Commentary on Niger Delta's Women Protest

Commentary on Niger Delta's Women Protest
Daphne Wysham
Minnesota Public Radio's Marketplace 25 July 2002

Since the 1970s, oil companies operating in Nigeria-together with their allies in the Nigerian military-have set business policy in the oil rich Niger Delta. Today women, some with babies strapped to their backs, others as old as 80, have taken over the flow stations. No one's touching them. Here's why:

In the past, when Nigerians protested oil companies taking their oil with nothing in return, they were beaten, tortured, and killed. So today the women of the Niger Delta are using a novel technique: they are about to disrobe.

This threat of public nudity is a traditional form of shaming and a powerful weapon. It's done what nothing else could to bring Chevron's oil operations in the Nigerian port of Escravos to a standstill.

Escravos's name means slave in Portuguese. Once, this port supplied slaves to the west. Today, it supplies oil. And oil has enslaved the local people in no less a devastating way. The oil-rich Niger Delta has suffered ten times the quantity of our Exxon Valdez oil spill-with no cleanup. Chevron and other foreign companies have provided neither jobs nor compensation in return.

But even slaves recognize their own condition. The Delta women demand that we face the human cost. Their children stand with distended bellies, protein deficiencies wracking their small frames. The few fish that survive in these waters taste of crude oil. Young, unschooled girls from as far away as Benin chase after the oil men, hoping for a lucrative one-night stand. And it's only getting worse. Post-9/11, as we drive more gas-guzzling SUVs and worry about terrorists turning off the Middle Eastern oil tap, we're pumping more oil out of impoverished countries like Nigeria. By 2015, West Africa is expected to supply a quarter of America's oil imports.

The question is, what's more important: Our right to drive SUVs? Or the right of the people of the Niger Delta to determine their future? Right now, we're voting with our feet by pushing on our accelerators. But the women of the Niger Delta, with determined, naked strength, stand ready to shame us all.

In Washington, this is Daphne Wysham for Marketplace.