Explosion rocks Warri

[Richard Akindele]

Barely two weeks after an explosion claimed lives in Port-Harcourt, Nigeria another one happened yesterday in Warri, Delta State.


The explosion occurred around the Tankers Park in the refinery area where a number of people were feared dead.

It could not be ascertained at press time what caused the Warri explosion and how many people actually died. But a source told Sunday Vanguard that like earlier one in Port-Harcourt, the explosion claimed lives..

Earlier in the month, precisely April 19th, bomb explosions rocked 2nd Amphibious Brigade Bori, Port Harcourt, Rivers State leaving two people dead and several others injured.

The Commander of the Brigade, Brigadier General Samuel Sanihu was to confirm the explosions revealing that it happened between 7.30 and 8.00 p.m. on April 19 and was detonated inside a Mercedes Benz car 200 model with registration No. DA 746KJA.

The Movement for the Emancipation of Niger Delta (MEND) later claimed responsibility for the bomb explosions when it said in an e-mail that it detonated 30 kg (66lb) dynamite using a celluler phone.

Source: Vanguard, Nigeria

[Richard Akindele]

If you've ever had the curious experience of being on both sides of the news, you will appreciate that there are times when this can be so disorienting you feel like Truman Burbank, who slowly discovers that he is a character in a television show.

I should point out that Truman Burbank, a.k.a. Jim Carrey, is the central character in the movie The Truman Show, but I had a Trumanesque insight last week when I received an e-mail from a radio producer at The Story with Dick Gordon, WUNC-FM.

"We'd like," explained Jon Bloom, "to tell the story of the Nigerian oil situation from a native Nigerian's perspective. . . .

I was wondering when you were last in Nigeria? We'd like to find someone who was recently in the Niger Delta and can speak on the situation there. A personal connection to the country and/or region is essential . . ."

Every now and again, I get this kind of enquiry and my response depends on all sorts of factors that are not important here, but the "native Nigerian" thing piqued my interest and I responded with a list of names and numbers, suggesting Mr. Bloom get back to me on my Nigerian cellphone if he had any further queries. As I expected, it wasn't long before I was speaking to Mr. Bloom on my "native Nigerian" cellphone.

After confirming my co-ordinates, Mr. Bloom wondered about life in my city after the bomb. "What bomb?!" I laughed. Now I'm trying to remember, looking back on it, whether Mr. Bloom saw the irony of my response, but I do recall that he calmly explained that a bomb had exploded at an army barracks in Port Harcourt that morning and that members of the rebel group MEND (Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta) were claiming responsibility.

As it happens, none of my colleagues in the building I work in had heard about the bomb, but a quick Internet search confirmed why my home city had been logged into the media diaries of local radio stations thousands of miles away.

It was then I realized, as I digested the news, that the convoy of bomb-disposal vehicles I had seen outside the army barracks on my way to the office that morning had created a ripple effect that triggered, among other things, the interest of a radio producer in North Carolina.

Such is the way with our connected world, where butterflies in the Amazon can cause tsunamis in Asia. But the big picture of this story is the geopolitics of crude oil that casts us all as characters in a global Truman Show.

Somewhere between the oil fields of the Niger Delta and the listeners of WUNC-FM is a chain of events that propels the bombing into an atmosphere filled with the competing interests of many stakeholders. For most of the people of the Niger Delta, trying to eke out a life from the misfortune of living on top of the huge oil and gas deposits that fuel the economies of Europe and North America, there is a direct and clear connection between the images of wealth that are piped back to Africa via television, to a bomb being detonated by militants outside an army barrack.

Joining the dots requires an understanding of colonial history and its residual impact on the world today and the political culture of Nigeria and the Niger Delta. It requires an understanding of the complex factors that determine the price of oil, from the nuclear standoff with Iran to Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez's manoeuvres against the U.S. State Department. It is a global chain of cause and effect, of supply and demand, that insists you look beyond selfish interests and agendas to see the larger picture.

So, when an e-mail from North Carolina lands in my in-box, it merely confirms my understanding of that picture. But I am curious how the listener in North Carolina sees it, and whether they see it, as I do -- as a map of a world where North Carolina is a suburb of Port Harcourt. And that there is trouble brewing in the ghettoes.

There is actually a part of me that wishes North Carolina and Port Harcourt were not connected in any way. That's the part of me that understands how the distribution of natural resources has built a world where those who have the misfortune to live atop rich natural resources experience the most social, political and cultural dislocations.

Still, I guess the reality is that we are all connected and as the old English saying goes, where there's muck, there's brass. But I sometimes wonder whether, as in The Truman Show, everyone (including the people of North Carolina), is in on the ruse and that I'm just the last to know?

KEN WIWA: kwiwa@globeandmail.com