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MAKING CONTACT Transcript: #11-00 Delta on Fire: Nigerian Women's Resistance Kathryn Washington: This week on Making Contact.... Esther Elenwa: We demand for the rights. We demand for the roads. We demand for the water. Kathryn Washington: Until May, 1999 the oil rich North African country Nigeria was ruled by dictatorship. Throughout about thirty years of brutal military rule, the Nigerian government violently suppressed opposition, sometimes at the behest of oil companies. Now the dictatorship is out but the Nigerian military continues to reign supreme. On this special program from the National Radio Project's Women's Desk, we take a look at Nigeria's women and how the operations of multinational companies have affected their lives and livelihoods. I'm Kathryn Washington, your host this week on Making Contact - an international radio program seeking to create connections between people, vital ideas and important information... Eket is a seaside community where the U.S. based company Mobil - now Exxon-Mobil-runs a vast oil extraction operation. The multi-billion dollar company's pipelines crisscross the ocean floor and, according to residents of Eket, those pipelines leak. In September, 1999 a human rights delegation observed a barren ocean beach with not a bird in sight. Waves churn brown and black. The delegation also reported that the air was so polluted their lungs felt as if they were bursting. Eket residents told the delegation that they are no longer able to catch any fish in their small boats near shore. Now, to reach the fish a trawler capable of navigating the high sea is needed. For most villagers such a boat is beyond their means. Throughout the Delta enormous flames lick the skies 24 hours a day 365 days a year as oil companies, including Exxon-Mobil, flare, or burn off the natural gas by-product of oil extraction. Experts in Nigerian say that the flares are changing the microclimate of the region, causing acid rain and polluting the air, soil and waterways. Included in the human rights delegation was Making Contact's managing director, Laura Livoti. Among the Nigerian women she spoke with was Grace Ikanum, a leader of the women's movement in Eket who told Livoti that seeing the effects of oil extraction on her community turned her into an activist. She was particularly outraged by Mobil's response to the largest oil spill in Nigerian history, the Edoho spill of January 1998, in which 1.6 million gallons of crude blackened many stretches of beach. In addition to the many environmental consequences, says Ekanum, the cost of living has increased dramatically. This at a time when traditional livelihoods depended on eating and trading fish and periwinkles have been undermined. As for the women, Ekanum says that they are redundant. Unable to trade fish for Niara, Nigeria's currency and provide for their family. Laura Livoti: Why did you become an activist? Grace Ekanum: I became an activist because of the problems, the cheats, we seem to see. After 30 years of exploration, our oil exploration, we still our people suffering, our children dying day in and day out. Our husbands don't have jobs. Our children don't have jobs. They will go to Universities, they will come back. They will have no jobs. And when they go to Mobil, Mobil will say we should go to aptitude test. And upon all the tests we do have we don't have any employment. And ..uh, what really brought me to be an activist for this oil something is because of the oil spill that happened on the 12th of January of 1998. That was the final camel's back -- that the final straw that broke the camel's back. Some many things went bad. So many things went bad. Our fishes -- the oil spill and our fishes all died in the waters. So that was what. And Mobil seemed to not to be concerned. They pretended that we did not know what was going on in the high sea. But we knew everything. That made us to fight for our rights. Laura Livoti: And have there been bad effects from the oil companies, particularly on the lives of the women? Grace Ekanum: There's a lot of it. Lot of them. Why? Because at least we are not going to the market anymore. We used to go to buy our fishes from the fisherman and would sell it in the markets. We used to go to pick the periwinkles on our shores to go make soups for our children. Now we can't even afford it again because one cup of milk, one cup of periwinkle cost for ten Niara. And if you go to Akwa Ibon or the rest of the places you can buy that for about a cup of, about 3 cups of milk, cup of periwinkle for 5 Niara but here is one cup for 10 Niara. And that is one of the effects on us. And our women seem to be redundant now. They don't have to do because most of them used be traders. They would trade on the fishes. They would trade on the vegetable on our farms. They would trade on the oil. Now all those things are all gone away and they seem to be redundant. They want to depend on the men and the men cannot even take care of them. So it is really telling bad on us, the women. Laura Livoti: And why did the cost of periwinkles go up