2003-01-23|12:12 p.m.
Girls and women aged from 10 to 70 in the southern Nigerian town of Warri are staging a protest today by blocking the river leading to the proposed naval base by preventing gunboats from passing through demanding more government aid for the region. They are rightfully upset. The Nigerian people as a whole do not get any benefits from the region's oil wealth and as a few bank in on the riches acquired from this raw good the people are without basic needs like food, hospitals, and schools.
This is said about the women:
"Our women are without fear. They are participating actively in our struggle and have embarked on this action without the use of arms, not even brooms," Mr. Kuku, spokesman for the Ijaw Youth Council, said.
In July sometime, these Nigerian women also occupied four oil facilities in Nigeria's coastal Delta State protesting at the pumping stations, run by ChevronTexaco. They got the oil company to promise to hire more than two dozen villagers and build schools, water systems and other amenities.
However, ChevronTexaco has yet to actually come through. And what is really sad is it doesn�t stop with this one. Shell has a long list of environmental atrocities in this region.
And the news has been talking lately of how Bush is going to give tax breaks for people who drive SUVs. Which, if it wasn�t already evident, will make the US a nation built upon companies (and other nations) that are basically unwilling to be responsible for the people that they exploit either through their lands, their work, their health or their lives.
But, there are other options for us, as US citizens. We can always flex our muscles too, like these women, and try to set things right.