing of Igbos in the North was no more a joking matter.

General Gowon was an inexperienced army officer with no knowledge of leadership. Gowon was a school certificate holder and was power hungry. While, Colonel Ojukwu held a master’s degree holder in modern History. The difference between Ojukwu and Gowon was quite enormous in terms of reasoning on international politics.

Gowon taught that British imperialism liked him and that was why they would support him to fight a war against Ojukwu. But he failed to understand that Britain and America were only interested in stealing Nigerian oil.

There was a great negotiation between the different regional politicians and Gowon that ended up in a conference hosted in Aburi, Ghana, in order to bring Colonel Ojukwu to recognize the Gowon government.

Agreements were also made to pay salaries of displaced Southerners, to provide a subsidy for refugees, making total of £1.8 million, and to give a certain amount of autonomy to the region. Under pressure from the British and US governments, fearing at this point the loss of control of their oil concession, Gowon quickly agreed and signed these concessions.

But Gowon did not stick to the agreement. Because of his myopic ambition to remain in power, he took the resources of the Southerners and gave them to imperialism at no cost. The South-Eastern region felt that they were no longer protected under the umbrella of the Nigerian federation.

The Biafra War

On 30 May 1967, Colonel Ojukwu proclaimed the independent Republic of Biafra. The government and the economy of Biafra was among the best in the whole of Africa for three good months of peaceful existence.

Biafra fought a war against Britain, the United States of America, the Nigerian federal army and the River State militia. The actual fighting lasted for 24 months and took the form of an initial conquest of towns and a whole region to the west of Biafra by the Biafran Army and then the slow re-conquest of this region and Biafra itself, town by town, with the Nigerian Federal Army with its imperialist backers pushing the Biafran troops further back.

The Biafran army was never short of soldiers. There was a short supply of weaponry and the total blockade implemented after the first 16 months of heavy fighting. Biafrans are talented and creative people and Biafra was the only State in history to start a war without arms. The first weapons used to defend Biafraland are sticks, machetes, double-barrel guns for hunting. But, 40 percent of the Biafran soldiers came to be equipped with weapons captured from the Nigerian federal army. In addition, Biafra lacked air power, possessing a single B26 bomber dating back to World War Two and six old French Alouette helicopters.

The fact that it was the Igbos who developed the technical and engineering corps of the Nigeria Federal army, meant that they had a certain knowledge of expertise which the Federal troops lacked until their Western backers, finally realising that they were facing a severe resistance and a prolonged war, started providing direct heavy weapons to Gowon.

The first gunshots were fired on the 6 July, 1967 over the Northern Biafran town of Ogoja by Federal Nigerian troops. It was a diversionary attack and on the 8 July, 6,000 federal troops captured the town of Nsukka, the border town with the North. Another surprise attack was via the sea on the island Port Bonny, where the Shell and BP oil terminal was located. The Nigerian federal troops were unable to enter Port Harcourt, the main oil town of the region, as Ojukwu responded by putting a strong Biafran army and sending patrols to defend the coast at all cost.

While Nigerian federal troops were looking for a way to enter Port Harcourt, the Biafran army marched into the Midwest and took town after town without gunshots until they had enlarged the territory under Biafran control to encompass the whole of the oil producing area of the country. The Governor of the Mid-western region, Major General David Ejoor ran away by bicycle into hiding because the strength of Biafran army was beyond his control. This movement took Gowon and his imperialists backers by surprise.

Another system that Gowon and his crooks used was the food and supplies blockade of Biafra. Milk and meat, and other sources of protein had to be brought in from other regions and though chicken farming was started intensively once the war was under way it was not sufficient to feed the starving children of Biafra. The deficiency in dietary protein led to the slow death of almost a million civilians, most of them were children.

What the Nigeria and Biafra civil war did achieve was hatred, tribalism, nepotism, marginalization, ethnic inquisition, killings of 2 million innocent Nigerians who did not know anything about politics nor the oil in their region by Gowon and his capitalists backers, i.e. Britain and US. It also resulted in the reinforcement of the Gowon regime as the military dictatorship was to remain in power for a further six years before being kicked out of power by another brutal military dictator Major General Murtala Mohammed in 1976.

Rivalries for Oil

The BBC journalist Frederick Forsyth, who reported from Biafra during the war, later highlighted a major factor precipitating the war.

"It has been postulated that if the Biafrans had had their way as a republic of semi-desert and was allowed to separate from Nigeria, there would have cries of ‘Good Riddance’ in their ears. One foreign businessman said that ‘it’s an oil war’ and felt obliged to say no more."