in this area? Grace Ekanum: Well because of periwinkle up in this, our area, is because there is none. No more in the shores, in our shores. In our shores, where you want to cook even behind the back of your yard just go into the swamps you see periwinkles all over it. And you pick it and make your soup. Because of oil exploration, everything is just vanishing day in day out. I mean I just watching it vanishing. And we can even see it. And everything is just because of the oil. Oil pollution has killed everything and that is why we are suffering. Laura Livoti: What would you like from Mobil? Do you want them to go away? Do you want them to act differently? What are your demands of the oil company? Grace Ekanum: We don't want the gas flaring. They should turn the gas flaring into something else that can be useful for us like converting it into electricity for us. And the waste, the waste, the toxic waste like the water they normally send back to our rivers, our shores. I don't know how they can do it. Whether they can really return it back into the ground because we don't need it. They should not be pouring it back into the oceans so as to not kill our fishes. Kathryn Washington: Grace Ekanum, a leader of the Eket women's movement. Nigeria is composed of approximately 300 different ethnic groups, each with their own language, customs, religion and traditional governance structure. Many of those living within the country's boundaries identify with their ethnic nationality, not as Nigerians. Authorities in Nigeria and multinational corporations have used these cultural differences to play one group off of another with classic divide and conquer strategies. In fact, these tactics are sometimes employed within the same ethnic group. Take the case of a group of Egi youth who clash with Egi women. The Egi people of the Niger Delta live in an area where the French oil company Elf operates. Esther Elenwa of the Egi Women's movement is leading a campaign among the women in her community who are upset that Elf does not employ members of the Egi community. Esther Elenwa: I planned this. Look at the women who moved the action. This is the five women who moved (?) Who moved the action. We moved from village to village for a form of campaign calling the women out like, there is a problem. By that time our children are not getting a job. No matter how you school, no matter how graduated you are, you never get a job in Egi land. But, our children can never get a job in this oil company. That is what brings the annoyance. Kathryn Washington: In Nigeria, not only are there separations among different ethnic groups, but there is a large divide between the predominantly Muslim ruling class in the North of the country and the predominantly Christian resource rich South. Elenwa explains that her first trip to Abuja, the capital of Nigeria, where she saw paved roads, running water and electricity, opened her eyes to the fact that the Delta communities in the South are not receiving any of the financial benefits of oil production. Instead, she realized that the money flowing to the Nigerian government from oil sales is disproportionately invested in the North. Esther Elenwa: Like three years ago I went to Abuja. When I went to Abuja I see the oil money that is working in Abuja, there's not any oil well in Abuja. And when I went around Abuja, I did not see any oil well in Abuja. That's why when I came back I told my people, come, our money are going. We don't enjoy our money, we don't have roads, we don't have anything. Kathryn Washington: Elenwa says that in 1993 Elf made an agreement with the Egi people which stipulated that the company would provide electricity, running water and paved roads to the community in exchange for access to the oil on Egi lands. Six years later, in 1999, when those promises remained unfulfilled the Egi women went back to Elf to demand a new agreement that included specific time commitments. Esther Elenwa: We demand for the lights. We demand for the road. We demand for the water! They said they would do in principle. We said no, we don't like principle. Said now or tomorrow or next tomorrow I will do! Kathryn Washington: To convince Elf to take their demands seriously, Elenwa organized a 5,000 woman march and shut down Elf's operations. According to Elenwa, Elf paid a group of Egi youth to disrupt their demonstration. She says that the young people fought with the women physically causing some of the women to lose the wrappers that they wear as skirts. And the youth called in the police. Elenwa says that the police focused their attention on the women and ignored the youths. Esther Elenwa: They attacked the women. They did not attack the youths. They attacked the women. When the youth brought them, they attack us. Kathryn Washington: But the women held their ground and protected each other from arrest Esther Elenwa: We did not allow him to take any women. So when the police went to hold some women, we bounced on him. So after that the policemen see that the women are so serious, so they have to leave us and call the youth out and speak to them. Kathryn Washington: Undaunted, the Egi women developed a charter of demands and presented it to Elf. Claiming that they can only sign an agreement with men, the Elf management refused to speak with the women. Instead Elf is seeking a less substantial agreement with the youths. According to Elenwa, Elf has paid the youths 2 million Niara, or 20,000 U.S. dollars to sign the agreement. Elenwa points out that in Nigeria it is customary that such an agreement be made with the elders of the community. Traditionally, only the elders have authority to make agreements on behalf of the community. Esther Elenwa: We have been seeking dialogue with the ELF Petroleum Nigeria Unlimited but they refuse to listen to us. So what they did is that when they see that the women pressure was too much, they have to go and call the youth out. So when we went to the Elf management, I said, "Why should you do this to us?" They said that they need the youth to talk to, that they cannot talk with the women. That is what they said. That they cannot talk with us. And they cannot sign an agreement with us. That they need the men to sign the agreement. And I said we have chiefs, we have the elders. Not the youths. We should call the elders so that the elder will have the agreement with you. And the elder knows of our problem than the youths. They said they need only the youths. I asked them so many questions before they told me that they give the youths two million. I said that means that you give the youths two million to come and kill us. But they are youth. When they see the money, their head big. (Sound of music and singing) Kathryn Washington: Singing was the Grass Roots Development Organization, a women's group in Cross River State, Nigeria. Joi Yowika: I've done a lot of cases for the rights of women. Kathryn Washington: Joi Yowika, Nigerian attorney and member of the minority Ogoni ethnic group is speaking with Laura Livoti. Joi Yowika: Basically staff of multinational oil companies like Shell, taking advantage of the poverty of our people and the young girls that exist. For instance, they get them pregnant and walk away, walk back to their countries. They get these girls -- introduce them to drugs. Expatriates, mostly from multinational oil companies, you know, seducing these girls with money and having them sleep with their dogs, for instance. We've got photographs and we've got cases like that. Laura Livoti: The girls, are they involved with prostitution before they meet up with these expatriate white oil workers? Joi Yowika: No, they're not prostitutes. They never have been. Well, they're usually never prostitutes until they meet these white men who get them into these acts. Laura Livoti: And what is it that causes these girls to become prostitutes after they meet these men? Joi Yowika: Poverty, basically poverty. Poverty of the people of the Niger Delta, particular reference to the Ogoni people. Kathryn Washington: Rural community after rural community show the human rights delegation streams and ponds that are their sole source of drinking water. These waters, dark with the flickering rainbows indicative of oil slicks are all that a community has for washing and drinking. Annie Brisibe is a member of the Ijaw minority ethnic group in the Nigerian delta. Brisibe who sits on the Executive Committee of the Ijaw Youth Council and is the President of Niger Delta Women for Justice, says infants are dying from exposure to polluted water. Annie Brisibe: When these women lose their babies, they just?they kind of say it's witchcraft or something because that's the belief, but it's not. The reason is because the women drink from the river. The babies' food is from the river. Whatever food they use for the child is from the river. They bathe the children with the river water, and you very well know that the river water is extremely polluted. And at the end of the day you have lots of skin diseases, cholera, diarrhea. No medicine. No drugs to take care of these children. And before you know what's happening many children are gone. Kathryn Washington: Brisibe goes on to explain that the difficulties confronting Nigerian women are not only the result of multinational companies, but also of traditional culture. Annie Brisibe: A part of traditional cultures and norms and all that that mitigates against the development of the Delta women, our men have a habit of marrying so many wives. And they have this habit of like, the woman is under a man. Not even beside a man. Can you believe that? Kathryn Washington: Ogoni attorney, Joi Yowika addresses the question of polygamy. Laura Livoti: Sometimes in the United States we hear the argument that we shouldn't make judgments about another culture and that that's the way it's done, and that as feminists it's inappropriate for us to say that that's not right. That the women there, maybe that's the way they want it to be. What's your impression? Joi Yowika: It's completely unacceptable to every Nigerian woman. Even women that were born into polygamy. Like I was born into a polygamous home. My father had another wife besides my mother. And it was never acceptable to my