CAMPBELL: It’s a village funeral and the gang’s in town. The motorcycle boys belong to an outlaw militia called the Niger Delta People’s Volunteer Force. It’s one of many gangs waging a violent battle for a slice of the region’s oil wealth. Their leader has threatened to take the fight all the way to the capital, Abuja.
ASARI: We own the oil! The thieves are the people in Abuja. Not the other way round. A thief cannot come into my house, take my property, sit down, because he is strong, and then turn back to say, oh, this is the actual thief. So that is it.
CAMPBELL: His gang has come to the village of Ogdagiri to pay their respects. The boat-shaped coffin contains a villager killed in their recent battle with the Nigerian Army. It’s supposed to be a time of peace and they’ve supposed to have disarmed but they’ve brought assault rifles, handguns and machetes, mixed with a heavy dose of drugs and alcohol. In villages across the Niger Delta, this is the brutal legacy of an oil industry that was supposed to save the nation.
But for young men of the Niger Delta, it’s fuelled commonality, gangs and now armed rebellion. It’s a conflict that threatens to tear the nation apart and send the global price of oil soaring. Welcome to Nigeria’s oil war.
The Niger Delta is a vast region of creeks and rivers holding an estimated 3% of the world’s oil. It’s been described as America’s reserve fuel tank, an escape valve to its dependence on Middle East Oil. The huge exports of enriched politicians and western oil companies. But they’ve brought little but misery to Nigerian people. Even in the oil capital Port Harcourt, the headquarters of the western oil firms, most live in absolute poverty on less than a dollar a day.
Reverend Lekia Gbosi ministers to some of its poorest residents.
REVEREND GBOSI: We don’t understand the oil concept because we don’t feel the impact of the oil. We are in the oil city, they call Port Harcourt the oil city. Well look at... look at the oil city, where the oil company just there... and look at the places just behind there. No electricity, no water – just nothing.
CAMPBELL: His community is a shantytown next to the Italian oil company AGIP. Since February, the authorities have been demolishing the town, clearing a new access road to a luxury housing estate adjacent to the slums.
REVEREND GBOSI: We see people without homes, without any place to stay, that is where they are camping. They put this their waterproof down.... and then sleeping on it at night.
CAMPBELL: Unemployed youths have found one way to share the oil wealth, crime. Dozens of gangs in Port Harcourt extort money from small businesses, steal crude oil from pipelines, even charge protection money from oil companies. What started as a criminal phenomenon is turning political.
Al Haji Asari Dokubo is dismissed by many as an oil thief and common gangster but he’s turned his so-called volunteer force into a self-styled liberation army.
ASARI: [To crowd] These are relics that we use in the [INAUDIBLE] of our land and we’re not ashamed of ourself. Our fathers fought with this.
CAMPBELL: An Islamic convert and professed admirer of Osama bin Laden, he’s demanding the oil be given back to the people.
ASARI: The message the Nigerian State will understand is the message of power. The message of the people on the street and the creeks that will take over our oil installations, that will take over our pipelines. That is the message the Nigerian state will understand. That is the message - we can’t compromise. And Shell will understand.
CAMPBELL: Asari has already shown that he can attack the oil companies where it hurts. Their installations are scattered through isolated creeks and rivers where resentment of the oil industry runs deep. Asari took us to a flow station that use to be a major junction for oil supplies.
ASARI: Like all of the flow stations, it belonged to Shell but we sacked it and turned it to this way, like this. So this is an example of how we’ll turn all the flow stations into when the time comes.
CAMPBELL: Is it very hard to shut these facilities down?
ASARI: [Laughing] It’s very easy. Most of our people had worked in the oil installations before.
CAMPBELL: The Niger Delta has long been a centre of oil violence with disparate ethnic groups fighting for resource control but organised political violence is a new development. Ten years ago the leader of the large Ogoni community, Ken Sara-Wiwa led a peaceful campaign against the Shell oil company. The former dictator, Sani Abacha, hanged him on trumped up charges.