Biafra was not a semi-desert. Beneath it lies an ocean oil. Approximately one tenth of this field lies in neighbouring Cameroon, three tenths in Nigeria. The remaining six tenths lies under Biafra.

Gowon and his ruling bandits and Ojukwu’s Eastern interest group had attempted to make an agreement over the terms of their relationship with the British and US oil companies in New York in June 1967. Ojukwu claimed the right to the royalties paid in Lagos by Shell/BP. Up until June 1967, £7 million due to Nigeria in oil royalties had not yet been paid. It was discussed that Biafra should receive 57.7 percent of the royalties and the rest be put aside until there was a political settlement. Gowon vehemently refused to pay and threatened to extend the anti-Biafra blockade to the Bonny Island oil terminal. Without respecting the agreement, Gowon’s troops launched their attack and captured the terminal at Port Bonny.

Biafra received nothing at all in promised royalties and all negotiations after this were done only with Gowon. By September 1967, the £7 million in oil royalties had been paid to Gowon because Britain fully expected that Ojukwu would be assassinated and a coup d’etat perpetrated in the next few weeks. This plot to kill Ojukwu failed, and the war became inconvenient for them but continued for another 18 months.

However, as soon as the Nigerian army took the oil terminal, the British and US oil companies arrived behind them building new oil installations as fast as they could while war was still raging a few kilometres away.

The Gowon regime represented by proxy the interests of Britain, the US and Muslim countries including Egypt whose pilots flew the Ilyushin jets provided by the USSR. The important imperialist interests at work were those of the oil companies owned by the British, Americans and French and backed by their respective governments in the way they lined up for and against Biafra.

The British Labour Prime Minister Wilson declared his support for Gowon against Biafra. Government spokesmen publicly announced in both Houses of Parliament that no military aid was going to Nigeria and that Britain’s stance was entirely neutral. Eventually, the truth came out – not only was Wilson totally supportive of Gowon’s regime, but Britain was totally up to its neck in supplying arms, personnel and support for the war against Biafra and had been in the forefront from the beginning.

Shell/BP was the biggest exploiter of Nigerian oil. This Anglo-Dutch consortium held the major concessions for oil in both the Biafran and Niger delta region where oil had more recently begun to be pumped. When Biafra was blockaded all oil ceased to flow – because the oil from outside of Biafra, from the Niger Delta’ was conveyed to Port Harcourt, now in Biafra, via a large pipeline. The US companies were also exploiting Nigerian oil but their interests were mainly in the Niger Delta region.

As to France, since all oil concessions in the Biafran region were not yet taken by super imperialists, they had been planning to expand their own concession already operating in Biafra in the name of the state-owned company ELF. Because of that they were in direct rivalry with Shell/BP and hope to gain something at their expense.

The President of France, General Charles De Gaulle kept his options open. Though he never formally recognized Biafra, he did support Biafra’s "right to self-determination" and gave aid through France’s colonized states like Ivory Coast, Cameroon and Gabon. Biafra also got support from South Africa, and Israel.

In 1970, after the genocide, a series of peace talks were held and a settlement was reached and Gowon made his famous speech that there were no victors, no vanquish in this war.
Of course, this was true. Both sides had suffered severe losses and part of the country had been devastated. But there was one victor not only in Biafraland but, also in the whole world. Imperialism had established a number of new oil terminals and ensured the stability of its oil profits thanks to Gowon.

The "unity" of Nigeria in reality disappeared because of the mistrust built up during the war and the atrocities perpetrated against Biafrans by Gowon and his imperialist backers.

Double standards

Forty-one years after Gowon committed war crimes against the children of Biafra, he is allowed to move freely both in Nigeria and overseas just because he worked for capitalists at the expense of the blood of his people. The world was happy watching the first genocide committed by Gowon and his allies, in Nsukka, Enugu, Onitsha, Asaba, Agbor, Okigwe, Owerri, Aba, Umuahia, Afikpo, Calabar, Ogoja, Awka, Abagana, Awgu,etc.

Augustus Pinochet of Chile, Saddam Hussein of Iraq, Milosevic of former Yugoslavia,
Charles Taylor former President of Liberia, the warlords in the Rwandan genocide, former rebel leader of Sierra Leone, Foday Sonko, were arrested to face trial for war crimes and crimes against humanity. A French court is even calling for the arrest of Paul Kagame, the President of Rwanda, to bring him to trial.

The world is getting legalized, so why is it that no court of law has bothered to call Gowon for questioning 41 years after the Biafran genocide? Is it because Gowon gave Nigerian resources to capitalism at the exchange of the Biafran Blood? Is Gowon above the law as an agent to the capitalist baboons? Were the lives of Biafran children massacred during the genocide of low quality compared to the life of Gowon and his capitalists backers? The money that was to pay Biafrans by the capitalists oil companies was paid to Gowon. And where is the money today ? No accountability from Gowon’s regime.

