The Curse of Natural Resources

Many countries with enormous reserves of oil, gas or precious metals, are plagued with disproportionate poverty, corruption and mismanagement. Would the people in Nigeria, Congo or Russia be better off without their natural gifts?

A thick sludge laps against the coconut palms, black and foul-smelling. The banana plants are blackened with oil as well; they point leaflessly at the sky as if a fire had raged here. Located about two hours southeast of Nigeria’s oil capital, Port Harcourt, the town of Kpor looks like a battlefield.

Farmers used to plant corn, kasava or yams here. But ever since drillhole 18 at the nearby Bomu oil field started leaking, the mangrove swamps in this Ogoni territory have been flooded with oil for entire kilometers. “We kept calling the government, but no one came,” complains Lekagah N. Lekagah, the village elder. Now nothing will grow here again. The land is dead — and yet it remains extraordinarily valuable and continues to be fiercely contested.

Nigeria is one of the global oil business’s greatest hopes. Oil fields as large as the ones being found here are to be discovered in few other places in the world, and corporations want to double oil extraction here within the next 10 years. Nature has blessed this country and it could be extremely wealthy. Instead, it’s being ruined.

In Nigeria today, more than 130 armed militias fight for influence. The country is divided, and its people are worn out by ongoing conflict. The situation here is so chaotic that Nigeria, which is the world’s sixth-largest oil exporter, has to import fuel. The country doesn’t have enough functioning refineries to process oil for its own people.

Spiegel