Sara-Wiwa’s successor, a human rights lawyer named Ledum Mittee, continues to preach a message of peaceful resistance.
LEDUM MITTEE: [At meeting] As a movement committed to non-violence, we’re open to dialogue provided it’s a genuine, transparent and honest.
CAMPBELL: But he admits young Nigerians are now more attracted to violence.
LEDUM MITTEE: Asari and many of us are saying today that this is a natural successor to what Ken said because they tried the non violent option and no one listened to them. In fact they were killed. Before they are killed they should be able to kill somebody so why should they take the non-violent process?
CAMPBELL: The root cause of the anger is the same as it always was, the belief that oil companies have polluted their land while corrupt politicians have reaped the benefit. Ledum’s village is surrounded by oil spills some caused by sabotage, some by accident, some by Shell’s aging infrastructure.
LEDUM MITTEE: The crude that is there’s trying to push itself up. You can hear the thing is hissing. With time it will develop into a larger spill and sometimes there’ll be an explosion, and in fact fire. At that stage you’ll find out that very large hectares of land will be engulfed with fire - that’s what happens.
CAMPBELL: And you’ve asked Shell to clean this up?
LEDUM MITTEE: Yeah the committee has informed them. I mean this thing has been on for the past, over a year. They have been here to see it happen and they’ve done nothing about it.
CAMPBELL: Shell insists it’s not to blame. Basil Omiyi is the company’s former PR man now promoted to managing director. He says Shell does all it can to help communities where it does business.
BASIL OMIYI: I really do believe they should derive much more than they currently get. Our position on that has been very, very clear and we campaign on that continuously whenever we engage government, that we need to bring development to this region. But it is not our place to determine the political solution to that.
CAMPBELL: The government insists the people are overjoyed with everything it’s done for them. Dr Peter Odili is the governor of Rivers State, the main oil producing centre in the Niger Delta. A former deputy governor under the Abacha regime, he’s now a key ally of the civilian President Olesegun Obasanjo and revels in a stage-managed image of popularity. Today his officials have sent entertainers to celebrate new air links with Europe.
DR PETER ODILI: We thank God and the hard work of all stakeholders and we’re happy that we are looking up and things are going to continue to look up.
CAMPBELL: But the tight security sits oddly with his image as a popular ruler.
LEDUM MITTEE: People have now grown to the situation that they do not even think that government stands for them. The corruption that pervades the whole place starts from the way the contracts are awarded for oil exploitation –it’s not transparent. And then there seems to be some sort of collusion between the oil companies and those who are in power. So in such a situation nothing gets to the people. Instead of the oil becoming a blessing, it now becomes a curse.
CAMPBELL: It takes just a short helicopter ride to see the staggering scale of oil corruption. These barges are openly stealing tens of thousands of barrels of oil every day. The practice is called “bunkering”, criminal gangs tap the oil straight from the pipelines, then transport it offshore tankers bound for neighbouring African states, even European ports. It’s believed as much as 10% of the Delta’s oil output is stolen this way. The government does almost nothing to stop it.
ASARI: The Nigerian Navy is patrolling the Nigerian territorial waters. Where does these tankers come from? These big ships and vessels, where do they come from? The Nigerian Navy did not see them. They’re so tiny. The Nigerian Air Force did not see them. They’re so tiny.
CAMPBELL: Governor Odili denies his administration is involved in bunkering but the Ogoni leader, Ledum Mittee, says police refuse outright to make arrests.
LEDUM MITTEE: I put them in my car, personally drove to where there was bunkering and as I see them, they say no, no take us back. I say you want me to give you statement. See the bunkering going on. You have the evidence. You don’t need me to tell you and that is it.
CAMPBELL: Bunkering is not only made hundreds of millions of dollars for corrupt politicians, it’s also funded Asari’s rebellion. He admits his militia also helped themselves to oil to pay for their weapons.
ASARI: We took the oil and refined it and started selling it. While the government was selling their oil at government refined oil at 43 naira per litre, we were selling our own at 15 naira. So everywhere you go to it was Asari’s oil. Everywhere you go to.
