Follow-up – WAA
Nigeria, a member of OPEC, has in recent decades entered a strange state of contradictions as its production has declined sharply and it has become the largest importer of oil in Africa.
One of Nigeria’s problems with its oil wealth is that more than 250 villagers were burned to death in the blink of an eye on July 10, 2000, as they gathered to fill their bottles from an oil pipeline in the south of the country that oil pirates had drilled holes in at night to steal the black gold. A motorbike passed by and a spark from it caused the pipeline to explode, causing this large number of casualties.
This tragic incident was not unique. In 1998, more than 1,000 people were killed in a similar incident in the Niger Delta town of Jessie, and later in 2003, an oil pipeline explosion in southeastern Nigeria killed more than 105 villagers in the same way. This phenomenon is not the whole problem, and it is, as they say, the tip of the iceberg.
Oil in Nigeria, the East African country with the world’s sixth most populous nation with over 229 million people, was discovered as early as 1901, but actual exploitation began in 1956.
Since 1960, black gold has become the backbone of the economy of this African country, which covers an area of 923,769 square kilometers. Nearly 73 percent of them live below the poverty line, meaning that their income does not exceed two dollars a day, despite the large oil reserves of about 32 billion barrels, which is equivalent to 2.38 of the world’s reserves.