Legendary Nigerian Writer Wole Soyinka on Oil in the Niger Delta, the Effect of Iraq on Africa and His New Memoir
…AMY GOODMAN: And the Niger Delta, we talked about it in our first part of the interview, but the level of militancy, the anger at the oil companies coming into the Niger Delta, this organization called MEND, Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta, can you tell us who they are?
WOLE SOYINKA: They’re very young, mostly, very highly motivated people who, however, have links with some of the elders, the progressive elders in the region, in Bayelsa, for instance, in Ijaw region, many belong to the Ijaw ethnic group, and from all indications, they’re very articulate. The ones whom IÕve spoken to asked me to intervene in a number of ways in Nigeria, very articulate, and at the same time, they’re reluctant rebels. Take, for instance, an email which one of them sent to me, said, ÒProf, listen. We are people who would rather be with our families raising our children, sending them to school. WeÕre not happy sort of carrying out operations in the creeks. We want to be home. We want all this to be over so we can return to our families, but what future do our children have? There are no schools, there are no clinics. All the wealth in this region is going to Abuja, is going to sustain the rest of the nation, so it’s about time that we took a stand. We want you to understand this.Ó This is the kind of language which they use. It’s not bravado; itÕs not crude, thuggish kind of people, at least the ones whom IÕve spoken to.
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Militants reject Niger Delta help
Nigerian militants in the southern Delta region have rejected plans announced by President Olusegun Obasanjo to develop their region.
The Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta also renewed its threat to continue oil installation attacks.
It said the offer of thousands more jobs and a new motorway did not address their demands for more local control of oil wealth and demilitarisation.
Mend have kidnapped foreign oil workers and warned them to leave the Delta.
In a statement, Mend said the government was trying to remedy 50 years of injustice with the promise of menial jobs.
“We do not need any further mismanagement of the fast diminishing resources of our land by the award of bogus contracts intended to channel the wealth of the Niger Delta back to the hands of those who have looted … all these years,” it said.