CAMPBELL: The Nigerian authorities have tried hard to reign in Asari’s campaign. Last year he and his men retreated into the jungle after repeated clashes with a rival gang believed to have been armed by the State Government. The Nigerian military joined in, launching strikes on his twenty one jungle camps.
ASARI: So this use to be our office. We had just installed a V-SAT so that we can have uninterrupted internet access. That’s a piece of our computer.
CAMPBELL: That’s the hard drive.
ASARI: Yeah. Original was destroyed…
CAMPBELL: His men held out for nine months, even staging attacks inside the state capital, Port Harcourt.
ASARI: We had widespread support at that time. People were not really to reveal our locations and we were moving up and down.
CAMPBELL: The army’s deadliest attacks were on villages believed to be sheltering Asari. Odagari was bombed in September, two days after he left. Village leaders claim twenty people died. Thirty seven year old Blessed was among a group of women who escaped into the jungle. She says government soldiers hunted them down and raped them.
BLESSED: They used to catch the women, and rape them in the bushes. The soldiers came to kill – they don’t want us to escape. You understand. Soldiers kill. Everyone’s dead from the war. You understand? Even my brother, with the children – dead. It’s only me now.
CAMPBELL: Human rights groups estimate hundreds of civilians were killed in the nine month conflict but it wasn’t the appalling civilian casualties that ended the fighting, it was the threat to oil. In September the rebel leader Al-Haji Asari warned he would attack the installations of foreign oil companies. The threat spooked international markets and within hours the price of oil shot to a record fifty dollars a barrel. Within days the Nigerian Government was calling for a truce.
An agreement was soon reached to pardon Asari and his fighters and to buy back their weapons. The amnesty has left him virtually untouchable. He’s now living in considerable style in a fortified mansion in the centre of Port Harcourt but if it’s an attempt to buy Asari off, it’s not working. He’s threatening to re-arm unless the government grants independence for the Niger Delta and the oil companies leave.
ASARI: Since they have refused to repent, what we are demanding, the minimum demand is Shell, AGIP, Chevron Texaco, Esso Mobil pull out and let us see whether the Nigerian State can sustain our repression and total marginalisation of our people and the management of their own resources.
CAMPBELL: So you want the oil companies to leave this land?
ASARI: Yes they should go. It will be better for all of us.
CAMPBELL: And if they don’t go?
ASARI: If they have a conscience, if they don’t have then they will be part of the, of the of the unfolding crisis. They will start to be involved. Their personnel will be involved. That is the truth. We will not leave them alone.
CAMPBELL: Recent actions by the government and oil companies have only increased support for Asari’s campaign. In March villages neighbouring this Chevron Texaco plant broke down its fence to protest of the company’s operations on their land. Nigerian soldiers based at the plant, opened fire with teargas then bullets. Father Kevin O’Hara, a Catholic priest who investigated the shootings says one protestor was killed and many were seriously injured.
FATHER O’HARA: For a month before that March incident, I had been sending messages to Chevron Texaco telling them that there’s great anger and tension and that this thing is going to explode.
CAMPBELL: After the soldiers opened fire on the crowd, they beat them with rifle butts and held them at gunpoint inside the Chevron Texaco plant. Nigerian soldiers provide security at all the major oil plants, their wages topped up by generous company allowances.
SOLDIER: Let this be the first and the last time…
CAMPBELL: The villages were left in no doubt what the soldiers would do if they protested again.
SOLDIER: If it happens again, nobody will spare you. You are lucky that you were not shot. So make sure nobody lures you back into these premises anymore.
CAMPBELL: The end of Sani Abacha’s dictatorship six years ago has had little affect on the excesses of the military or on the impoverishment of the people.
SOLDIER: Is that clear?
CROWD: Yes sir.
SOLDIER: Is that clear?
CROWD: Yes sir.
SOLDIER: Is that clear?
CROWD: Yes sir.
