Article published in The Nation Newspaper

23/06/2010

Is it not a pity that 92 days to 1-10-2010, politicians in Nigeria are playing impeachment politics at state and national levels instead of providing power, light and water and books in schools. Have they heard of the American Mexican Gulf oil spill? Nothing is permanent. Unfortunately many millions of Americans will experience, directly and indirectly, what is routine to millions in the Niger Delta- an oilspill at an individual in-your-face-and-nose level. An oilspill is a very personal tragedy as tourists and tour businesses, fishermen, surfers, swimmers and animals are finding out as they lose simple pleasures of fresh clean water and beaches and annual incomes paralysing their business and family economic predictions stopping their mortgage, retirement and school fee payment plans. They are ‘lucky’ they are American and have Obama to fight for them in spite of the objections of the British press. Nigeria is awaiting its own anti-spill Obama since Ken Saro Wiwa was murdered. Nigerians in the Niger Delta will study the payouts to Americans and ask ‘Have Americans got two or three heads’ that they are paid not only for actual losses but also for potential loss of income and then so promptly and ‘generously’.

Obama has likened the spill to 9/11 in extent, the reach across the population, the collective trauma and the final cost as up to $20b+ for restitution to status quo ante. Only BP will be able to answer why it did not immediately recruit or adopt the simple and most obvious approach. That is gathering 10+ giant supertankers immediately positioned over the spill with hoses deep in the ocean. These would have sucked all the ‘water+ oil’ in the vicinity for settlement, oil floats on water, on board and simple ‘oil and water’ separation in the hold for a few hours and then pumping the separated water part back into the sea while retaining the oil for refining. This would have been an intelligent emergency approach which all oil companies, whether in America or the Niger Delta, do not do. It is said that every five days the same amount of oil leaks from the oil pipeline in the Mexican Gulf as the entire loss from the Exxon Valdez megaship spill. Imagine if that spill had been in the Niger Delta. Perhaps to suppress the information we would have executed all the Saro Wiwas by now in judicial executions for rumour mongering. How does this oil spill measure up to the ‘?hundreds?’ of oil spills in Nigeria which contaminate most of the Niger Delta but go uncleaned or undercleaned by design or by collusion between the oil companies and the cleanup companies?

The British anger at Obama over his urgent insistance that BP should be much quicker and more generous in offseting the damage now and in the future and even postpone their quartererly dividend payment is perhaps strange. So they even have quarterly dividend payments. Na wa O! The British anger borders on the ethnic and racist response to legitimate critisism. It is not Obama’s fault that the company at the centre of this gigantic, never seen before, ‘megaoilspill’ is known as BP and formerly was known as ‘British Petroleum’. This was from an era when it was fashionable to have ‘Royal Dutch Shell’ and co as means of demonstrating old national strategies and continuing national pride through corporate  world connections. If ‘British Petroleum’ was called ‘Big Petroleum’ or ‘Beta Petroleum’ the President of America would have railed against ‘Big Petroleum’ or ‘Beta Petroleum’ without a single mention of ‘British’. Sensitive people, companies and groups need to be cautious before calling things after themselves and their country remembering that the label may be let down and things can go wrong bringing the ‘name into disrepute’. Brand names like Dangote spring to mind as being in similar ‘danger’.

I do not think I would use my father’s name for a noodle –in case it poisoned someone. So BP shareholders while voting to postone their dividend payment must vote for a name change if only to protect the British public from being tarred with the same oily brush and being stained with the same oil spill. Of course if it had been an American company like Chevron or Exxon, President Obama may have toned down his message but he knows that 40% of BP is American and he is aware of the effect of his words on the share price especially one spilling oil at the rate of 60,000 barrels a day. BP did not accurately estimate the spill, some say deliberately or mistakenly underestimated it down to 5,000 barrels a day. Yet the obviously simple schoolboy calculation from velocity, time and diameter of the leak can be seen clearly by the ‘live video stream’.

This is not unusual for petroleum companies as anyone in the Niger Delta can testify. Imagine if such a spill had occured off the Bight of Benin. Only the victims can smell the oil, taste oil, see oil and calculate their personal losses.

The four major disasters of the recent past have cost the world dearly this 21st Century are 9/11, the banking mortage crisis, Icelandic Volcanic eruption and now the Gulf of Mexico pipeline rupture which transend politics. CountdowNigeria@50 -92 asks how do we get politicians in Africa to be of service in crises?