Niger Delta

“ Given the poverty outlined above and visible injustice in the distribution of wealth in the Niger Delta, is it any wonder that there are so many manifestations of discontent with, and disrespect for those who are in authority? ”

“ This illusion, of empty land, is the problem of modern people in the Niger Delta which is seen as the place where economic problems can be solved: where additional food can be grown and where valuable mineral resources can be extracted cheaply. Development of the Niger Delta may indeed be one of the solutions but because it looks large and empty the answer is seen in terms of large-scale developments that by nature are careless of the local people and the environment. ”

“ Numerous examples of development projects in the Niger Delta (indeed throughout Nigeria, Africa and the world) have failed because the development process is in the hands of outsiders. However well-meaning, most outside agents eventually leave and have no permanent commitment to places which are not their own. ”

“ Sir Percy Girouard and others have warned the public against confusing Northern and Southern Nigeria, and running away with the idea that there is no great difference between them. As Colonel Mockler-Ferryman says: “Commencing with what is called the Niger Delta, we have a land of swamps and impenetrable forests, intersected by a vast network of streams and creeks and inhabited by numerous pagan tribes addicted to every species of vile custom, including even cannibalism and human sacrifices.... ”

“ The Niger Delta is a young, complex and dynamic ecosystem which can be understood in terms of five prime ecozones, unique to it, as described in Chapters 5-9. With the exception of the Estuaries and Offshore-Waters ecozone, the Niger Delta lies within the West African tropical rainforest biome, so that regardless of the human impact, the natural climatic climax vegetation is tropical rainforest. ”

“ Similarly, the estuaries/inshore waters ecosystems form an ecotone between the sea itself and the brackish-water ecosystems further inland.
The natural Estuaries and Inshore Waters ecozone covers roughly a quarter of the whole surface area of the Niger Delta. If the Delta is seen as the drainage 'sink' for much of Nigeria and other parts of West Africa, via the Niger River system, then the estuaries and inshore waters ecosystem is like a series of drainage holes through which everything passes on its way to the deeper sea. ”

“ ERA is constantly asked for information about the Niger Delta, based upon its work in the area since 1993. Thus we are issuing a first edition of the ERA Handbook to the Niger Delta, despite the book's many imperfections. Moreover, although ERA by no means claim to have the last word on the subject of the Niger Delta, we feel we have a duty to make available all the information we have to as wide a public as we can. ”

“ In theory Nigeria is a Federal Republic where states have certain powers of government, which is supposed to come directly to the people through local government institutions. In practice, at least as far as the Niger Delta is concerned, Nigeria is a very centralised state, with state administrations operating as puppets of the central authority: Rivers, Bayelsa and Delta States, for instance, at the time of writing, have military administrators. ”

“ Each ecozone has different agricultural potentials and problems. Inevitably the Niger Delta will be, and with proper planning it has the ability to be, a major producer of food, especially fish, rice and palm oil. ”

“ With the advent of viable society in the Sand-Barrier Islands of the Niger Delta, at least 5000 years ago, the natural ecosystem of Akassa began to be substantially altered: the very accessibility of the Niger Delta estuaries and their abundance of fish would have made them especially attractive to human activity. ”

“ Rising sea levels resulting from global warming The 1995 World Bank Report suggests that the Niger Delta is particularly at risk because of its low elevation. A 1m rise in sea level would flood 18,000 km2 of Nigeria, severely disrupting the oil and gas industry, forcing up to 80% of the delta’s population to relocate, in addition to destroying much agricultural land, forests and fisheries. ”

“ The assumption that population densities are low in the brackish and fresh-water ecozones of the Niger Delta is an illusion: population densities on land that can be settled are high.
Like in many other areas of the world, the regions where oil is found in this country are very inhospitable. ”