LEDUM MITTEE: People are getting poorer now as they were maybe five, six years ago and I think it’s a very sad commentary on this situation that people can compare their life now with what we saw in Abacha which we thought which we thought should be the worst that we can ever experience.
CAMPBELL: In reality, the same political gangsters continue to run the Delta. Odili won the 2003 elections with figures that would have made Saddam Hussein blush. His electoral commission reported a 96% majority with some electorates recording a 100% turnout and a 100% vote for the ruling party.
DR PETER ODILI: The government Rivers State is very well trusted by the people of Rivers State. They are confident that we will stand for their interests all the time, we do what is right.
CAMPBELL: So you’re confident those figures are correct? There was no falsification of election results?
DR PETER ODILI: As a politician who’s been on the ground and I’ve had seven elections, I know that you cannot play with figures and numbers if you are not in absolute majority. You can’t. They’ll mob you.
CAMPBELL: Ledum Mittee claims the government used armed gangs to wipe out the opposition.
LEDUM MITTEE: It’s sort of an armed struggle - a low-intensity armed struggle. You need to see from the times of the primaries, people are already shooting guns, people are killing themselves.
CAMPBELL: Belatedly the central government has begun to act. President Obasanjo has set up an anti-corruption commission targeting senior political figures.
PRESIDENT OBASANJO: Our fight against corruption would be meaningless if it is concentrated on the federal tier of government while the States and local governments wallow in corruption.
CAMPBELL: Meanwhile life continues to worsen for the people of the Niger Delta. At the end of our visit to Port Harcourt, the bulldozers and their police escorts moved in to demolish what was left of this shantytown. Pastor Lekia’s church was one of the first buildings to come crashing down, leaving him and the families he’d been sheltering, homeless.
PASTOR LEKIA: The oil boom has turned into the oil doom! Oil boom has turned to the oil doom. What next? What can we do? Look at all of these people. They are counting on me. I have no money. I have nothing.
WOMEN WEEPING: I need help. I need help. Look at my two children -nowhere to stay. So I need help.
CAMPBELL: The children of the oil boom no longer expect help from their governments or the west. It is demagogues like Asari who are winning their trust, promising that blood will win them oil.
ASARI: We own the oil! The thieves are the people in Abuja. Not the other way round. A thief cannot come into my house, take my property, sit down, because he is strong, and then turn back to say, oh, this is the actual thief. So that is it.
CAMPBELL: His gang has come to the village of Ogdagiri to pay their respects. The boat-shaped coffin contains a villager killed in their recent battle with the Nigerian Army. It’s supposed to be a time of peace and they’ve supposed to have disarmed but they’ve brought assault rifles, handguns and machetes, mixed with a heavy dose of drugs and alcohol. In villages across the Niger Delta, this is the brutal legacy of an oil industry that was supposed to save the nation.
But for young men of the Niger Delta, it’s fuelled commonality, gangs and now armed rebellion. It’s a conflict that threatens to tear the nation apart and send the global price of oil soaring. Welcome to Nigeria’s oil war.
The Niger Delta is a vast region of creeks and rivers holding an estimated 3% of the world’s oil. It’s been described as America’s reserve fuel tank, an escape valve to its dependence on Middle East Oil. The huge exports of enriched politicians and western oil companies. But they’ve brought little but misery to Nigerian people. Even in the oil capital Port Harcourt, the headquarters of the western oil firms, most live in absolute poverty on less than a dollar a day.
Reverend Lekia Gbosi ministers to some of its poorest residents.
REVEREND GBOSI: We don’t understand the oil concept because we don’t feel the impact of the oil. We are in the oil city, they call Port Harcourt the oil city. Well look at... look at the oil city, where the oil company just there... and look at the places just behind there. No electricity, no water – just nothing.
CAMPBELL: His community is a shantytown next to the Italian oil company AGIP. Since February, the authorities have been demolishing the town, clearing a new access road to a luxury housing estate adjacent to the slums.
REVEREND GBOSI: We see people without homes, without any place to stay, that is where they are camping. They put this their waterproof down.... and then sleeping on it at night.
