Niger Delta Quotes

It is the duty of youths to war against indiscipline and corruption because they are the leaders of tomorrow.

None of this is to deny that the Niger Delta has made mistakes. It has, and a good number at that. But then, mistakes are made to make wiser and therefore help in better decision making.

The Niger delta as a matter of urgency needs to re-think its development strategy by developing her non-oil sectors. There is no easy way out of this, and we will all see that at the end it is the only way out.

Everybody looks at oil and almost entirely forget that the percentage of jobs the oil sector creates is relatively small compared to the population; the introduction of more sophisticated exploration methods makes it even worse. Oil companies now look for smarter, leaner and cheaper operations. Where will these leave the economy? Good disposable income to the government with no real value to the people of the Niger Delta.

After years of watching their patrimony squandered in this way, a large percentage of the [Niger] Delta's population feels abandoned by both national and local politicians, and has settled on illegal bunkering as the most direct way to ensure that they benefit from their own oil wealth. The trouble is that what started as activism has become an industry. In the words of one activist, 'It is becoming increasingly difficult to separate greed from grievance.

that night she dreamed of employing an army of women cleaners who would set forth across the planet on a mission to clean up all the damage done to the environment they came from all over Africa and from North and South and South America, they came from India and China and all over Asia, they came from Europe and the Middle East, from Oceania, and from the Antarctic, too she imagined them all descending in their millions on the Niger Delta and driving out the oil companies with their mop and broom handles transformed into spears and poison-tipped swords and machine guns she imagined them demolishing al the equipment used for oil production, including the flare stacks that rose into the skies to burn the natural gas, her cleaners setting charges underneath each one, detonating from a safe distance and watching them being blown up she imagined the local people cheering and celebrating with dancing, drumming and roasted fish she imagined the international media filming it- CNN, BBC, NBC she imagined the government unable to mobilize the poorly paid local militia because they were terrified by the sheer numbers of her Worldwide Army of Women Cleaners who could vaporize them with their superhuman powers afterwards, she imagined legions of singing women sifting the rivers and creeks to remove the thick slicks of grease that had polluted them and digging up the land until they'd removed the toxic sublayers of soil she imagined the skies opening when the job was fone and the pouring of pure water from the now hygienic clouds for as long as it took for the region to be thoroughly cleansed and replenished

It’s this idea that you can support a health initiative in Nigeria on the Niger Delta to reduce disease or diarrhea or whatever, and you can also make an investment in a company that is a polluter in the Niger Delta.

The Isoko remained one of Niger Delta's unique tribe with almost every migration made from a Royal family. I consider the Isoko people a Royal Clan

João Afonso wanted pepper, as West African spices – the Malagetta (Aframomum melegueta) and Ashanti or Benin pepper (Piper guineense) – were much in demand in Europe, bringing pungent aromas and strong flavours to dull cuisine. But above all, he was looking for slaves. This was not yet for a transatlantic trade, but as part of a barter process along the West African coast; the Portuguese exchanged slaves they bought in the Bight of Benin for gold with the Fante people on the Costa da Mina (what the English called the Gold Coast).1 Indeed, the Niger Delta rivers to the south of Benin were already known as ‘the slave rivers’.

… my father thought the whole idea was absurd. He refused to identify the stream he had crossed at Bomako, where it is no deeper, he said, than a man is high, with the great widespread waters of the vast Niger delta. Distances as measured in miles had no meaning for him … Maps are liars, he told me briefly. From his tone of voice I could tell that I had offended him in some way not known to me at the time. The things that hurt one do not show on a map. The truth of a place is in the joy and the hurt that come from it. I had best not put my trust in anything as inadequate as a map, he counseled … I understand now, although I did not at the time, that my airy and easy sweep of map-traced staggering distances belittled the journeys he had measured on tired feet. With my big map-talk, I had effaced the magnitude of his cargo-laden, heat-weighted treks.