This is the closest I got to the Niger Delta during my stay in Nigeria. On the road to Enugu we crossed the Niger River, although we were still a couple hundred kilometers upstream of the Delta.
When Nigeria makes the news in the West it’s often because of the violence in the Niger River Delta. Last night CNN World News reported from nowhere else but Lagos, and the story was about this very topic.
The report covered the most recent attack on oil production in the Niger Delta. On Monday, militants struck a Shell Petroleum pipeline, halting production of 130,000 barrels of crude oil per day. Since I arrived in Nigeria in June, several such attacks have occurred. The most notable among them was against an offshore drilling station, the first attack on an offshore facility in the history of Nigeria.
The facts of oil in Nigeria are compelling. Nigeria is the world’s sixth largest producer of oil. It was the 5th largest oil producer until recently, when militants' attacks forced oil companies to shut down significant portions of their production. The Nigerian press reported today that for the first time in recent history, oil production has fallen below 1 million barrels per day, while Nigeria has the capacity to produce 3.2 million barrels per day.
From oil production Nigeria receives billions of dollars in revenue per year. The exact amount of revenue is difficult to calculate, but it’s at least $5 billion, according to the CEO of Shell Nigeria (he addressed our SIPA study tour when we came to Nigeria in January). A Nigerian friend told me that the number is likely closer to $20 billion.
Niger Delta Militants are motivated to attack oil production facilities because of the squalor in which Delta residents live, while multinational oil companies use state-of-the-art technology to extract millions of dollars worth of crude oil per day. Militants in the Niger Delta are organized into groups such as Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta (MEND), who carried out Monday’s attack.
In a statement issued Monday, MEND traced blame for Delta residents’ poverty to the British who employed “divide and rule tactics” during colonial times, favoring Nigerians in other parts of the country and forcing poverty upon Nigerians in the Delta. MEND made specific reference to the July G8 summit in which Gordon Brown offered aid to the Nigerian military to fight militants in the Delta. Through this, MEND claimed, Britain would help the Nigerian military “further the violation of [Delta residents’] human rights.”
According to Nigerians, the situation is more complex than the clear-cut, developed-world-versus-developing-world conflict ones sees at face value. Just as culpable as the oil companies is the Nigerian government, some Nigerians say. The federal government directs significant amounts of funding to develop the Delta region, but governors of Niger Delta states siphon federal funds to their own coffers, building elaborate homes in Nigeria and abroad. The federal government created the Niger Delta Development Commission to see that federal funds reach their intended target, but the effect of such commissions remains to be seen.
One Nigerian explained to me that when projects are planned for the Delta—when the government allocates funds for a school, for example—Delta bureaucrats from the top down require a cut of the funds. In the end, funding for projects is so depleted that projects become ineffectual.
Also, Nigerians outside the Niger Delta blame the attitude of Delta residents themselves. Accustomed to corruption and embittered by poverty, Delta residents turn to violence to provoke change. A Nigerian from Lagos who recently visited the Delta region spoke of the unwillingness of Delta residents to do real work when the opportunity arises. “You cannot develop [Delta residents] if they do not want to develop themselves,” she said.
The federal government is continually trying to placate both sides, but the conflict in the Niger Delta is so complex that it is unlikely to be resolved soon. Living in Lagos, I read about the violence in the Niger Delta as if it were happening in another country; it is concentrated in the far South, where the oil companies operate. Were I to live there instead of Lagos, I would certainly have a bodyguard, because any White person in the Delta is assumed to work for an oil company and is thus a target for kidnappers. Because of the relative calm of Lagos, several multinational oil companies have moved their headquarters to Lagos, and several more are following suit.
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I was talking to my co-workers about the Niger Delta as I wrote this. Ayokunnu, our twenty-two year old IT guy, offered his perspective on the conflict in the Delta:
The Niger Deltans sure have some reasons for their agitations. Development in the Niger Delta is low compared to other regions. For instance, it costs sufficiently more to fix a kilometer length of road in the Niger Delta than it would cost in other parts of the nation, because of different land topography and socio economic concerns. This definitely makes a case for increased funding for the Niger Delta.