CAMPBELL: Unemployed youths have found one way to share the oil wealth, crime. Dozens of gangs in Port Harcourt extort money from small businesses, steal crude oil from pipelines, even charge protection money from oil companies. What started as a criminal phenomenon is turning political.
Al Haji Asari Dokubo is dismissed by many as an oil thief and common gangster but he’s turned his so-called volunteer force into a self-styled liberation army.
ASARI: [To crowd] These are relics that we use in the [INAUDIBLE] of our land and we’re not ashamed of ourself. Our fathers fought with this.
CAMPBELL: An Islamic convert and professed admirer of Osama bin Laden, he’s demanding the oil be given back to the people.
ASARI: The message the Nigerian State will understand is the message of power. The message of the people on the street and the creeks that will take over our oil installations, that will take over our pipelines. That is the message the Nigerian state will understand. That is the message - we can’t compromise. And Shell will understand.
CAMPBELL: Asari has already shown that he can attack the oil companies where it hurts. Their installations are scattered through isolated creeks and rivers where resentment of the oil industry runs deep. Asari took us to a flow station that use to be a major junction for oil supplies.
ASARI: Like all of the flow stations, it belonged to Shell but we sacked it and turned it to this way, like this. So this is an example of how we’ll turn all the flow stations into when the time comes.
CAMPBELL: Is it very hard to shut these facilities down?
ASARI: [Laughing] It’s very easy. Most of our people had worked in the oil installations before.
CAMPBELL: The Niger Delta has long been a centre of oil violence with disparate ethnic groups fighting for resource control but organised political violence is a new development. Ten years ago the leader of the large Ogoni community, Ken Sara-Wiwa led a peaceful campaign against the Shell oil company. The former dictator, Sani Abacha, hanged him on trumped up charges.
Sara-Wiwa’s successor, a human rights lawyer named Ledum Mittee, continues to preach a message of peaceful resistance.
LEDUM MITTEE: [At meeting] As a movement committed to non-violence, we’re open to dialogue provided it’s a genuine, transparent and honest.
CAMPBELL: But he admits young Nigerians are now more attracted to violence.
LEDUM MITTEE: Asari and many of us are saying today that this is a natural successor to what Ken said because they tried the non violent option and no one listened to them. In fact they were killed. Before they are killed they should be able to kill somebody so why should they take the non-violent process?
CAMPBELL: The root cause of the anger is the same as it always was, the belief that oil companies have polluted their land while corrupt politicians have reaped the benefit. Ledum’s village is surrounded by oil spills some caused by sabotage, some by accident, some by Shell’s aging infrastructure.
LEDUM MITTEE: The crude that is there’s trying to push itself up. You can hear the thing is hissing. With time it will develop into a larger spill and sometimes there’ll be an explosion, and in fact fire. At that stage you’ll find out that very large hectares of land will be engulfed with fire - that’s what happens.
CAMPBELL: And you’ve asked Shell to clean this up?
LEDUM MITTEE: Yeah the committee has informed them. I mean this thing has been on for the past, over a year. They have been here to see it happen and they’ve done nothing about it.
CAMPBELL: Shell insists it’s not to blame. Basil Omiyi is the company’s former PR man now promoted to managing director. He says Shell does all it can to help communities where it does business.
BASIL OMIYI: I really do believe they should derive much more than they currently get. Our position on that has been very, very clear and we campaign on that continuously whenever we engage government, that we need to bring development to this region. But it is not our place to determine the political solution to that.
CAMPBELL: The government insists the people are overjoyed with everything it’s done for them. Dr Peter Odili is the governor of Rivers State, the main oil producing centre in the Niger Delta. A former deputy governor under the Abacha regime, he’s now a key ally of the civilian President Olesegun Obasanjo and revels in a stage-managed image of popularity. Today his officials have sent entertainers to celebrate new air links with Europe.
DR PETER ODILI: We thank God and the hard work of all stakeholders and we’re happy that we are looking up and things are going to continue to look up.