mother. She couldn't cope with it. And I've spoken with a lot of other women that are, like, into polygamy as well, and they're not happy. Kathryn Washington: Brisibe, now the Assistant Secretary General in the Executive Committee or Ex Com, the governing body of the Ijaw Youth Council, is the first woman ever elected to the body. She describes the reaction of her male colleagues to the election news. Annie Brisibe: Well, it's quite interesting that for an organization like the Ijaw Youth Council that I am a member of the Ex-Com. It wasn't?well it was a little bit... shaky at first, because when I was elected, I was elected into the position of Assistant Secretary General in absentia. I was very tired during the convention so I just went somewhere to put my head, because it went all through the night. Once I went to put my head on my pillow, and I came back and heard, "You're the new assistant secretary general." And I heard later there were so many men saying, "How can she be there? How can you put a woman in this kind of struggle? A woman is not supposed to be there? She's going to tell all her secrets to her boyfriend." Seriously you know, I smiled when I heard it. I said I think the only thing I can do is -- they said the next meeting we have, they were going to impeach me. I never even started, and they're going to impeach me. And I said who ever had the guts to do it, I hope he stands up to try to say something about my being in the Ex Com - and would ask if the oil belongs to only men. Kathryn Washington: The energetic Brisibe uses her education and skills to improve the lot of Nigerian Delta women. Annie Brisibe: We have been trying as much as we can by using campaigns in communities and doing our meetings to also mobilize women to also get involved in the process and also take it back home. It's more or less like training of trainers. They take it back home and they continue the process of reorientation, creating awareness, the reasons why a women should know her rights. You should be able to differentiate between why I am a woman and why I should do this. And why the culture should not be used against my development. So those are basically the things we are trying to do. And also to make the Nigerian man, specifically the Delta man understand that the woman is no second fiddle. Stephanie Welch: You're listening to Making Contact, a production of the National Radio Project. If you'd like to get in touch with us we'll be giving out our toll-free number at the end of this broadcast. Singing was Abakan Afutap, a women's organization in Cross River State, Nigeria. Kathryn Washington: Like Annie Brisibe, many Nigerian women are taking matters into their own hands and working to change customs oppressive to women, including seeking office in the local village councils from which they have been excluded. Nigerian women are also leading efforts to empower one another economically by creating alternative sources of livelihood. Laura Livoti spoke with Gloria Monn, the head of the Grassroots Development Organization about her work on behalf of village women in Cross River State, Nigeria. Gloria Monn: A typical Nigerian man thinks that a woman's voice is better not to be heard. A woman is better, to be heard?to be seen than to be heard. So most of our women especially in the rural areas--all they do is take care of their children, go to their farm. In fact, they are used as beasts of burden. And all the decisions taken in the community is taken by the men and handed down to the women. Even when the decisions affect the women and their children. Men take those decisions and hand them down to the women. And so, my organization thinks that it is time for the women in the community to rise up and be part of what happens in the community. Laura Livoti: And you're actually advocating that women be included in the traditional governing structure of the village, is that correct? The village council? And women have never been included in that council in the past, have they? Gloria Monn: No. Women are never included in the council. Laura Livoti: If you had to guess, how long do you think it will take before there's a woman on the village council? Gloria Monn: Even if it takes 10 years, 20 years, but we know definitely it will make progress --slowly, slowly. Laura Livoti: And in the U.S. there is a phenomena that we call backlash. When women start organizing that there is a backlash to that, where men and maybe even conservative women take the agenda. We, maybe the feminists, move the agenda three steps forward, and then the backlash takes it two steps back. Do you experience the same thing in your community? Gloria Monn: Of course, we do. Well, most of the women say that it is not feminine for women for instance to do some of the things that men do. And some of them say they would rather stay at home and take care of their children while their husbands go out and do things to bring home maybe a means of livelihood for the family. They think it is not feminine to do that. And some of them think that when they do that, their husbands will not love them. You know that their husbands