“ It is, on the contrary, astonishing, his circumstances being what they are, that the native of the Niger delta should have developed as keen a commercial instinct as can be met with anywhere on the globe, and that through his voluntary labours, inspired by the necessities and luxuries of barter, he should be contributing so largely to supply the oils, fats, and other tropical products which Western industrialism requires. ”

“ In this sense the mangroves of the Niger Delta are one of the most productive ecosystems in Africa, and are the beginning of a food chain that supports all the rich fishing grounds of the Bight of Guinea. ”

“ Thus the present state of the ecological resources and land-use of the Niger Delta is best understood in terms of:
the natural ecosystems; human economic impact; society; and the resulting human landscape. ”

“ In the Niger Delta, an expanding poor and urban population makes most resource and land use decisions. Their decisions are being driven by lack of development, stagnant agricultural productivity, negligible opportunities in urban areas, rapid population growth, tenuous property rights... ”

“ A good example of this is the environmental problems which have arisen from the unprecedented population increase of the past forty years. Undoubtedly the oil industry has encouraged large-scale inward migration into the Niger Delta, but even without the industry there would have been a rapid increase in the number of people living in the area just as there has been in the rest of the country. ”

“ If the forests of the Niger Delta are to survive into the 21st century, then their true economic value must be understood by all who are in a position to influence their use. An understanding of their economic value is not enough, and financial management needs to be reformed in order to ensure that there is a real financial incentive for the political controllers of the forest not to destroy them unnecessarily. ”

“ This very is true of the Niger Delta, where mankind's exploitation of the landscape has influenced most areas. The mangrove forests are perhaps the least cultured part of the landscape, but even they have been influenced by mankind for thousands of years.
3.3 THE HUMAN LANDSCAPE: ECONOMIC ACTIVITY AND SOCIETY
Most landscapes, even those that seem to be entirely natural, are a manifestation of human ecosystems which have arisen out of mankind's dynamic relationship with natural ecosystems. ”

“ The condition of these forests is that some are lost to agro-industrial rice and oil palm, small-farmer rice, urban uses, and oil extraction related activities. All accessible areas are depleted, and are cultured close to settlements. In less accessible areas the forest is depleted or natural.
Within the Niger Delta, these forests probably have the highest economic value in terms of all forest resources, particularly timber, but they are under greatest threat from both small farmer and agro-industrial agricultural expansion. ”

“ Trade with the outer world which the merchant—himself working under conditions of supreme discomfort, and in constant ill-health—has brought; improved means of communication through the clearing and mapping of creeks and channels, thereby giving accessibility to new markets which the Administration is yearly creating—these are the civilizing agents of the Niger delta, the only media whereby its inhabitants can hope to attain to a greater degree of ease and a wider outlook. ”

“ Progress was always most rapid in the interior, where were first constituted national groups sufficiently powerful and industrious to play an important part in the history of mankind, and transmit their fame to remote regions. While such nations were being developed along the Middle Niger, the natives of the delta remained in a barbarous state, blocking the approach to the sea from the civilised inland peoples. ”

“ Moreover the Forcados bar shifts little laterally, and within the bar is a natural harbour with an area of 3 to 4 sq. m. having a depth of 30 ft. at low water spring tides. From the mouth of the Forcados to the main stream is 105 m., with a minimum depth in the dry season of 7 ft. A northern arm affords ocean-going vessels access to Wari and Sapele. The other western mouths of the Niger have as a rule shallow and difficult bars. The delta is the largest in Africa and covers 14,000 sq. m.
The Benue is by far the most important of the affluents of the Niger. ”

“ The delta region is swampy, and forms, for a distance of from 40 to 70 m. inland, a network of interlacing creeks and broad sluggish channels fringed with monotonous mangrove forests. The main rivers are navigable for ocean-going steamers for a distance of from 15 to 40 m. from their mouths. Beyond the delta firm ground takes the place of mud and the mangroves disappear. The land rises gradually at first, becoming, however, in many districts very hilly, and is covered with dense forests. The Niger at its confluence with the Benue is not more than 250 ft. ”