Niger Deltans want the chicken that lays the eggs to be well taken care of. This explains the agitation for increased derivation fund for the region. The truth is that government needs to do some more for the Niger Deltans. A visit to this region will reveal deep seated injustices against the people – socio amenities are grossly below required numbers.
As strong as this argument may be, the question that readily comes to mind wants to probe the rationale behind the criminality employed by the Niger Deltans. Taking up arms against the nation will at best bring cases of sedition and crime against the nation state. The only plausible thing is for dialogue and this is another problem in its own right. Niger Deltans are tired of talking, as many instances of such discuss have failed in the end. Government must demonstrate renewed commitment to implement whatever comes out of such national engagements.
Finally, these issues are multi-faceted. The blames must be dropped, enough is enough. We must begin to explore all options to resolving the issues that make Niger Delta so tick and troublesome.
English is the lingua franca in Nigeria, but that doesn’t necessarily make it easy for me to communicate with Nigerians. Sometimes I have a clear understanding of what someone says to me; sometimes it takes me a few tries to get what they say; and sometimes I have absolutely no idea what they are saying. The same goes for their comprehension of my American English.
The first difference between my English and theirs is the accent. What I hear as their accent comes from the legacy of the British, who first brought English to Nigeria, and Nigerian accents, since most people speak Yoruba, Igbo,or Hausa before English. When I can’t understand what someone is saying, even after they repeat it several times, I ask them to spell it. “Pote Ah Cote" is the city Port Harcourt, in the Niger Delta;“peppay soup” is pepper soup, and “foo-whale” is fuel, as in the substance you put in your car.
Second, Nigerians use some English words differently than we do. My favorite is “sorry.” When someone sneezes, the response is “sorry,” instead of “bless you.” The same goes for when someone trips, drops something, or does anything else by accident. Nigerians mean to express their condolence that something unpleasant happened to you but I hear “sorry” as an apology. I always think, “Why are you apologizing? I sneezed, not you,” and “Why are you apologizing because I fell? Did you trip me?”
Finally, what Nigerians are often speaking is Pidgin English, not English as I know it. Pidgin English sounds like an entirely different language to me. Whenever I want to say something to the cook or nanny or gateman at my house, I bring one of my host siblings to translate between my American English and their Pidgin English. When we try to communicate directly, we just start laughing. Pidgin English has a totally different cadence, accent, and use of vocabulary than American English. For example, “please” is “abeg” and at the market yesterday, our driver asked, “Chicken no dey?” meaning “Is there no chicken here?”
The one thing that has given us endless amusement is the Nigerian equivalent of “uh-huh.” It’s used to confirm what someone is saying, or to question it, depending on the emphasis. It sounds like a loud, often nasal-sounding combination of “uh-huh” and “ah-hah” and it can be hilarious when some people say it! (I know it’s not to sensitive of us to laugh at Nigerian accents, but they get a kick out of our accents too, I know.)
“Oh-ee-boh” is the first word that a non-African visitor learns in Lagos. It means “White person” in Yoruba, the language of the Yoruba people in southwest Nigeria. It often applies not only to Caucasians but also to Chinese, Indians, and everyone else who is not dark-skinned.
We oh-ee-bohs hear “oh-ee-boh!” all the time—from little kids playing on roadsides, from men speeding by on motorbikes, from women cooking yams at lunchtime. After seven weeks in Lagos, I still wonder what motivates people to shout, “White person!” at a White person. Do they want the attention of the White person whose name they don’t know? Do they want to alert others that there is a foreigner around? Do they simply want the pleasure of getting me to react?
I found it just as strange when Moroccans yelled, “Black” at African-American Peace Corps Volunteers. Whenever I was with a Black American, non-Black Moroccans would comment, “Black person,” “Africa,” or whatever else as African-Americans walked by. There as in Nigeria, I didn’t understand why people needed to tell others what color they were.
Being White in Lagos has some advantages, of course. We are often treated with deference (we are obviously someone’s guest), and we have more freedom than Nigerians when entering nice hotels and the like. On Saturday, for example, Chris and I simply sauntered past security at the Eko Hotel, the most exclusive hotel in Lagos, with rooms starting at $500/night, and headed to the bar. All we had to show was our White skin and no questions were asked.
