http://www.yahoo.com/s/15342 Some Nigerian women raided ChevronTexaco facilities in order to get jobs and other concessions. <i> ChevronTexaco Facilities Taken Over Wed Jul 17,11:03 AM ET By D'ARCY DORAN, Associated Press Writer ESCRAVOS, Nigeria (AP) - Unarmed village women stormed four ChevronTexaco pipeline stations, as protests against the oil giant spread in southeastern Nigeria, ethnic activists said Wednesday. Kingsley Kuku, spokesman for the ethnic Ijaw Youth Council, said hundreds of ethnic Ijaw women captured four pipeline flowstations in boats 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 not confirm the reported takeovers. Kuku said the latest occupations were spurred by the crushing poverty in which villagers live, 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 action also appeared to be linked to ethnic rivalry stirred up by a separate 10-day occupation of ChevronTexaco's main oil terminal in the Niger Delta region. Although those protesters include women from several different ethnic groups, the core group is of the rival Itsekiri group. Kuku said Tuesday's protests occurred near the villages of Opueketa, Abiteye, Makaraba and Otunana, some 50 miles east of the company's multimillion-dollar Escravos export terminal. A separate group of unarmed village women has been holed up at Escravos 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 or otherwise harmed them. Lucky Lelekumo, a spokeswoman for the Ijaw women, was quoted in the daily Punch newspaper as saying 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 women hoped to force the company to grant jobs and help improve living conditions in nearby villages, Kuku said. But they also wanted assurances from state government that Ijaws would be granted favorable municipal boundaries separating the tribe's lands from rival Itsekiri areas, Kuku added. The Ijaws believe the women who raided the Escravos terminal are using their siege to pry government concessions in a yearslong land dispute between Ijaws and Itsekiris, he said. 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 appeared to have emerged among the several hundred protesters at Escravos, who were refusing to leave the facility despite a verbal agreement to end their siege. Olowu said the women were 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 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. 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. <b>The company said it was 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.</b> 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. <b>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.</b> 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. </i>
The ironic thing here is that these same women (obviously the younger ones) find no shame in removing their clothing for paying customers at the "bush bar" (Nigerian brothel) just outside the fence at Escravos.
I am not sure why, but I found this funny: "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.
Judging by the fact that Houston was recently rated one of the "fattest cities in America"... we should all be thankful there are no naked protests in town!