will not regard them as a weaker sex and love them. Laura Livoti: When I was visiting your village, I saw that you had certain poverty alleviation projects to empower the women like, for example, you had classes on sewing. Can you talk about that a little bit, that element of your program? Gloria Monn: OK. Essentially the women in my community, they are hard working. They work in their farms, and from January to December they labor. They toil in their farms with their bare hands. And at the end of the year they get little or nothing from their farms. And what they get is barely enough to sustain their families -- to take care of their children. And you know many, in our society, men are free to marry as many wives as they can. So every woman struggles for her own children, and most of the women -- they get sick, old, tired because they labor all the year around, and they get very little. So my organization thought that the best thing to do will be for this type of women at the period where they have sewn their crops and they are waiting for it to grow, they could use that period to do other things to give them money. We also thought that the young girls who drop out of school. Most of them drop out of school because, once again, their mothers who take on the responsibility of taking care of their own children, don't have enough to support them in school. So most of these young girls drop out of school. They take to prostitution in order to support their mothers, and so you have early pregnancies as a result of that. So we also thought that this kinds of girls could be helped, could be taught to sew. So what we did in that direction was that we discovered one of the women in the village who had gone out to the town to learn to sew. And she sews very, very well. And so...but she did not have facilities to train. She had one little verandah where she sat, and she was sewing for people and making some money. So we approached her, and we asked her if we could give her a bigger space, and then we get some machines for her, one or two machines for her to help to train some girls. And she accepted, so we got a place, the place you saw. The place is not big enough, but that could take a few girls at this time. So we got... she agreed to commence. So right now we have three girls that she is training. But she's willing to take more if we can have, you know, more equipment, and if we can have a bigger space for her to do that. Laura Livoti: And you're hoping to create some kind of a center, is that correct? Gloria Monn: Yes. Last year the community was very impressed with what we are doing. The community gave us a large parcel of land. Very big parcel of land. On that land, we hope to have agro-forestry projects. And then part of the land we hope to build a vocational center, so that we can enlarge the place to take many girls. Laura Livoti: And what other projects like that are you engaged in to help girls empower themselves economically? Gloria Monn: OK, Last year, my organization sent out three girls to be trained by some reverend sisters. Taught them catering and home or hotel management, and then those girls have qualified and we trained them as trainers, so they could come back to the community to train other girls. Because we discovered it would be cheaper for us to train our own girls from that community. It will be...it will make learning for all the girls easier if they learn from their own kind. Kathryn Washington: Sharing a common set of demands, communities want the oil companies to stop flaring gas, clean up the oil spills and to provide them with running water, electricity and roads. For a free copy of the report produced by the human rights delegation coordinated by Global Exchange and Essential Action, or to find out more about women's initiatives in Nigeria please call the National Radio Project. You'll hear our toll free number in a moment. That's it for this edition of Making Contact. Thanks for listening. And special thanks to Theya Kanagaratnam, Victoria Fernandez, Rosie Reyes and Lisa Rudman. Producers of this special program are the National Radio Project's Women's Desk are Laura Livoti and Shereen Maraji. I'm your host, Kathryn Washington. Phillip Babich: Laura Livoti is our managing director. Phillip Babich is managing producer. Peggy Law, executive director. Associate producer, Stephanie Welch. Senior advisor, Norman Solomon. National producer, David Barsamian. Women's Desk coordinator, Lisa Rudman. Prison Desk coordinator, Eli Rosenblatt. Production assistant, Shereen Meraji. Archivist, Din Abdullah. If you want more information about the subject of this week's program call the National Radio Project at 800-529-5736. Call that same phone number for tapes and transcripts. That's 800-529-5736. You can also go to our web site at www.radioproject.org. That's www.radioproject.org. Making Contact is an independent production. We're committed to providing a forum for voices and opinions not often heard in the mass media. If you have suggestions for future programs we'd like to hear from you. Our theme music is by the Charlie Hunter Trio. Bye for now. |