Travelling down-river in the Niger Delta is a journey to the heart of Nigeria's most intractable problem. For 20 years, this region has been in crisis, with rebel groups holding multinational oil companies and the government to ransom.
HENRY OKAH: We are fighting for the freedom of our people, we are fighting for our resources and our land.
It's not long before you see the source of the problem. Everywhere in the delta are massive platforms like these, which pump billions of dollars worth of oil every year and spew noxious fumes into the air. My travelling companion is Luckyman Egila, who has spent the last 10 years fighting for a piece of that fortune.
LUCKYMAN EGILA: If you go to where these companies are, if you go to where their staff live, they are living in heaven while we are living in hell.
Luckyman wants to show me what's fuelling his righteous anger - a life of squalor amidst untold oil riches. This is the island he grew up on, near what's known locally as Bille Kingdom. This community lives without electricity or roads and has just one poorly built water pump installed by the local government. The water is so salty, it's not fit for human consumption. So the islanders have gone back to drinking from the same well they've drawn from for generations.
LUCKMAN EGILA: This is the community well. This well has been here for over 30 years. I drank from this well while I was a baby.
Nearby is what passes for sanitation on the island.
LUCKMAN EGILA: This is the male toilet.
The only modern building is this half-finished school which the oil giant Royal Dutch Shell began building for them, but never finished.
LUCKYMAN EGILA: As you can see, it's a 10m by 10m room. I don't know where they're going to put the students. It's taken three years to construct for what should have taken three months.
Luckyman says this is just one of hundreds of broken promises made by governments and oil companies. 10 years ago, his frustration saw him pick up the two main tools of young militants here - the gun and the mask.
LUCKYMAN EGILA: The mask reminds me ofso many things I have done.
REPORTER: Like what?
LUCKYMAN EGILA: Like killing a fellow human being wearing this mask and not giving a damn about it.
He says the world looks different through the mask.
LUCKYMAN EGILA: You look like an enemy now, because you’re coloured, you’re white. So many people of your colour have done wrong things to us.
Locals may live without oil's profits but they have all its problems. Gas flaring occurs all over the delta. It's the cheapest way to dispose of excess gas, but it's curtailed elsewhere in the world because of the pollution that it produces. At night, it's the brightest light over cities with no electricity. Then, when it rains, the by-products return to earth with disastrous results. For communities living nearby those facilities, like Ebocha, where I am today, rain like this is incredibly corrosive. I'm told that this piece of corrugated iron is only three years old and, yet, the acid rain has left it weak as paper. At this hospital, Dr Obuwan Nien tells me flaring is causing a rising rate of respiratory infections.
DR OBUWAN NIEN: We have pneumonia, really children between the age of fiva and twelve. Then we have asthmatic problems in elderly people. Now normal cough, ordinary cough is also very very rampant with catarrh in this zone. Air pollution contributes so much.
90% of the Niger Deltans are unemployed and live on just a few dollars a day, despite the hugely profitable industry nearby. Barnabas Ben has four children, all university graduates, and none can find work. The state governments in the delta are given 13% of the national oil revenue, which is supposed to be put directly into villages like Barnabas's, but he says his community has never seen any of that money.
REPORTER: What do you think happens to that money?
BARNABAS BEN: I don't know. If it is being paid, I don't know what goes. It is better to ask Shell to whom they send the money, because they are taking the oil. Shell should know the right answer to give. Where do they send that money?
That money is administered by state governors, like Tiempre Sylva. This is his home - the plush governor's residence for Bayelsa State. Evidently, the politicians are not being short-changed.
TIEMPRE SYLVA: You can see some amethysts. But this is something I really like very much.
REPORTER: What happens to that money?
TIEMPRE SYLVA: It’s spent on behalf of the people. Whatever expenditure we make here in developing this capital is on behalf of every Bayelsan. That is what we’re doing, at the same time as working in various villages, although it’s not to the extent that it should go.
MILITANT MAN 1: Because we don’t have benefits. The federal government calls us idiots. We are fathers, children, brothers and mothers. We don’t benefit at all.
These long-held grievances have radicalised an entire generation of young Nigerians. Today, these militants are staging a rare public show of strength. Through violence, sabotage and kidnapping they've drastically reduced Nigeria's oil production. And they've done it using weapons supplied by the government's number one enemy - a man they recently freed from jail, Henry Okah. Dateline secured a rare interview.
HENRY OKAH: The Nigerian Government was compelled to release me. They did not release me of their own free will. So, I feel that at least they understood the strength of the militia groups in the Niger Delta, and the ability of these groups to shut down the entire Nigerian exports.
Okah is a leader of the Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta, or 'MEND'. He's determined to keep on fighting.
HENRY OKAH: I don’t expect my people to just sit down quietly and accept these things especially when we have the weapons to protect ourselves and our people.
This is where real political power in Nigeria resides - the capital, Abuja. It's an affluent and pristine city, built far from the creeks, using the oil royalties that never made it to the delta. The pressure is now on the federal government here to address the grievances over oil production. Major General Godwin Abbe is Nigeria's minister for defence. He comes from the delta and doesn't deny that the people there have been short-changed.
MAJOR GENERAL GODWIN ABBE: There is no question about that. These agitations are reasonable, they are not unusual of a people, but it is the style of demanding their rights that has been unacceptable to government. They have a right to express their views, but they don't have the right to kill or to kidnap because they want to express their views. That is barbaric. That is not acceptable.
