Militants attack oil infrastructure and staff. Oil theft leads to severe pipeline damage, causing loss of production and pollution. There is piracy, sabotage, violence, and decrepit infrastructure. Nigeria is the largest oil producer in Africa and has the ninth largest natural gas reserves in the world. Yet only 50% of the people have access to electricity.
Read…. Nigeria’s Oil and Gas Fiasco.
I’m no socialist but there is a place for sharing. Nigeria needs someone like Hugo Chavez to step up and redistribute the wealth like Venezuela. Oil gushing from the ground only ‘belongs’ to global corporatists and the local corrupt politicians due to force and corruption. Same with the other countries where the people and resources are exploited.
Yes well look no further than Shell PLC and the IMF. It’s been debt slavery ever since and continuing chaos. Just last year Christine Lagarde forced the puppet regime to end energy subsidies to oil workers causing a massive strike that crippled production. Why? Nigeria were behind with interest payments on fraudulently induced IMF debt and the IMF are teetering on insolvency and their 50 year charter (From Bretton woods 1944), ran out in 1994.
Of course the wage levels and food prices for Nigerian oil workers means they cannot survive without the subsidized energy but none of this really matters to an illegitimate, bankrupt entity whose only claim to legitimacy is their own shrill and unbacked claims.
They just want to loot from the chaos which they are largely responsible for creating.
well, that went according to plan.
Charges Dropped Against Former Morgan Stanley Banker.
http://blogs.wsj.com/metropolis/2012/10/15/charges-dropped-against-former-morgan-stanley-banker/
@Danny Cunningham
“They just want to loot from the chaos which they are largely responsible for creating.”
Exactly. The best visualization of this policy is the image of US marines guarding the Iraqi oil ministry whilst the rest of the city tumbled into chaos. It is a tenet of the shock doctrine – exploiting or creating chaos in order to steal from the people without them being able to respond effectively. Neoliberalism is just the ideological claptrap of thieves.
@Jayme
“I’m no socialist”
Depends on how you define “socialist”. Noam Chomsky pointed out several decades ago that US administrations always defined socialism as anything that threatened corporate profits. So you are a “socialist” in the twisted view of the corporatists.
NB: Chomksy investigated the records of successive US administrations and found that this is exactly how these issues were discussed in meetings. Something like the following
“Corporate profits are being threatened by this peasant organization looking for environmental protections?”
“Okay lets call them communist and get that country’s army to destroy them – we have been giving that army millions of dollars a year, time to call in the favour etc etc etc…”
Or they set up proxy armies of course. Nothing has changed since those times. It is all about protecting the corporations, everything else is bollocks (e.g. for freedom and democracy).
Noam Chomsky, “How the world works” is a great read, though sobering.
@Flotpot
By someone’s definition, you are right. It is a problem of labeling. Chomsky is excellent at pulling out the meaning of action and words. Isms are confining and destroy the richness of potential human adaptation and response to a situation. In some situations, capitalism works, in others socialism, in another, something different will work to bring the greatest vitality to a person. Essentially, I don’t consider myself an ideologue.
Failed to post this last dawn. The internet crashed while trying. Mostly what you guys have already said. Just trying to guess what’s “special” about Nigeria’s case, when compared to her peers.
The “elites” get their share of crumbs from the Corporation’s looting. In money, infrastructure, power, protection, education, health services, transportation, .. etc. The corporations get to loot the country’s resources. The people are kept from becoming an “equal” threat to anyone, being pushed down into self-reinforcing miserable poverty and insecurity, without access to dependable health, sanitation, education, due process…
The “elites” have working universities, hospitals, private and public courts, police and security services, banks and financial institutions. Or that part of them that works and is usually removed , or cordoned off, from the people. They even have a small circle of production capacity to see to their immediate interests and to those of their sponsors and mentors, er, I mean, “partners”, colleagues, consultants and service providers.
Nigeria launched a very interesting, rather advanced communications satellite, this year. With their own research in it. What else is up? The place is now more interesting than the “Easts” were, a century ago. Makes Sierra Madre, in its heyday, (or Panama, or Fordlandia, or The Bolivian Syndicate) look like a slow holliday in a sleepy small town.
It really is a fiasco, for the people. When was it any different? Why could it be different, here? Is there any chance there, for a movement knowing, willing, and capable of by some means procuring a working, honest state – at all levels – to consolidate, prosper, and prevail? Uncrushed? Un-hijacked?