By Toye Olori
LAGOS, Aug 28 2003 (IPS)

Nigeria lost 6.1 million barrels of crude oil, worth about 151 million U.S. dollars, to theft during the first quarter of this year, government officials say.

During that period, an average of 50,000 barrels of crude oil was being stolen every day.

President Olusegun Obasanjo insists the underlying factor was largely criminal, although some genuine political agitation by the three feuding ethnic groups in the oil-rich Niger Delta exists.

”While the three warring tribes in the oil city – the Ijaws, the Itsekiris and the Urhobos had through their leaders agreed to dialogue, the mischief makers stayed at the background fuelling the crisis to provide opportunity for them to steal the nation’s source of wealth,” Obasanjo said last week.

The latest disturbances in Warri, Niger Delta, has claimed more than 200 lives and seen the destruction of property worth billions of Naira, prompting the government to deploy troops and set up a military task force to restore peace.

”Illegal oil bunkerers fuelled the bloody ethnic clashes because they profit from the ensuing confusion,” Obasanjo claimed.

Lucky Akaruese of the Lagos-based Committee for the Defence of Human Rights, says: ”I used to think that the crisis in the Niger Delta was a result of under-development, but now I feel that that type of thinking is completely out of tune. What has emerged is that we have what is called ‘crude oil cartel’ in Nigeria just as we have the drug cartels in Latin America”.

A number of illegal oil dealers, who steal and sell the oil, were arrested off the Nigerian coast last week.

”What is happening now has gone beyond just buying refined fuel and taking it to the high seas to sell at higher price which was the case in the past. Now the crude oil is being siphoned directly through the pipelines,” Akaruese claims.

Poverty, argues Akaruese, is not the main cause of ethnic conflict in the Niger Delta. ”It is out of tune to invoke the orthodox explanation that under-development and marginalisation are responsible for the unrest. After all we have unemployment all over the country, while marginalisation is experienced by different groups across the country,” he says.

Eni-Afolabi Mukowu, a former university lecturer, speaking on national television Wednesday, agreed. ”It is oil bunkering that is fuelling the crisis. They create a state of anarchy, which prevents security men from reaching the creeks where the bunkerers are located. And this gives them the opportunity to have a field day in their nefarious activities,” he says.

Some civil society groups blame the frequent violent protests, agitations and ethnic clashes on the neglect of the region by the Nigerian government and on the degradation of the environment of the Niger Delta region through oil-exploration activities. Fishing and farming, the main occupations in the region, have been destroyed as farmlands and rivers are polluted through frequent oil spillage. Thousands have lost their lives to fire disasters caused by illegal bunkering and damage to old and un-serviced pipelines.

”The pains that under-development and poverty inflict on the people of the Niger Delta constitute a big sociological burden for them,” says Peter Odili, governor of Rivers State, Niger Delta. He blames the federal government for failure to find a lasting solution to the problems of the region.

Odili argues that if the authorities had religiously addressed the Niger Delta problem, incidents of youth unrest would have vanished.

Segun Sango, of the National Conscience Party, says ”80 percent of Nigeria’s revenue comes from the Niger Delta which is marginalised. There is deep sense of poverty and unemployment”.

Nigeria’s economy is tied to oil revenue. Africa’s largest producer, Nigeria turns out about two million barrels of crude oil per day, which accounts for more than 90 percent of the country’s foreign currency earnings.

Humphrey Emeka, a political commentator, says the people of Niger Delta have been abandoned for too long by government. ”Amenities are not enough there so people fight for them," he says.

Emeka urged the government to adopt a new policy to solve the problem. ”Cosmetic approach by government will not solve the problem. It must look beyond what it is doing right now. There must be fundamental restructuring of the society. We should come to the round table and discuss how we want to live together as Nigerians and how to share our natural resources,” he says.

Joseph Evah, a former university don, says government was reluctant to solve the Warri crisis. ”Government will not even want us to sit down to discuss and where it allows genuine dialogue, it will want to manipulate the meeting to suit its purpose," he claims.

Evah, who hails from Niger Delta, claims the youth were armed by politicians to rig elections. ”After the elections, the politicians forget to collect the weapons, which the youths are now turning against their fellow brothers," he says.

Rights groups fear that the deployment of troops and the use of force by government to resolve the problem may result in more deaths.

They argue that the military should be used only to keep the peace among the warring groups, while a more permanent solution be sought to engage the youths – about 90 percent are unemployed – in gainful employment.

The usually peaceful Warri, where the three ethnic groups have lived together for centuries, was first thrown into crisis in 1997 over the relocation of the local government headquarters from an Itsekiri town to an Ijaw locality.

The second phase of the crisis erupted in March when the Ijaws (a major ethnic group) stood against the holding of elections in the three Warri local government areas.

The reasons for the latest round of violence are yet to be made public.

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