CAMPBELL: But the tight security sits oddly with his image as a popular ruler.
LEDUM MITTEE: People have now grown to the situation that they do not even think that government stands for them. The corruption that pervades the whole place starts from the way the contracts are awarded for oil exploitation –it’s not transparent. And then there seems to be some sort of collusion between the oil companies and those who are in power. So in such a situation nothing gets to the people. Instead of the oil becoming a blessing, it now becomes a curse.
CAMPBELL: It takes just a short helicopter ride to see the staggering scale of oil corruption. These barges are openly stealing tens of thousands of barrels of oil every day. The practice is called “bunkering”, criminal gangs tap the oil straight from the pipelines, then transport it offshore tankers bound for neighbouring African states, even European ports. It’s believed as much as 10% of the Delta’s oil output is stolen this way. The government does almost nothing to stop it.
ASARI: The Nigerian Navy is patrolling the Nigerian territorial waters. Where does these tankers come from? These big ships and vessels, where do they come from? The Nigerian Navy did not see them. They’re so tiny. The Nigerian Air Force did not see them. They’re so tiny.
CAMPBELL: Governor Odili denies his administration is involved in bunkering but the Ogoni leader, Ledum Mittee, says police refuse outright to make arrests.
LEDUM MITTEE: I put them in my car, personally drove to where there was bunkering and as I see them, they say no, no take us back. I say you want me to give you statement. See the bunkering going on. You have the evidence. You don’t need me to tell you and that is it.
CAMPBELL: Bunkering is not only made hundreds of millions of dollars for corrupt politicians, it’s also funded Asari’s rebellion. He admits his militia also helped themselves to oil to pay for their weapons.
ASARI: We took the oil and refined it and started selling it. While the government was selling their oil at government refined oil at 43 naira per litre, we were selling our own at 15 naira. So everywhere you go to it was Asari’s oil. Everywhere you go to.
CAMPBELL: The Nigerian authorities have tried hard to reign in Asari’s campaign. Last year he and his men retreated into the jungle after repeated clashes with a rival gang believed to have been armed by the State Government. The Nigerian military joined in, launching strikes on his twenty one jungle camps.
ASARI: So this use to be our office. We had just installed a V-SAT so that we can have uninterrupted internet access. That’s a piece of our computer.
CAMPBELL: That’s the hard drive.
ASARI: Yeah. Original was destroyed…
CAMPBELL: His men held out for nine months, even staging attacks inside the state capital, Port Harcourt.
ASARI: We had widespread support at that time. People were not really to reveal our locations and we were moving up and down.
CAMPBELL: The army’s deadliest attacks were on villages believed to be sheltering Asari. Odagari was bombed in September, two days after he left. Village leaders claim twenty people died. Thirty seven year old Blessed was among a group of women who escaped into the jungle. She says government soldiers hunted them down and raped them.
BLESSED: They used to catch the women, and rape them in the bushes. The soldiers came to kill – they don’t want us to escape. You understand. Soldiers kill. Everyone’s dead from the war. You understand? Even my brother, with the children – dead. It’s only me now.
CAMPBELL: Human rights groups estimate hundreds of civilians were killed in the nine month conflict but it wasn’t the appalling civilian casualties that ended the fighting, it was the threat to oil. In September the rebel leader Al-Haji Asari warned he would attack the installations of foreign oil companies. The threat spooked international markets and within hours the price of oil shot to a record fifty dollars a barrel. Within days the Nigerian Government was calling for a truce.
An agreement was soon reached to pardon Asari and his fighters and to buy back their weapons. The amnesty has left him virtually untouchable. He’s now living in considerable style in a fortified mansion in the centre of Port Harcourt but if it’s an attempt to buy Asari off, it’s not working. He’s threatening to re-arm unless the government grants independence for the Niger Delta and the oil companies leave.
ASARI: Since they have refused to repent, what we are demanding, the minimum demand is Shell, AGIP, Chevron Texaco, Esso Mobil pull out and let us see whether the Nigerian State can sustain our repression and total marginalisation of our people and the management of their own resources.