“ Leaving the Dahomey kingdom, we reach the dead levels of the delta of the Niger, which has twenty-two main channels, separated by swamps of mangrove trees.
The navigation of the Niger is now carried on by a half dozen or more light steamers. These ascend the current from the Atlantic to the factories situated at the junction with the Binue, and even farther up both streams. These steamers carry on an exchange of European goods for ivory, palm oil, and butter from the olivelike seeds of the butter tree. ”

“ That human industry will one day level these forests, drain these swamps, and cover this soil with luxuriant harvests, we may confidently anticipate; but many ages must probably elapse before man, in Africa, can achieve such a victory over nature.
The Niger, besides its own ample stream, has a number of tributaries, equal perhaps in magnitude and importance to those of any other river on the globe; with the exception of the united streams of the Mississippi and Missouri. At no great distance above the point where the Delta commences, the Tshadda, nearly equal in magnitude to itself, enters it ”

“ In one expedition after another sent out from the island of Ascension, nine white men out of ten fell victims to the “beautiful, but awful climate.”
Nevertheless, news from the interior more or less distinct has found its way over this belt of danger and death. Being a land of mystery, it should be borne in mind that there is a strong tendency to exaggeration in all that comes from it. The Niger, one of the noblest of rivers, skirts this unknown country for some hundreds of miles, after sweeping away through the middle portion of Central Africa already described. ”

“ Indeed, people at home can have no conception of the natural difficulties under which the administrator, the merchant, and, for that matter, the native also, labour in carrying out their respective tasks and avocations in the deltaic and forest regions of Nigeria. For six months in the year a very large portion of the Central and Eastern Provinces is partially submerged. The Niger overflows its banks, every forest rivulet becomes a river, the creeks and channels spread their waters upon the land, the forest is flooded over an enormous area, and the pathways intersecting it are impassable. ”

“ This region—apparently the Wangara country of Idrisi—is sometimes called Bambara, the name of the chief race inhabiting it. The lakes or widening of the Niger itself occupy vast areas; Lake Debo, the Lake of Horo, the Lake of Dauna, Lake Faguibini are all to the south or west of Timbuktu, and are permanent. The greater part of the colony lies within the bend of the Niger, but westward it includes both banks of the Senegal as far as the Faleme confluence. It also extends north of the Niger so as to include the fertile land on the borders of the Sahara. ”

“ I. According to the oldest of these opinions, and that which is supported by the greatest authorities (being the opinion not only of some of the principal Geographers of antiquity, but of D'Anville and Rennell among the moderns) , it is supposed, that the Niger has an inland termination somewhere in the eastern part of Africa, probably in Wangara or Ghana: and that it is partly discharged into inland lakes, which have no communication with the sea, and partly spread over a wide extent of level country, and lost in sands or evaporated by the heat of the sun. ”

“ Amongst the states mentioned, were Kashna, Kano, Daura, Solan, Noro, Nyffe, Cabi, Zanfara and Guber. Most or all of these were tributary to Bornou, described as decidedly the most powerful kingdom in central Africa, and which really was so regarded before the rise of the Fellatah empire caused in this respect, a remarkable change. The Niger, according to the unanimous belief in the northern provinces, was said to flow from Timbuctoo eastward through Houssa, and holding the same direction till it joined or rather became the Bahr-elabiad, the main stream of the Egyptian Nile. ”

“ The Niger, or as the natives call it, the Joliba, or Quorra, is not connected with the Nile, and does not lose itself in the desert sands or in the waters of Lake Tchad; it flows in a number of different branches into the ocean on the coast of the Gulf of Guinea, at the point known as Cape Formosa. The entire glory of this discovery, foreseen though it was by scientific men, belongs to the Brothers Lander. The vast extent of country traversed by the Niger between Yaoorie and the sea was completely unknown before their journey. ”