by Dalley Hughes

Created on: January 15, 2009

Forcibly manning speedboats mounted with automatic rifles and wearing bullet proof vests, the criminal gangs of Nigeria, Niger Delta are terrorizing the area, kidnapping foreign oil workers and launching raids on oil platforms. As reported by BBC NEWS, " the Nigerian delta may be blessed with the world's best quality of oil but, for security forces, it's a nightmare."

People blame the fallout from the oil industry for their ruined environment, ill health and unemployment. For many of the gangsters, this is the only employment they can find. Youth are led into gangs to survive in this land that lacks running water and electricity, except for the ruling elite.

Gangs are funded by the theft of oil, as "illegal bunkering" of Nigeria's crude oil is loaded into barges that are bunkering ships, only to be transferred into larger ships that then take the oil to markets for legitimate sale. These transfers are made in high seas where they are not easily tracked. With Nigeria's oil production capability of 3.2 m barrels per day, the oil smugglers are profiting $60 m per day. They are greatly feared and will kill you, me, anyone in order to protect their part of what they feel is "legal theft," believing that what they are taking is rightfully theirs to take.

President Umaru Yar'Adua says that this is "blood oil." The Ogoni people, in the heart of the Niger Delta, sing their protest song, saying, "the flames of Shell are the flames of hell." In this region the size of England, the Niger Delta is littered with violence and gas flares, with roar and heat you can feel for hundreds of metres around. Port Harcourt, is at the heart of region where people are angry.

The Small Arms Project(SAP), www.smallarmsnet.org is where the NDPVF, Niger Delta People's Volunteer Force encourages arms control, seeking to reduce the violence, yet men like Henry Okah, a Niger Delta militant is being held by the Nigerian government for murder, robbery, gun-running and the so called "SHELL Police" are being bribed to allow more arms to aid those engaging in what has been termed, "the new civil war of the troubled giant of Nigeria." Armed with RPG's and AK47's, these gangs are knowledgeable of what the oil industry has done to their land. A Nigerian schoolchild's first primary school lesson is to learn that Oil was first discovered in the Niger Delta in 1956. With British interest in Nigeria back to the formation of the country, major oil companies like Shell, Chevron, Texaco, and Mobil have joined

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