Nigerian Women Storm Oil Stations

Unarmed women stormed four ChevronTexaco oil pipeline stations in southeastern Nigeria, a prominent activist said Wednesday.

The takeovers came as signs of an ethnic dispute emerged in a separate 10-day occupation of the company's main oil terminal in the Niger Delta region.

Kingsley Kuku, spokesman for the Ijaw Youth Council, said hundreds of unarmed Ijaw women captured four pipeline flowstations in boats on Tuesday.

An unknown number of employees at the sites were "allowed to leave," he said. He did not know if any workers remained inside.

Wole Agunbiade, a spokesman for ChevronTexaco's Nigeria subsidiary, could neither confirm nor deny the reported takeover.

Kuku said the latest protests occurred near the villages of Opueketa, Abiteye, Makaraba and Otunana.

They are some 50 miles east of Escravos, ChevronTexaco's multimillion-dollar oil export terminal where a separate group of unarmed village women has been holed up since sneaking inside on July 8.

"Our women are without fear. They are participating actively in our struggle and have embarked on this action without the use of arms, not even brooms," Kuku said.

He warned that Ijaw men would "burn down all Chevron oil facilities" if police or soldiers tried to forcibly remove the women protesters or otherwise harmed them.

The latest action was launched to force the oil giant to grant jobs and help improve living conditions of nearby villagers, Kuku said.

Lucky Lelekumo, a spokeswoman for the Ijaw women, said in a statement quoted by the daily Punch newspaper that the action was to draw attention to widespread poverty in villages with "nothing to show for over 30 years of the company's existence."

The protesters also hoped to force the state government to give assurances that Ijaws would be granted favorable municipal council boundaries delineating the tribe's lands from rival Itsekiri areas, Kuku said.

The Ijaws accused the women who raided the Escravos terminal of using their siege to pry government concessions in a yearslong land dispute between Ijaws and Itsekiris. Although the Escravos protesters include women from several different ethnic groups, the core group is Itsekiri.

Anino Olowu, a representative of the women still inside Escravos on Wednesday, denied her protest was linked to the land dispute, or to the Ijaw action.

Ethnic divisions also appear to have emerged among the several hundred protesters at Escravos, who are refusing to leave the facility despite a verbal agreement to end their siege.

Olowu said the women are waiting for a final agreement to be signed with the company and for squabbles between Itsekiri women and protesters of other ethnicities to be resolved. She did not elaborate.

"We may leave tomorrow or leave the next day, because there are members of other communities that do not cooperate with us that followed us inside (the terminal)," Olowu said. "They are not Ijaws, but they are not with us. They think that by joining us, they will have right to the land here."

ChevronTexaco executives presented the women with a seven-page memorandum of understanding on Wednesday.

The two sides argued heatedly over the document inside the residence of a village chieftain in Ugborodo, about 100 yards across the river from Escravos.

The 10-day takeover trapped an initial 700 American, Canadian, British and Nigerian oil workers inside the southeastern Nigerian terminal.

About 200 of them were allowed to leave on Sunday, and hundreds more departed in a ferry Tuesday morning, leaving just a few dozen trapped inside, protesters said.

After the verbal agreement was reached with the company Monday, the women permitted ChevronTexaco employees back into the facility's control room so they could load two tankers with offshore oil.

But village chiefs threw a sudden twist into the deal Tuesday by insisting it be modified to include long-term contracts, such as deals to paint and repair the terminal, said Victor Omunu, a spokesman for the protesters.

The unarmed women, some with babies bound to their backs, sang and danced on the facility's docks Monday when they learned the company had offered to hire at least 25 villagers over five years.

The company is also willing to build schools, provide water, electricity and a community center, and help the women establish poultry and fish farms to supply the terminal's cafeteria.

Niger Delta residents are among the poorest in this West African country, despite the region's oil wealth. Nigeria is the world's sixth-largest exporter of oil and the fifth-largest supplier to the United States.

The women's protests are a departure for Nigeria, where armed men frequently use kidnapping and sabotage to pressure oil multinationals into giving them jobs, protection money or compensation for alleged environmental damage. Hostages generally are released unharmed.

The women, ranging in age from 30 to 90, used a traditional and powerful shaming gesture to maintain control over the Escravos facility — they threatened to remove their own clothing.

The struggle between international oil firms and local communities in Nigeria drew international attention in the mid-1990s, when violent protests by the tiny Ogoni tribe forced Shell to abandon its wells on their land.

The late dictator Gen. Sani Abacha responded in 1995 by hanging nine Ogoni leaders, including writer Ken Saro Wiwa — triggering international outrage and Nigeria's expulsion from the British Commonwealth.