If 41 years of Biafran massacres, Gowon and his cronies have not faced trial, they should know that Ojukwu’s reason to defend Biafra was to fight against imperialism which he underestimated before declaring the republic of Biafra.

Capitalism is causing a hydra-headed menace in Biafraland and the Niger delta. Every ethnic leader in the southern Nigeria who has been arrested for their role in demanding their regional autonomy has been released by the Nigerian authorities except the MOSOB leader Chief Ralph Uwazuruike who is still languishing in prison. And he has been incarcerated for his believe in the actualization of Biafra.

I implore Biafrans, Nigerians, Africans and the world at large to learn how to use political dialogue in resolving conflicts and avoid war. Every war fought in the world is at the advantage of capitalism.

The Nigerian-Biafran war, Rwandan genocide, Liberia war, Sierra Leone war, Democratic Republic of Congo war, Ivory Coast war, Uganda war, Eritrea-Ethiopia war, Darfur conflict, Angola war, Iraqi war, Palestinian-Israeli war, Afghanistan war, India-Pakistan war, Somali war, Zimbabwe conflict, Senegal-Cassamace war, Guinea Bissau war, Chechnya- Russia war. All wars to the advantage of capitalism. Beware and be warn.

Do not say that you did not know or hear about socialism and what we do. The choice is yours. Enough is enough. We must work together irrespective of our tribe, race or religion and join hands and cast capitalism and imperialism to burn in the abyss of everlasting fire

Comrade Cebiloan HYACINT
FRANCE
cebiloanhyacint@hotmail.com

Nigerian Poverty in the midst of wealth

Over 70 million Nigerians are living below poverty level disclosed Dr Otive Igbuzor, Country Director of ActionAid .

Nigeria, he added, remains one of the 20 countries with the widest disparity between the rich and the poor, stressing that most of the nation's wealth is in the hands of a few powerful individuals while the majority wallow in abject poverty.

Also reported is that about 529,000 women die annually globally, while Nigeria contributes 1.7 percent of the global population yet it accounts for 10 percent of maternal deaths annually. Nigeria is said to be the second highest, next to India, with an unimaginable rate of maternal and infant death in the whole world.

About 396 infants out of every 1000 live births in the north eastern Nigeria die by the age of five in the region comprising Borno, Adamawa, Taraba, Bauchi, Gombe and Yobe States, a study has shown.

More than US$400 billion was stolen from the treasury by Nigeria's leaders between 1970 and 1999, according to the country's financial crimes agency. With reserves of 35 billion barrels, Nigeria accounts for 60 percent of proven oil reserves in the Gulf of Guinea . Nigeria is one of the top five suppliers of U.S. oil imports and is emerging as an important liquefied natural gas supplier for Europe and North America. Rising Asian economies such as China and India are now seeking an interest in the region.

But strapped for cash to meet its joint venture obligations for deep water exploration in the Gulf of Guinea in the 1990s, Nigeria entered into special contracts that allowed the oil majors to invest their capital and recoup their own costs before sharing profits with the government.There has been massive finds such as Shell's Bonga field, Chevron's Agbami and Total's Amenan — each with the potential to yield more than 1 billion barrels.The Nigerian government has yet to see revenue from these offshore oil fields, and wants to review the agreements.

Will Nigeria end the paradox of the energy-rich country wracked by fuel and power shortages ?

Will Nigeria tackle the poverty of its citizens ?

Socialist Banner thinks not .

Direct Action in Nigeria

The average Nigerian still survives on less than $2 a day, despite the country's $20 billion rise in oil exports to the United States over the past five years. This report reveals how the ordinary Nigerian endeavours to resist

The oil-pipeline fire burned strong for 45 days and 45 nights . It wasn't that no one could put the fire out. It was that no one would — not the oil company that owned the pipeline, not the government and not the villagers . Kegbara Dere villagers saw the fire less as an environmental crisis than as a negotiating tool — risking their health, land and even lives to grab their bit of the spoils from the multinational oil companies that rule the region. In the case of Kegbara Dere, it was village youths who confessed to sabotaging the line, and it was village leaders who refused to let the fire be extinguished without a payout. It takes planning and serious tools to sabotage an oil pipeline. Shell's Trans-Niger line is six feet below ground, with walls more than a quarter-inch thick.
The story of the latest fire in Kegbara Dere goes back to early May, when Komene and 39 other young men closed off pipe valves for six days to extract money from Shell. The closure cut output by about 170,000 barrels a day. The pressure from the stopped-up pipes was so intense that the ground shook. The rest of the village banded together to reopen the valves. Shell, in its turn, invited the youth involved to a training session on environmental cleanup in a fancy hotel. They expected lucrative cleanup contracts to follow. None did. So the young men, calling themselves "Militant/Commando 2000," sent a letter to Shell in early June warning "the situation would be bad" if the company failed to give them contracts. When no contracts came, the fire started.

