Devastating Oil Extractivism in Nigeria

How Oil Damages Our Women

Presented by Betty Abah

ENVIRONMENTAL RIGHTS ACTION/FRIENDS OF THE EARTH NIGERIA

At the WoMin Women, Gender and Extractives Regional Strategy Meeting in Johannesburg, South Africa

Oct. 9, 2013

THE CURSE OF OIL

EXTRACTIONNigeria is the seventh importer of crude oil in the world.

About 70 per cent of the citizens live below poverty level, according to recent statistics.

Widespread poverty, unemployment and emerging insecurity trend are problems citizens currently grapple with. The Niger Delta occupies a surface of about 112,110 square kilometres with a population of about 26 million people.Oil revenues, extracted from the Niger Delta accounts to about 85% of government revenue and 95% of foreign exchange earnings.The desperate poverty and alarming envr degradation makes it a classic eg that the presence and extraction of mineral resources does not always translate to citizens’ wellbeing.

Map of Nigeria showing the Niger Delta region

The Oil Wealth has not translated into the wellbeing of the Niger Delta woman and her family

Niger Delta Women live in an unbelievable planet of pollutions…

What really are her headaches?

• The discovery of oil in the Niger Delta since 1958 has only spelt sorrow for the woman of the area.

• Her traditional source of livelihood mainly farming and fishing are constantly under threat due to the oil spillages, gas flares that are common place due to the unregulated extractive industry activities.

• • She represents one of the most repressed and

environmentally degraded on the planet today.

• She is the feminine face of the environmentally degraded of the earth.

• Her farmland is a sea of oil spillages.

• She lives, breathes and have her life around poisonous gas flares

• She and her household are sickened by constant pollution.

A VICTIM OF DOUBLE TRAGEDY

– Because she is not only environmentally degraded, she is culturally underrated.

– She is landless, voiceless and faceless.

– She is silenced by the shackles of ‘man-made’ traditions.

– She is not a part of the conflict-resolution process, because, after all, she is a ‘mere’ woman.

– She has never been part of the ‘negotiation’ between hypocritical multinational companies nor dishonest government agencies because after all they are discussing ‘serious issues, and not women matters’.

– She is hardly a beneficiary of their occasional handouts though she bears the greatest brunt.

DOUBLE WAHALA …!• Her land is rendered barren from

harmful extractive activities.• The pollutions sometimes renders

her infertile, or her children are born with birth defects.

• The constant conflicts in the region render her vulnerable to the whirlwinds of homelessness, rapes and multiple abuse.

• In times of natural disaster, she is hapless, stranded because the extractives and traditional environment ensure that she is left without considerable wherewithal.

• She is a woman of sorrow, acquainted with grief.

Home Maker, Burden BearerShe carries the double yoke of home maker, bread winner, and in times of conflict,

she bears all the burden, and her legs are already heavy!

ERA’S INTERVENTION: Sensitizing, Mobilizing Women for change…

GIVING WOMEN A VOICE…

• ERA therefore as an environmental justice group, is at this stage, working on putting the searchlight on the double tragedy of the Niger Delta woman—environmental justice campaigns can focus on her peculiar situation, how she can be given a voice, lent and ear and made to be part of the entire process of reclaiming sanity in one of the most degraded and volatile

regions on earth.

The West African Gas Pipelines (WAGP)

The West African Pipelines Project is a 678 km gas pipeline transporting natural gas from Nigeria to Benin, Togo, and Ghana used for power generation, especially for industrial and commercial use.

The pipeline is being laid largely offshore in a seabed 15 to 20 kilometers from the coast of all four countries.  The first World Bank West African Gas Pipeline began disbursing in 2005 and a second EIB loan began disbursing in 2007. 

Both projects are still being implemented

‘Gender-insensitive’

• Although the World Bank Group

and European Investment Bank

(EIB) provided a series of loans

to finance the Chad-Cameroon

and West African gas and oil

pipelines starting in the year

2000, an Internet literature

review on the pipelines

indicates almost no attention to

the negative gender impacts

resulting from investments

Badagry, Nigeria -- Women are negatively affected...

Nigeria...

Togo, Ghana, Cameroon... ...Same Story of impoverishment...!

TAKING HER STORY GLOBAL!

Thank you