Within a 10km radius in the Onne, a popular oil port in the troubled Niger Delta oil rich region of Southern Nigeria, is the Petrochemical Industries, the refineries and the biggest fertilizer plant south of Sahara,Benebule, a fisherman lived in Onne and has never seen a night fall in all of his 30 years on earth .It is daylight all around him 24/7.
Gases are flared off from the oil wells abutting his village.
This is not about gas flaring, pipelines crisscrosses nook and crannies of the creek, where he made fishing his trade albeit polluted streams and degraded earth.
I wont take on a mammoth like Shell or Chevron Texaco, you may ask the widow of Ken Saro-Wiwa, the late environmentalist and writer who was judicially murdered in 1995, for standing up to the government and her collaborators in the oil game.
Regarding those pipelines, they bring oil as far as Kaduna some 1000km up North in Nigeria, Lagos and other Nigeria major cities are served by these thousands of kilometers of oil pipelines.
The designs are that all reaches of the republic should have oil at the next gas sation, right.
Wrong.
The pipelines are dilapidated, poorly maintained (for a sector that is so obviously profitable. it is almost criminal, the level of neglect) although monies are allocated each year, powerful cabals with ties to authorities vandalize the pipelines with armed escorts and siphoned off oil to be sold in bourses of black markets all over Nigeria and beyond.
That may have been alright ,since corruption and sharp practices are taken in these shores, but the vandals never properly fixes the pipelines after taking their fill, they leave it leaking and the hapless citizens ,for whom time have stood still for a thousand years, the artisan who makes $30:00 a month with 10 children as dependants, moped rider known locally as ”okada riders” who makes about $50:00 per month ,a lucrative employ after deducting rebates to policemen ,highway officials ,the local council, Vehicle Inspection Officers ,name it and an army of unemployed citizens coupled with an ever present fuel crises. Nigerians like other citizens the world over likes to make the odd fast buck, he pilfers from the leaking pipelines.
Through the grapevines, another pipeline has broken, come one come all and siphon oil, women abandon their wares in the markets square, commercial drivers double parked their vehicles on the highway, pastors abandon their flocks and seers stopped seeing for a while, they are all going to take from the national cake as oil and related matters are known in Nigeria.
They make brisk business selling petrol from jerry cans, open bowls, bottled water bottles, empty jars of salad cream, buckets and even polythene nylons (yes….) ,they will make enough in one hour ,what they wont make in a month selling on the highway to motorists ,who cant get fuel to buy at the gas stations.
Nigeria is the fifth largest producer in OPEC.
The temptation is too great, they will take their chances, after all it is a nation of risk takers, our number one risk taker is the average Nigerian leader, possibly a coup plotter now made good.
It is not rocket science to know that someone somewhere among the hopeless multitude will strike a match or light a cigarette, the result is a conflagration of atomic proportions (pun intended).
Charred bodies, women with kids on their back burnt to death, those at the epicenter of the conflagration will never have the honour of even their ashes buried by their loved ones, take a gander to the picture of the charred corpse, people are so unconcerned, they could have been at the beach watching beach volley ball, life is cheap here .
The masses have been so traumatized by the neglect and looting of their country by their leaders, that they have lost their inate humanity.
They are too busy looking for the next meal.
This piece hasn’t been concluded ,you can help conclude it.
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