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GBARAMATU, Nigeria, July 22 (AFP) - Despite playing host to Nigeria's multi-billion-dollar oil industry, the communities of the Niger Delta enjoy none of luxuries wealth could provide.

In Gbaramatu, a cluster of thatch-roofed fishing villages, nestling in the polluted swamps of Ijawland, they often ask why God has cursed them with the black slime that coats their rivers.

"The discovery of oil in our communities has brought misery and sorrow," laments 42-year-old Mary Olaye, leader of a group of women who have occupied four oil pumping stations in protest.

"Our rivers are polluted and fishes dead because of the toxic being spilled into the environment."

The placard-carrying women chanted war songs as they began the eighth day of their peaceful occupation, vowing to block the oil until US giant ChevronTexaco takes an interest in their fate.

At flow stations in Bakarava-Okoitoru, Abiteye, Otunana and Obuakeva they are holding hostage a system capable of pumping 110,000 barrels of crude oil into Chevron's terminal every day.

Their demands are wide ranging. They want clean drinking water, electricity, schools, clinics, fishing boats, palaces for their kings, university scholarships, jobs and cash.

And they want Chevron Nigeria's managing director to come and see for himself the misery of their existence, clinging to life in broken down hovels, cut off from the development oil money was supposed to support.

"We will not leave here. Only death can remove us. Chevron must leave our lands. Let them kill us if they choose to. Enough is enough," says 40-year-old fisherwoman Queen Bia.

The people of this region have protested before.

Youths, many of them armed and violent, have occupied oil rigs, kidnapped workers and sabotaged equipment. Often, although the oil firms are reluctant to talk about it, they have won pay-offs.

But a new style of protest last week gave the Gbaramatu women hope for a new kind of relationship with the oil companies.

After the community's Itsekiri-speaking neighours, the Ugborodo, took over Chevron's main oil terminal in the delta and held it for 11 days, the company agreed to many of their demands.

A school will be built, water and electricity supplied, local hiring increased.

The Ijaw women decided to follow suit. They stormed the flow stations and then sat down, waiting for Chevron to come to them with an offer. Eight days later they are still waiting.

"To us in the Gbaramatu kingdom, the future is hopeless. Chevron is not even bothered," Bia said.

She is unemployed because, she says, her business has been ruined by water pollution. Her six children cannot go to school.

Bia said that a fire started Saturday by a lightning strike at the oil terminal had further polluted the rivers, leaving them without water to drink.

Chevron has denied the fire has affected loacl communities. But whether or not Saturday's blaze increased the problem, the oil in the rivers is clear to see, and smell.

"For three years I have sought employment with Chevron without success," says Timi Edende, a 25-year-old unemployed graduate.

"The few youths engaged are casual workers while the white men are getting the juicy jobs. Oil to us is a tragedy. If there was no oil we can at least do our fishing and farming. But our lands have been pillaged and made desolate because of the activities of the multinationals," he adds.

Community leader Moses Yorokiri, 42, sits on a chair carved in the shape of a baboon as he gazes sadly at the stretch of black, foul-smelling water in the river in front of his hut.

"That is what oil has done to us. My people are hungry and angry because they can no longer fish on their waters. No drinking water, no electricity, no schools, no work," he told Nampa-AFP at the village of Otoikoru on the bank of the Warri River.

"They are not even ready to talk with us. We have been in this struggle for years, yet the suffering persists," he said.
- Nampa-AFP

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