14.2 OIL MINING IN THE NIGER DELTA: THE MORAL ISSUE
Nigeria has an undemocratic and corrupt political process. The willingness with which mining companies tend to exploit this process, springs from the historical entrenched culture of the Western oil companies in their relationships with third world countries. This oil industry culture is founded on five assumptions:
- that profit maximisation is the only basis upon which a company can be run, so that any expenditure beyond what is required to get out the oil is resisted;
- that a 'deal' can be made with governments only, regardless of the government's legality or morality, and regardless also of the wishes or needs of the Local People;
- that once an arrangement has been made with a government a mining company can do what it likes-in fact, to act as if it is a government agency;
- that the 'market' (i.e. the industrialised world) has a right to have the resources it wants, at the lowest possible price, and regardless of the costs to the Local People who are obliged to play host to mining companies; and
- that 'we', the mining companies, know best and are acting responsibly.
Generally, neither the companies nor the governments with whom they associate, (from both the first and the third worlds) are willing to accept any divergence from this culture which is re-enforced with a mixture of cynical public relations and intimidation. It is fair to say that the adverse impacts of mining upon the lives of host communities (and, for that matter, the extravagant use of mineral resources by the industrialised world) arises more from this immoral culture (this wickedness) than from anything else. Thus, until there is a culture shift by mining companies towards an acceptance of some of the moral responsibility for the injustices that the host communities suffer, mining will continue to be an activity that is at best unwelcomed, and in most cases feared by Local People. This fear is especially the case in countries where governments are able to act with impunity against the interests of their own citizens.
As described in the next chapter, there is no doubt that the oil industry has a significant adverse environmental impact upon the Niger Delta. This not only damages human ecosystems, leading to deprivation and environmental health problems, but it also distorts social conditions. This distortion of social conditions in turn influences political conditions in terms of people's views about their ability to change the society in which they live and the degree to which these views translate into tension between different groups within society.
This does not mean that the oil mining industry is the cause of all the problems in the Niger Delta, but it does mean that conditions are simpley worse than they would be without the industry.
In order to appreciate the impact of that the oil industry has upon the human ecology of the Niger Delta, one requires an understanding not only of the underlying human ecological conditions of the area (the overall aim of this book) but also of the nature of the Nigerian oil industry itself. The following sections aim to bring the reader to such an understanding.
