Nigeria’s Oil

Curse or Blessing

Since its discovery in 1956 in the southern swamps, oil has dominated Nigeria, Africa's top oil producer. Export sales account for 80 percent of federal revenues, monopolizing the economy and triggering often violent schisms among regions and ethnic groups over their piece of the profits.

Broken Promise of Niger Delta Oil

Shantytown

After 50 years of oil, Port Harcourt in southern Nigeria still looks and smells like a shantytown. Smoke from a slaughterhouse drifts over shops thrown up on a riverbank

Gifts of the GulfTwenty miles (32 kilometers)—and a world away—from strife-torn oil fields on land, a rig operated by Total, a French multinational, draws oil from a newly tapped deposit in the Gulf of Guinea.

Oil Insurgents

Fighters with MEND (Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta) brandish weapons near their camp. Insurgents vow to shut off the oil if calls for local control of resources aren't met

Nigerian traders stand next to a car burnt by militants after they stormed the police headquarters in Port Harcourt, January 29, 2007. Militants freed 125 suspected criminals when they stormed a police complex in the oil capital Port Harcourt

Shell's oil and gas terminal on Bonny Island in southern Nigeria's Niger Delta in May 2005

Village Life

Ebia Amakadou, 18, watches over her sleeping two-year-old son in the village of Oweikorogba. Like most delta settlements, the village has no power or clean water.

Black Market

Dockhands push a barrel of gasoline to a black-market distributor in Yenagoa. Despite its large oil reserves, Nigeria lacks functioning refineries and often suffers fuel shortages.

Island StrifeUprooted to make room for a liquefied natural gas plant, people in the village of Finima on Bonny Island complain that the facility has damaged fishing grounds, with few jobs offered in return.

On the OutsideVillagers in Finima live within sight of giant fuel tanks and a polluting gas flare, part of the sprawling energy infrastructure on Bonny Island. Ships loaded with millions of dollars' worth of crude oil and natural gas depart regularly from an island where most people subsist on a few dollars a day.

Not for SaleThe noise and smells of a fish market in Finima wash over a sleeping child. In the past, delta children expected that, like their parents, they would grow up to fish and farm. Nowadays, as oil money dominates the delta and pollution reduces fish numbers, many young people end up migrating to a city or, if they stay in the village, trying to get a job with the oil industry.

Oil TracksAmid twisting waterways, narrow pipeline channels cut paths across the Cawthorne Channel area of the southern Niger Delta. Spills in the Scotland-size delta, many caused by sabotage, have created one of the world's most polluted regions and threaten Africa's largest remaining mangrove forest. The swampy terrain makes roadbuilding difficult in the delta. Villagers mostly travel by ferry or dugout canoe; oil workers usually go by powerboat or helicopter. But rebels use the maze of creeks and channels to avoid capture by the military.

From Bad to WorseHeat and smoke force back villagers who have come to check on an oil fire erupting from a leaking wellhead in Ogoniland. The wellhead had been spilling oil for a week, coating the ground around it before catching fire. The fire burned for more than two months before an oil company team could make arrangements to quell it. Fifty years of oil spills have turned the delta into one of the most polluted areas in the world.

Swampy MessWading through swamp waters discolored by an oil spill, Chief Sunday Ugwu assesses the damage in Odiemerenyi. Companies usually offer compensation, but activists claim that payments are too low and don't reach the affected people.

Toxic Take-outToxic smoke from tire fires—used to loosen the skin of animals—billows around a worker carrying a goat to a butchering table at the Trans-Amadi abattoir in Port Harcourt. Meat substitutes for fish in the delta diet as pollution causes catches to decline.

Low TurnoutA scolding remark chalked on a desk reflects the grim condition of a school in Ogulagha. Teachers often don't show up, and pupils are scarce. Though delta states receive millions of dollars a month in oil revenue, little of it reaches rural communities

Oil MoneyKingdom Elenwa, traditional ruler of the Egi people, relaxes with his grandson after the annual yam festival in Akabuka. The oil firm Total paid for the furniture.

Final FarewellMourners in Oporoza take a last look at a MEND rebel killed by the Nigerian military. Insurgents later struck back, attacking oil facilities and kidnapping dozens of workers.

Joyous Send-offThe funeral of 63-year-old Roseline Okotie brings out a brass band and colorfully dressed mourners in the oil city of Warri. Funerals for children are usually somber affairs, if held at all. But for people who have lived long lives, tradition calls for a joyous send-off.

Company TownOil leaves its mark in Okrika, from a company umbrella to a trail of pipelines coiling through town. Since oil started flowing, most communities have seen living standards fall, betraying the hope that oil once brought to Nigeria.