"They promise that they are going to give us some contracts. They have not paid anything,"

Shell paid the village youth 100,000 naira ($800) to let the cleaners in. The men came with five big trucks to wrestle down the fire and suffocate the life out of it with spray. Finally the fire was snuffed out as the people watched.

Such fires are common — Royal Dutch Shell said it was hit by more than 16 fires in Nigeria between August 2006 and June 2007. At least six of those fires were on the Trans-Niger pipeline, which runs underneath Kegbara Dere.

Chevron Oil faces the court for massacres

Chevron Nigeria Ltd is to stand trial later this year in the United States for the alleged murder of villagers in the Niger Delta region in two separate incidents in 1998 and 1999. The United States (US) District Court Judge in San Francisco, Susan Illston, ruled that Chevron was directly involved in the alleged attacks by acting in consonance with Nigerian government security forces, paving the way for a trial which the company had made attempts to avoid for eight years. The plaintiffs assert claims ranging from torture to wrongful death.

Judge Illston "found evidence that CNL [Chevron Nigeria Limited] personnel were directly involved in the attacks; CNL transported the GSF [Nigerian government security forces], CNL paid the GSF; and CNL knew that GSF were prone to use excessive force."

The report alleged that the crime occurred when the Nigerian Military and Police were paid by Chevron to shoot and torture protesters opposed to the company's activities in the troubled region. Chevron helicopters and boats were used by the security forces, resulting in torture and wrongful death, it further alleged. The said evidence, the Judge said, will allow a jury to find that Chevron knew the attacks would happen and supported the military's plan.

The plaintiffs' counsel Theresa Traber, partner at Traber & Voorhees, said :-

"Chevron conspired with and paid the notorious Nigerian military to attack our clients and their loved ones, murdering at least seven people, torturing others and burning two villages to the ground. The court correctly refused to let narrow legalistic excuses allow Chevron to escape responsibility for these brutal attacks."

The Legal Director of EarthsRights International stated :-

"Chevron has very expensive legal counsel, there's no doubt about that. But they've been trying for eight years now to dismiss this case and they failed. So their expensive lawyers so far have not been able to get them off, to avoid accountability for their action and at this point it's going to be a jury that decides Chevron's faith. And all of Chevron's money and power won't necessarily have much impact on a jury."

Fela Kuti - Voice for all Times

from the BBC we have the lyrics from the songs of Fela Anikulapo Kuti which are well worth copying here .

Title: INTERNATIONAL THIEF THIEF (ITT) Written: 1979

... Many foreign companies dey Africa carry all our money go
Say am, say am [after each line]
Many foreign companies dey Africa carry all our money go
Dem go write big English for newspaper, dabaru [deceive] we Africans
Dem go write big English for newspaper, dabaru we Africans
I read about one of them inside book like that -
Them call him name na I.T.T
I read about one of them inside book like that -
Them call him name na ITT

Them go dey cause confusion
CONFUSION
Cause corruption
CORRUPTION
Cause oppression
OPPRESSION
Cause inflation
INFLATION
Oppression, Oppression, Inflation, Corruption, Oppression, Inflation

Dem get one style wey dem dey use
Dem go pick one African manA man with low mentality
Them go give am million naira [Nigerian currency] breads
To become of high position here
Him go bribe some thousand naira bread
To become one useless chief
Like rat dey do Dem go dey do from
Corner corner pass-ee, pass-ee
Under, under pass-ee, pass-eeInside-ee,
Inside-ee pass-ee, pass-eeIn-ee, in-ee, pass-ee, pass-ee
Out-ee, out-ee, pass-ee, pass-ee
Peep-peep, peep-peep, pass-ee pass-ee...

Then and now: In International Thief Thief Fela uses the abbreviation of International Telephone & Telegraph (IT&T) to take on big multinational corporations he accuses of draining Africa's resources by deviously setting Africans against one another. He criticises their African collaborators for selling out. The violence in Nigeria's Niger Delta is often attributed to the activities of Western multinational oil companies operating in the area. Although the bulk of Nigeria's oil wealth comes from the Niger Delta, the region remains heavily impoverished. The people of the area blame the oil companies and their government officials for the poverty in the region and have taken up arms to demand 'justice'.

