Niger Delta in Focus, Ed Kashi exhibition

The force behind the groundbreaking new book ‘Curse of the Black Gold’, Ed Kashi is known worldwide for his outstanding photojournalism and his commitment to documenting the urgent social and political issues of our times. He speaks to Lucid ahead of his London exhibition about his work, his activism and the future of the Niger Delta.

In your introduction to Curse of the Black Gold, you write “Iraq led me to the Niger Delta”. Can you explain what you mean by that?

It was the photographic coverage I made in Iraq in 2003-4, covering the initial aftermath of the US invasion that brought me to Michael Watts’ attention and led him to invite me to work on a project he had underway about the Niger Delta. Often in this line of work you cannot know where the ultimate destination of your current path will lead.

You also write that the Delta is “the pivotal point where all of Nigeria’s plagues of political gangsterism, corruption, and poverty seem to converge.” Why is that?

It is in the Niger Delta that Nigeria’s most serious problems of official greed and corruption, conflict and violence, the breakdown of civil society and the breakdown of government responsibility manifests so openly. It’s as though the presence of oil makes everyone behave at their worst. The stakes are high, the pressures extreme and the lack of any control by either the government or the oil companies has created a vacuum of authority and a lack of agreement by all parties concerned, so it’s a wild west mentality where everyone tries to take it all, but most people get nothing.

Copyright Ed Kashi

As a photographer, what images were you most excited to capture over the course of your many travels through the region?

The images that speak most profoundly to me fall into three areas; the environmental degradation, the human cost in terms of poverty and lack of development, and the

MEND militants. But the scene that sticks in my mind most is of the Trans Amadi Slaughter, the largest abattoir in the Niger Delta, where they burn the carcasses of freshly killed animals with old tires and the acrid, black smoke that dominates the neighbourhood of Port Harcourt rises into the sky while creating a furnace of hell atmosphere for the unfortunate workers who toil for hours daily in that place.

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Nigeria brings in over $2.2 million in oil revenues every day, yet on average residents of the Niger Delta live on less than $1 a day. What is life like for most residents of the Delta?

The rural Deltans live in abject poverty with no running water, very little or reliable electricity and a lack of hope for the future. The urban folk live with daily reminders of what they have not gotten out of oil; very poor roads and infrastructure, unreliable electricity, slums filled with angry young men, disease and filth and a general lack of security. The educational system of the Delta is quite poor and healthcare is lacking in most villages and towns. Yet, Nigerians know better. They are smart people who are aware of the economic injustice they must endure, so their anger and hopelessness boil, making their lives and the overall situation quite combustible.

Your photographs explore the environmental impact of the oil industry in the Delta. How does this affect people’s livelihoods there, especially fisherman and farm workers who depend on a healthy ecological balance?

The waters of the Delta, Africa’s second largest watershed, are widely spoiled due to the oil industry and related industrial activities. This has reduced the fisheries from a net exporting business to a barely subsistence activity for the locals. The Niger Deltans must now eat frozen fish from outside the delta, which would have been unheard of in previous generations. Farming has also been reduced dramatically from pre-oil years, and it is also now a subsistence industry. This has disrupted the lineage of fisherman and farmers, and young men who could once proudly follow in their ancestor’s footsteps for work are today left with no jobs, searching in vain for other ways to make a living. Where they once thrived off the lands and waters of the Delta, they must now look for others ways to survive.

Fire and smoke are reoccurring images in many of your photographs from the Niger Delta, often caused by leaking oil pipelines or gas flares. Can you tell us a little bit about that, about the visceral impact of the oil industry on the landscape of that part of the world?

The impact of oil on the landscape of the Niger Delta is deceptive. At first glance, things appear normal and except for the occasional pipeline or signage signalling the presence of the oil works, there doesn’t appear to be much disruption to the natural environment. But take a closer look, which is what I was there to do, and you begin to see the dramatic impact of oil on the landscape. Whether from the hundreds of miles of crisscrossing pipelines, both above and below ground, or the dramatic flaring from the flow stations, refineries and LNG plants, once you begin to pick up on these things then it’s all you see. Then go on the waters of the delta and you see the muck, rainbow colours of oil leakage and the lack of fish, and you realize the full extent of the impact of oil. There is a kind of Dante’s Inferno quality to parts of the Delta. The oil companies have done a good job of taking care of their compounds and facilities, providing constant water, electricity, satellite TV and internet for their workers, but just outside their barbed wire compounds the situation becomes grim.

Copyright Ed Kashi

Many people have heard of Ken Saro-Wiwa, a leader of the Movement for the Survival of the Ogoni People (MOSOP), who was executed by the Nigerian military in 1995. His death brought universal condemnation from human rights organizations and governments around the world. Are the conditions in the Delta that his movement was fighting against much changed?

The conditions have not improved for the people of the Delta and in fact only gotten worse. The emergence of MEND is a direct correlation to the failure of Saro-Wiwa’s non-violent movement. What should concern us all is this dynamic has the possibility to spin out of control. Like so many people’s movements around the world, what starts innocent and non-violent, becomes increasingly violent and bleeds into other areas of the nation and potentially starts to affect the wider world. This process began two years ago when MEND’s attacks on Nigeria’s oil installations affected the price of oil around the world.

During and in between your travels to the Delta, you corresponded by email with a representative of the MEND, the Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta, a militant group responsible for taking hostages and attacking oil facilities. At one point you obviously spent some time with this group, as your photographs attest. How did you gain the trust of the militants? How do they explain their strategy of armed resistance?

I was only able to gain the trust of the militants through my extraordinary contacts in the Delta, the NGOs, human rights activists and people on the ground who MEND trusted. Representing the National Geographic, a trusted name in the media, still would not be enough. And I don’t know if they ever really trusted me as much as saw me useful to project their goals of spreading their message to the world. Often in these situations as a journalist, you are forming relationships in a kind of Faustian deal, regardless of whether you agree or not with the moral and political aims of the group.

Their strategy is in direct response to the inactions of the Nigerian government and security forces. As the governments have continued to reject the pleas of the people of this region, letting them down at almost every turn and election, MEND is trying to take things into their own hands by using violence as a tactic. They still believe in dialogue but they are also using force to push the agenda towards dialogue.

The book includes the following passage from Nigerian poet, Tanure Ojaide, “This share of paradise, the delta of my birth, reels from an immeasurable wound. Barrels of alchemical draughts flow from this hurt to the unquestioning world that lights up its life in a blind trust.” Why is it important for people to learn more about the people and places where so much of the oil that fuels our economy is extracted?

This question cuts to the heart of my motivation for doing this project. The balance of our earth and our global society is unsustainable at the rate we are going. If we don’t come to understand that there is a direct correlation between the people of the Niger Delta and the energy we use that is derived from their lands’ resources, there is no hope for humanity on this earth. The days are gone where we can blithely and quite frankly greedily use the earth’s resources and not care about where it comes from, what the toll is to get it and whether the people whose land it derives from are compensated properly.

Ed Kashi, Curse of the Black Gold is on at the HOST Gallery in London from 8 March – 3 April 2010.

Monday 8 March – Ed Kashi in discussion with Colin Jacobson, HOST Gallery, 6.30pm

 Wednesday 10 March – In the Picture with Ed Kashi: Curse of the Black Gold at the Frontline Club, 7pm

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