Daily Business Guide (Ghana
6 June 2011
The first oil well discovered in Niger Delta in Nigeria
We were living in peace before the oil companies came. We were sharing our forests with animals, but when they came, they started setting one community against the other and before we knew it, they started killing our people,” Chief Joseph Efanya of Uruma, a community in Niger Delta, told CITY & BUSINESS GUIDE recently in an interview.
Although the afore-mentioned observation was made with respect to Uruma, the statement holds true for virtually all the Niger Delta communities, where oil is being extracted by transnational companies and their local counterparts and collaborators.
CITY & BUSINESS GUIDE’S visit to some communities in the oil producing region, which were peaceful prior to the commencement of oil extraction activities, revealed the devastation in the area as a result of oil wars. Every community has its own string of pathetic stories to tell from violence occasioned by accumulated anger due to decades of neglect; exclusion from the benefits that accrue from the oil being mined under their soil, the devastation of their environment, as well as divide and rule strategy, among others.
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