Title: COFFIN FOR HEAD OF STATE Written: 1981

... Anywhere the Muslims dem dey reign
Na senior Al-haji na 'im be director
Anywhere the Christians dem dey reign
Na the best friend to Bishop na 'im be director
Look Obasanjo,
Before anything you know at all,
He go dey shout Oh Lord, Oh Lord, Oh Lord, Oh mighty Lord, Oh Lord, Oh God
And den dey do bad-bad-bad-bad-bad-bad-bad-bad-bad-bad-bad things
Through Jesus Christ our Lord
I say look Yar'Adua
I say look Yar'Adua
Before anything you know at all
He go dey shout Haba Allah, haba Allah, haba Allah, haba Allah, haba Allah
And den dey do bad-bad-bad-bad-bad-bad-bad-bad-bad-bad-bad things
Through Mohammed our Lord

Then and now: Coffin for Head of State criticises hypocritical leaders who hide behind their religions to commit atrocities against the people they lead. Fela recalls the 1979 attack on his compound by soldiers acting on the orders of former President Olusegun Obasanjo who was military head of state at the time. Shehu Yar'Adua, elder brother of the current Nigerian president, Umaru Yar'Adua, was Mr Obasanjo's deputy. Fela's mother, a government worker, died in the attack and the singer and his Movement of the People group carried her mock coffin to Dodan Barracks, Lagos - seat of the military government - and left it at the gates. Although Fela did this song almost 30 years ago, some of the same people who were in government then are still in charge of affairs in Nigeria today. But military rule ended with Mr Obasanjo's election in 1999 as Nigeria's first democratically elected president after about 15 years of unbroken military rule. Mr Yar'Adua succeeded him in May.

Title: ORIGINAL SUFFERHEAD Written: 1981

... Plenty, plenty water for Africa
Na so-so water in Africa
Water underground, water in the air
Na so-so water in Africa
Water for man to drink nko O [so what]

E-no dey e dey?

Plenty, plenty light for Africa
Na so-so energy for Africa
Na the big-big men dey get electric
If them no get electric dem go
If they no get electricity
Get plant O
Ordinary light for man nko O

E-no dey e dey?

Plenty, plenty food for Africa
Food under-ground,
Food on the ground
Na so-so plenty food for Africa
Ordinary food for man for chop [eat] nko O

E-no dey e dey?

House matter na different matter
Those wey dey for London dem
Those wey dey New York dem
They leave dey like kings
We wey dey for Africa
We dey live like servants
United Nations dem come
Get name for us
Dem go call us underdeveloped nation
We must be underdeveloped
To dey stay ten-ten in one room O
First and second dey
Dem go call us Third World
We must dey craze for head
To dey sleep inside dustbin
Dem go call us none-aligned nations
We must dey craze for head
To dey sleep under bridge O

Then and now: When Fela composed Original Sufferhead in the 1980s, infrastructure and social services were in a very poor state in Nigeria. Today, the situation is much worse despite increased earnings from oil. Corruption and mismanagement remain serious challenges despite ongoing efforts to tackle them. But many Nigerians believe that the country's return to democracy in 1999 has brought with it increased hope that things would ultimately change for the better.

Nigerian Status and Class

The BBC reports on the class divisions and stratifications in Nigeria . To be addressed as a Mr, Mrs or Ms in Nigerian social circles means you are a nobody. To be a mover or shaker you need to be a chief . To be a traditional chief is like being a small god - it is seen as the peak of one's achievement in life. A chief should be someone who is well-to-do financially and intellectually and has contributed substantially to the development of the community.

But no longer.

Honorary titles can often be bought by giving a donation of about $10,000 to one's home area.
The moment somebody is financially buoyant the next thing is to be chief because he has more money.
Many people use their titles for political gain. In Nigerian politicians don't sell party programmes, they sell people . It is the face , not the case .

"Chieftaincy titles have practically been bastardised these days," said Financial manager Reginald Ibe, a chief of the Igbo people in the south-east "Now you even have armed robbers, corrupt politicians and all sorts of people being chiefs,"

Former President Olusegun Obasanjo was made chief shortly after he first stepped down from power when he was the military head of state in 1979. President Umaru Yar'Adua holds the title Matawalin Katsina - "custodian of wealth of Katsina" - given to him by the Emir of Katsina when he was governor.

"Most of the people who seem to be crazy about titles are making up for some deficiencies or some inadequacies," claims Alhaji Abbu Mohammed from northern Borno State, the Yerima Kida of Biu Emirate, which literally means he is prince of the Kida area.