Three decades after pumping its last drop, the first oil well in Nigeria is marked by a decrepit signboard bearing what would seem an uncontroversial statement:
Oloibiri Well No. 1, drilled June 1956, 12,008 feet.
But this well, its wellhead furred with rust, is at the center of an increasingly vitriolic feud between two villages over who owns the land it's on. The conflict is fed by hope that soaring prices will tempt big business to squeeze more oil from the well and give a pittance to the village that owns the land.
The tussle between Oloibiri and Otabagi brings into relief the fact that villages sitting on the prodigious oil reserves in Nigeria, Africa's biggest producer of crude, have barely profited from the booming industry. Corrupt officials have hoarded the government's cut of profits, and energy firms have compensated locals with paltry payments, though enormous wealth is generated by drilling.
In both villages, children wander unclothed past heaps of burning trash. Oil spills have sullied the farmland and spoiled the water. Fields once crammed with ears of corn, and nets full of flapping fish, have become distant memories.
"After destroying the area without anything to give in return, we have stepped maybe 50 times backwards. Pollution, both air and water," said Sunday Ikpesu, a 74-year-old Oloibiri chieftain. "We didn't know crude oil was such a bad thing."
Neither village would win a share of the revenue that might flow from Oil Well No. 1. The most they could expect from Royal Dutch Shell PLC, which owns the rights to the well, would be "community outreach" funds for building projects.
But in a nation where the government has regularly failed to provide citizens with health clinics, decent schools, piped water or electricity, the scraps that oil giants throw are considered better than nothing and are subject to fierce competition.
Firms such as Exxon Mobil Corp., Total SA and Chevron Corp. employ teams of community relations officers whose jobs include launching development projects worth tens of millions of dollars. No overall figures exist for the payments. But Shell, the country's largest operator, says operations it runs contributed more than $110 million in 2007.
Rights campaigners say oil firms are sowing discord among villages and exploiting their desperation.