CAMPBELL: So you want the oil companies to leave this land?
ASARI: Yes they should go. It will be better for all of us.
CAMPBELL: And if they don’t go?
ASARI: If they have a conscience, if they don’t have then they will be part of the, of the of the unfolding crisis. They will start to be involved. Their personnel will be involved. That is the truth. We will not leave them alone.
CAMPBELL: Recent actions by the government and oil companies have only increased support for Asari’s campaign. In March villages neighbouring this Chevron Texaco plant broke down its fence to protest of the company’s operations on their land. Nigerian soldiers based at the plant, opened fire with teargas then bullets. Father Kevin O’Hara, a Catholic priest who investigated the shootings says one protestor was killed and many were seriously injured.
FATHER O’HARA: For a month before that March incident, I had been sending messages to Chevron Texaco telling them that there’s great anger and tension and that this thing is going to explode.
CAMPBELL: After the soldiers opened fire on the crowd, they beat them with rifle butts and held them at gunpoint inside the Chevron Texaco plant. Nigerian soldiers provide security at all the major oil plants, their wages topped up by generous company allowances.
SOLDIER: Let this be the first and the last time…
CAMPBELL: The villages were left in no doubt what the soldiers would do if they protested again.
SOLDIER: If it happens again, nobody will spare you. You are lucky that you were not shot. So make sure nobody lures you back into these premises anymore.
CAMPBELL: The end of Sani Abacha’s dictatorship six years ago has had little affect on the excesses of the military or on the impoverishment of the people.
SOLDIER: Is that clear?
CROWD: Yes sir.
SOLDIER: Is that clear?
CROWD: Yes sir.
SOLDIER: Is that clear?
CROWD: Yes sir.
LEDUM MITTEE: People are getting poorer now as they were maybe five, six years ago and I think it’s a very sad commentary on this situation that people can compare their life now with what we saw in Abacha which we thought which we thought should be the worst that we can ever experience.
CAMPBELL: In reality, the same political gangsters continue to run the Delta. Odili won the 2003 elections with figures that would have made Saddam Hussein blush. His electoral commission reported a 96% majority with some electorates recording a 100% turnout and a 100% vote for the ruling party.
DR PETER ODILI: The government Rivers State is very well trusted by the people of Rivers State. They are confident that we will stand for their interests all the time, we do what is right.
CAMPBELL: So you’re confident those figures are correct? There was no falsification of election results?
DR PETER ODILI: As a politician who’s been on the ground and I’ve had seven elections, I know that you cannot play with figures and numbers if you are not in absolute majority. You can’t. They’ll mob you.
CAMPBELL: Ledum Mittee claims the government used armed gangs to wipe out the opposition.
LEDUM MITTEE: It’s sort of an armed struggle - a low-intensity armed struggle. You need to see from the times of the primaries, people are already shooting guns, people are killing themselves.
CAMPBELL: Belatedly the central government has begun to act. President Obasanjo has set up an anti-corruption commission targeting senior political figures.
PRESIDENT OBASANJO: Our fight against corruption would be meaningless if it is concentrated on the federal tier of government while the States and local governments wallow in corruption.
CAMPBELL: Meanwhile life continues to worsen for the people of the Niger Delta. At the end of our visit to Port Harcourt, the bulldozers and their police escorts moved in to demolish what was left of this shantytown. Pastor Lekia’s church was one of the first buildings to come crashing down, leaving him and the families he’d been sheltering, homeless.
PASTOR LEKIA: The oil boom has turned into the oil doom! Oil boom has turned to the oil doom. What next? What can we do? Look at all of these people. They are counting on me. I have no money. I have nothing.
WOMEN WEEPING: I need help. I need help. Look at my two children -nowhere to stay. So I need help.
CAMPBELL: The children of the oil boom no longer expect help from their governments or the west. It is demagogues like Asari who are winning their trust, promising that blood will win them oil.