AP News, January 16th, 2007
Royal Dutch Shell evacuated staff from two oil installations in southern Nigeria and the military boosted troop levels in the volatile area Tuesday after a dozen village elders were killed in a riverboat attack, officials said.
Bisi Ojediran, a spokesman for Shell PLC, said only a skeleton crew remained at the two evacuated pipeline hubs in the Niger Delta region, a vast area of mangrove swamps where all of the crude in Africa's largest producer is pumped.
Production had not been affected by the clashes, which Ojediran characterized as a community fight. He gave no details of how many staff were evacuated.
"This seems to be an inter-community problem and not a direct attack on the oil company by militants," he said.
Irejua Barasua, a spokeswoman for police in Rivers state where the attack took place, said that 12 chiefs from various delta communities were killed overnight Sunday when assailants attacked their boat.
They had been traveling together to the scene of an attack days earlier on another chieftain. Clan and village elders, or chiefs, commonly act as mediators during community disputes in the region. They have no formal government title, drawing their influence instead from their age and experience.
Power struggles over local chieftaincies and associated payments from oil companies are common in Nigeria's oil-rich but impoverished Delta region.
The location of the clashes is strategically important, lying on the main route of rivers and creeks for oil workers and supplies between oil centers in Rivers and Bayelsa states.
A leader of Nigeria's military force in the region said extra troops were being deployed to the area, though he declined to say how many. "There's a total breakdown of law and order ... and we had to act fast," Brig. Gen. Samuel Salihu told The Associated Press.
Violence is increasing in Nigeria ahead of April's elections, when the majority of the current government will have to step down due to term limits.
Stepped-up attacks by militants demanding a greater share of oil revenues have cut nearly one-quarter of Nigeria's usual 2.5 million barrel daily crude output in the last year.
Despite being Africa's largest oil exporter and the fifth-largest supplier of crude to the United States, corruption and mismanagement has left most Nigerians mired in poverty. Many people see political appointments or traditional offices as one of the few ways to enrichment.