Naturally, being White brings seemingly infinite frustrations. People assume that we are inexperienced travelers, and that we have been coddled all our lives. Whenever we do anything like Nigerians do, they are shocked. “You rode on a motorbike?! You went to the market?! You ate Nigerian food?!” We calmly explain that we have experienced far more exotic conditions than those found in Lagos, and that we were not raised with nannies and cooks and drivers—we can actually do things for ourselves.
Also, showing a White face means that the price of nearly everything is doubled. When it comes to taxis, this is most frustrating because taxi fares are high to begin with. A ride anywhere in the city costs nearly $10 because taxi drivers—and every other person selling us anything—assume that all White people are rich.
And on top of this, it is simply annoying. It’s better than the sexual harassment and political harassment I had to put up with in Morocco, but it’s still trying. Especially now that I am about to leave Lagos, I have little patience for the kids who follow me down the street, telling me I’m White.
Since early in our stay here, we’ve played a game that helps us make fun of the entire phenomenon. When we’re in the car with our driver Daniel, we point out all of the White people we see throughout the city. It’s funny to make a big deal out of White people doing things in Lagos, and it’s also pretty interesting to see what the other Whites are up to. So far, we’ve seen:
· Five oh-ee-bohs in an SUV (they were working for Shell)
· An oh-ee-boh girl and her mother at a shopping mall
· The next day, an oh-ee-boh girl and her father in a car (could it be the same family?)
· An elderly oh-ee-boh man in glasses, jogging
· Two young oh-ee-boh men wearing matching suits
· A family of oh-ee-bohs, including grandparents, their daughter, and their daughter’s child, pushing a stroller
All joking aside, it’s nice to be in a position to teach Nigerians about other cultures. My host mother, a successful banker, told me that when she learned that I was coming to the house, she wondered, “What will a White person eat?” That mentality—that all White people have similar dispositions and preferences—pervades this place, even among people who are very educated and extremely wealthy. My host mother was glad to see that I am a pretty indiscriminate eater who actually enjoys Nigerian food.
Not only have my host siblings learned about White people—that we wear sunscreen so we don’t get sunburned, and that sunburn hurts—but they’ve become politically correct about our skin color as well. My eight-year-old sister Timmy tells me that she’s not Black, she’s chocolate-colored, and that I’m not White, I’m cream-colored.
Yesterday the cook, Iyabo, asked me a question in her most proper English possible (we usually need someone to translate between her pidgin English and my American English), and Timmy laughed at Iyabo’s accent. “Why are you laughing?” I asked Timmy. “Iyabo spoke to you differently because you are cream-colored,” Timmy said. I laughed out loud because being called cream-colored by an eight-year old was pretty funny too.
Below is a picture of some of our admirers in Enugu. Can you count how many eyes are looking at my camera? Most adults had turned away when I brought it out, but the kids kept staring. We were perhaps the first White people they had ever seen.
It is the middle of rainy season in Nigeria. Rainy season, which starts in April and ends in November, means that the temperatures are milder and it rains regularly. When I first arrived here, it rained every day or every two days. We had a weeklong reprieve before the rain started again last week.
The rain can be a blessing and a curse. It’s nice to sleep while it rains, and it can clear smoke and pollution from the air. However, rain makes the air more humid, so after a rainfall the smoke and pollution linger and turn the air yellowish-brown.
In such a damp environment, mold and mildew flourish so people with allergies (ahem!) can be miserable. Things stay damp in general—clothes gather a musty smell and they aren’t fully dry before you wear them, and papers curl in the humidity.
The rain does not necessarily cause traffic hold-ups. If the rain is really bad, only the most intrepid venture out, so the roads are relatively clear. However, the rain causes bad flooding and when cars eventually appear, traffic gets really bad.
One of the pictures above is from the drive to work last Monday morning, after it had rained all night. The other was taken a few weeks ago from our office window.
Unfortunately, the Nigerian entrepreneurial spirit is often used for wrongdoing. Nigerians are known the world over for their creative business scams, frequently done over the Internet. An article published Tuesday on BBC.com described a recent scam: Nigerian conmen posed as scouts for European football clubs, contacted young African football players via email, asked them for a $500 fee to try out for their clubs, and then ran with their money.
