| | Since the discovery of oil in Nigeria's delta in the late 1950s, the dream of oil as a commodity that would improve the lives of the people in oil producing areas and in Nigeria more generally has degenerated into a nightmare. Far from fulfilling the positive expectations of the people, crude oil has paradoxically become a source of poverty and conflict. Poverty has mainly resulted from the forced seizure of family or communal land by the Federal Government in favour of the oil companies and the pollution of adjoining lands, creeks, rivers and the sea upon which the people depend for their livelihood. |