Having failed to protect the oil industry with military might, now the government is offering the rebels an amnesty - as long as they disarm.
MAJOR GENERAL GODWIN ABBE: That is why we are pleading that all the militants that are still hesitantshould accept the goodwill of the government and indeed the good intentions of Mr President and surrender their arms in the interest of the ordinary people of Nigeria. Because violence will begat violence.
Today, the first militant group to take up the offer is attending a disarmament ceremony. These rebel soldiers are led by the self-styled general Victor Ben, alias 'Boyloaf'. He arrives to fanfare from the military and political elite. Boyloaf tells me it's time for the rebels to change their ways.
VICTOR BEN, “BOYLOAF”: There is a time for everything. There is a time for political struggle. There is a time for armed struggle. And what we believe now the time of armed struggle is over. I think we have to go into dialogue. We have to give peace a chance.
For years, General Boyloaf has been MEND's most respected battlefield tactician and a living nightmare for the oil companies. But, now, he's placing his faith in the politicians.
“BOYLOAF”: I think I will give the government the chance. We are holding them by their words. I spoke with the President one on one and, the way it sounds to me, I think the President is willing to do something but he needs a peaceful atmosphere to operate.
This disarmament is the first breakthrough for the government's amnesty gambit and it has split MEND in two. Rebel leader Henry Okah believes Boyloaf is being duped.
HENRY OKAH: I think it’s a ploy by the government to bring the fight in the Niger Delta to an end without addressing the real issues. You know it’s just another attempt to sabotage the efforts of the different groups fighting for freedom of the Niger Delta people.
“BOYLOAF”: For him to come out this way that….we shouldn’t accept the amnesty, we see it very bad of him. We are not babies, we are not fools. We are not fools or anything.
Back in Abuja, General Abbe suspects some people of prolonging the conflict for mercenary motives.
MAJOR GENERAL GODWIN ABBE: There are a number of people who have been benefiting from this state of insecurity.
REPORTER: Like Henry Okah?
MAJOR GENERAL GODWIN ABBE: I wouldn’t want to mention anybody at this stage. But certainly those who are involved in gun running, those who are involved in illegal bunkering and smuggling, these elements are benefiting massively from it.
The President's amnesty offer ran till this month, but even those militants who have disarmed, like Luckyman Egila, say it will take more than an amnesty to end the violence.
LUCKYMAN EGILA: The amnesty will not disarm the Niger Delta. It will only quell it for some time, bring peace for some time. That peace will only come to stay only if the government will be so kind enough to follow the processes laid down to develop the delta.
One of the most daunting promises that the government is making is to clean up the rivers themselves. Promise Dapa is a fisherman whose father always fed the family from the daily catch. But, since oil production began, there's been a spill here equivalent to the 'Exxon Valdez' disaster every year for 50 years. When Promise and his friend go out these days, this is often the result - nothing - and the nets return covered in an oily film.
PROMISE DAPA: Because of the spillage here and there we can’t find fish to eat, let alone to sell. Help ourselves, help our children. No way, no way at all.
The spill that caused this particular slick went on for three months, wreaking havoc on the ecosystem before Agip Oil came in to clamp down a broken pipe. Oil producers are legally responsible for any spill, except if the pipe was sabotaged. The companies blame the majority of spills on sabotage, something that angers the locals.
MAN 1: They hide under the cloak of saying that it is sabotage. That is why no effort has been made. Nobody has come to us for whatever reason, by way of either compensation or sending relief materials. They’ve done nothing. They are nonchalant, they don’t care.
There is no denying that militants have routinely tapped into oil pipes, selling off the oil to fund their campaign and causing more spills in the process. But even the Bayelsa state governor believes there are problems with the oil companies' behaviour.
TIEMPRE SYLVA: I must say that the way the oil companies have operated so far in this area has been, to say the least, irresponsible.
Till now, the oil companies, including Shell, have stayed out of the amnesty dialogue, refused to answer any allegations, and wouldn't be interviewed for this story. Today, I'm travelling with a convoy of militants and the military to witness another disarmament. The Nigerian President's personal negotiator, Timi Alaibe, is on hand to watch the ceremony.
REBEL LEADER: We assure the federal government there will be peace in our region if the following conditions are met. One…practical development of the region….
After demanding that new jobs be created, and electricity and roads provided, the rebels surrender their arms.
TIMI ALAIBE: What you have done today I’m sure will send a signal to all other youths who are presently carrying arms and ammunition to see this as an example and disarm forwith.
And it seems they have. By the end of the amnesty period, just a few days ago, all of the biggest rebel generals have agreed to disarm, and the MEND leader and arms dealer Henry Okah has moved to South Africa.
LUCKYMAN EGILA: Before now we always believed that the government is the whole problem. But now I think we understand that we also are part of the problem. And if we must solve the problem we have to work together.
The government insists it will keep its promises, but Nigeria's future is now on a knife's edge.
“BOYLOAF”: If the government refuses to develop the region and continue the marginalisation and injustice, the youths and the people coming after us I think will be more brutal than what we have done.
Reporter/Camera
AARON LEWIS
Researcher
VICTORIA STROBL
Fixers
VICTOR OKHAI
ABDULLAHI KAURA ABUBAKAR
Editors
DAVID POTTS
ROWAN TUCKER-EVANS
Translations/Subtitling
ELENA MIKHAILIK
ROBYN FALLICK
Producer
AARON THOMAS
Original Music composed by
VICKI HANSEN