Multinational oil firms airlifted hundreds of women, children and elderly to safety on Thursday from fighting that has razed villages and disrupted the companies’ operations in the petroleum-rich Niger Delta.
ChevronTexaco, Royal/Dutch Shell and the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation flew their cargo of weeping residents by helicopter from remote oil facilities, where the people had taken refuge from the fighting, to the southern port city of Warri.
At least eight villages and one oil facility have been destroyed in battles involving Nigerian soldiers and Ijaw and Itsekiri ethnic militants. Hundreds of troop reinforcements have been rushed to the region in recent days.
Although the exact number of dead is unknown, residents fleeing the region reported scores killed. George Timinimi, an activist with the Federated Niger Delta Ijaw Communities, said he and other militants fought a pitched battle with Nigerian navy troops on Thursday at Okerenkoko, a village south of Warri.
Fifty of his fighters died in the battle, he said by satellite phone as the sound of gunfire rattled in the background.
”We’re fighting the military with stones and pebbles,” he said.
Other witnesses said the militants are armed with automatic rifles and machetes.Navy spokesperson Shinebi Hungiapuko said he could not confirm whether fighting had occurred, but stressed Nigerian troops ”have not attacked anybody”.
Timinimi’s account couldn’t be independently verified.Villagers were fleeing the region of swampy waterways and few roads on Thursday.
Pa Aruwayo, a frail 78-year-old, spent two nights hiding in the mangrove forest after rival Ijaws attacked his Itsekiri village of Ugborodu Monday.
Relatives carried him to ChevronTexaco’s Escravos export terminal on Wednesday, and he was airlifted to Warri Thursday.
Shell was ”committed” to continuing ferrying non-combatants to safety ”as necessary” even after one of its helicopters came under fire and was hit by a bullet on Tuesday, company spokesman Harriman Uyofo said.
No one was injured in the incident and the helicopter landed safely.
The violence has forced the closure of oil facilities representing nearly one-tenth of Nigeria’s two million barrels-a-day oil production. Nearly all the West African country’s oil comes from the Niger Delta.
Nigeria is the world’s sixth-largest oil producer and fifth-largest supplier to the United States.
Shell, which drills half of Nigeria’s oil, has evacuated dozens of workers and shut 10 pipeline facilities that produce 126 000 barrels of oil a day. ChevronTexaco has shut three facilities accounting for 30 000 barrels a day, the company said.
Both companies are boosting production at other facilities to help make up the shortfall.
TotalFinaElf cut 40 000 barrels a day from its Nigerian production after hundreds of youths surrounded its facilities near the town of Ogbodu, officials said Thursday.
The youths accused TotalFinaElf of reneging on an agreement to supply jobs and amenities to the community. The protest was apparently unrelated to the violence more than 200 kilometres to the west.
The fighting began on March 12 when two soldiers and five civilians died during a shootout between Nigerian navy troops and ethnic Ijaw fighters at Okerenkoko village near Warri.
Residents fleeing the area have said they fear revenge attacks by the military akin to massacres by soldiers in 1999 and 2001 that left hundreds of unarmed villagers dead. In both earlier cases, the soldiers were retaliating for the murders of security forces.
Hundreds of heavily armed soldiers have been deployed to the delta recently, reinforcing 10 000 troops based there.
The Ijaw and the Urhobo, two of the region’s largest ethnic groups, accuse President Olusegun Obasanjo’s government of colluding with minority Itsekiris to draw up unfavourable voting boundaries ahead of next month’s elections.
Three senior Ijaw chiefs called on members of their tribe Wednesday to ”lay down your arms”.
Yet an influential Ijaw politician speaking on condition of anonymity Thursday said his supporters were determined to ”die for our rights”.
The violence comes after several political assassinations stoked ethnic and political tensions throughout Africa’s most populous nation of 120 million people. Presidential elections are scheduled for April 19.
More than 10 000 people have been killed in political, ethnic and religious violence since Obasanjo’s 1999 election ended more than 15 years of brutal military rule.
Oil companies in the Niger Delta frequently come under assault by activists and thugs, who sabotage pipelines and kidnap company employees in a bid to extort company payoffs. – Sapa-AP