Nigerians are keenly aware of how much money can be stolen through internet fraud, and many can tell you about friends who got rich by starting scamming at a young age. A popular Nigerian hip hop song memorializes and satirizes the scam artists, known as “Yahoo boys” or “Yahozees” (“Yahoo” is a general term for the internet). You can check out the "Yahozee" video here.
The song is sung in a mixture of Yoruba and Pidgin English. A Nigerian acquaintance explained some of the lyrics this way:
Ti n ba hammer, first tin na Hummer
If I hit it big (i.e. hammer it), the first thing I’ll buy is a Hummer
One million dollars, elo lo ma je ti n ba se ni naira?
I’ll get one million dollars and exchange it into tons of naira (Nigerian currency)
Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, boys dey hustle eh!
Internet scam artists work hard Monday through Thursday
Friday, Saturday, Sunday! Fbogbo aiye!
On Friday, Saturday, and Sunday they party
Champaigne, Henessy oh eh! For evribody eh!
With enough money to buy champagne and Henessy for everyone
Last night was a night to forget! There were so many mishaps on our drive home that I think we filled our quota for bad-things-that-happen-on-the-road for the rest of the summer.
Yesterday we left the office a little late, around 5:30, and drove to a nearby market so that Chris and Leehe could do some grocery shopping. When we started to head home, our new driver Charles realized that we didn’t have enough gas for the ride.
Charles stopped at a couple of gas stations but none of them gave him gas—the first station couldn’t print a receipt (the driver needed one to give to the office), and the second station said they didn’t have any gas.
We turned onto the highway to head to yet another gas station. Just as we entered the highway, a local bus started to exit the highway. Our car and the bus hit each other and then separated as soon as the hit happened. The damage wasn’t bad—our mirror was knocked off and there is a paint-stained dent at the front of our car—and, more importantly, none of us were hurt. An elderly man hanging from the side of the bus could have been badly injured—he was sandwiched between the bus and the car when we hit—but all he got was a bloody nose.
Both the bus and the car pulled to the side of the highway to sort things out. Because the accident was not the explicit fault of either driver, no one lost their temper. However, the fact was that an elderly man was injured and needed medical attention.
The crowd outside assumed that we White people would have money and want to get the episode taken care of quickly, so they asked us to simply give the man N1500 (about $13) and continue on our way. We decided not to give him cash but to take him to a hospital instead, and have the elderly man and the medical staff negotiate the price of his care.
As we headed to the hospital, however, the man insisted that he would rather have the N1500, that the hospital would charge him too much money, and that we should just drop him off at the side of the road. We concluded that the hospital would be too much trouble, so we finally gave the man N1500 and dropped him off, as he asked.
Our car was dented, the mirror was knocked off, and we still had no gas. So we returned to the office to switch our damaged car for one that had enough gas to get us home. When we set out, it was getting late and the traffic had picked up considerably. By the time we reached Chris and Leehe’s house, we had spent nearly two hours in traffic that moved at a snail’s pace (the drive to their house usually takes less than an hour).
It was finally time for the driver to take me home. As we turned onto the road outside Chris and Leehe’s house, the car simply stalled. A dead battery was the likely culprit. I called Chris and Leehe and told them to meet me on the road so I could walk back to their house.
While I was waiting for them, a woman pulled onto the side of the road to ask if we needed help. It turned out that she lived only a short distance away from where I live, so she drove me home. Or almost home—she didn’t want to take her nice, new car through the pond-sized puddles on the road outside my house (a decision I completely understand), so I took my bags and trudged around the water, finally getting home at about 9:45, over four hours after leaving the office.
While I was enjoying my dinner at home, Chris and Leehe and Charles pushed the dead car back to Chris and Leehe’s house, and Charles spent the night with them. He was really grateful for their hospitality and for the chance to chill out after the ride.
This morning, another driver from FATE Foundation came to check out the car. He realized that the battery was not dead after all, and that it was a simple security switch that Charles needed to press to make the car work again. He must have been frazzled from the accident earlier that night and forgotten how to work the switch.
Chris and Leehe and I have yet another story to tell once we return to New York...