Nigeria's huge oil wealth has brought misery

By David Blair, Diplomatic Correspondent

The immense wealth bestowed on the Niger Delta by the hand of nature has brought nothing but misery to most of its people.

This verdant region of creeks and inlets sits on most of Nigeria’s 35 billion barrels of proven oil reserves.

In theory, oil companies operating in the Delta could produce about 2.5 million barrels of crude every day.

In reality, they rarely achieve this level of output thanks to a campaign of sabotage and violence mounted by local militants, who style themselves the Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta (Mend).

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2007/07/09/wnigeria209.xml

This is a story that bears watching, yet gets almost no media attention (gasp!), but for the occasional pipeline catastrophe. The havoc that oil drilling and oil politics have wreaked on the people and environment of the Niger Delta is enormous.

Here is a much more detailed report from National Geographic: http://www7.nationalgeographic.com/ngm/0702/feature3/

everyone in nigeria should be living in modern comfort instead a few both in and out of the country are wealthy beyond the dreams of avarice on the blood and misery of many.

what a pitiful world we live in.