20 Years Ago

20 Year ago, I got a job in Shell Nigeria. I was part of the project team working on a rig somewhere in the Swampy area of Delta State. We see kids running around with rounded kwashiorkor bellies staring at us and probably dreaming to be like us someday. They had beautiful names like Destiny, Faith, Gift and Boma. Beautiful names with beautiful dreams yet no plan to complement it all.

What do we do as Shell worker? We wave past and feel cool with our status as compared to theirs. 20 years later we have 20 year olds holding guns and killing people. 20 years ago, we could have stopped it by helping that kwashiorkor kid get a life. We chose to look the other way. Now, he has a gun and no education to put him in check.

By the way, 20 years ago, I was not in Shell and most definitely, I was not in the Delta region. A friend of mine was and part of my narration is based on his real life experience. I was too young to work but older than Destiny and obviously luckier. I was in a boarding school somewhere in the middle belt. Mine was a Nigerian dream. Well, partly. I choose to set the record straight in case Destiny or Boma remember the incident. Just be sure I was too young to have seen you hungry.

20 years later, it's amazing I don't have a gun too. We have our own type of guns too. The pen guns. Not like double-0-7. Much lethal. We rob entire countries with it. And worse still, we get away with it.


Now I live in the Delta region where everything seems to have gone wrong. Look at it like the human body with a hole in the heart. The body manages to survive by resting often and doing light tasks. However, Mr. Body fails to fix the problem by plugging the hole. Then one day, the heart fails and Mr. Body is in a critical state.

Nigeria has had a hole in the heart for a long time. The heart in this analogy is the Niger Delta. The heart is failing now. Let's hope it's not too late. There are many ways to fix a failing heart. A transplant is the only option if the heart don fail patapata. if e remain small, a surgery will do. (that if the doctor says it has not failed completely. who is the doctor? What stage are we in? Do we even have hope for surgery? Time will tell.

Who caused this problem? The oil companies blame Government, Government blame the Oil Companies, the Oil Companies all blame Shell. Shell in the middle.

Personally, I blame the Oil Companies. I wouldn't say Shell specifically but I am not impressed with the operations there either. They are the agents and it is the agents task to ensure a strategy is formulated to guide the company through the future. The agent had the responsibility to ensure a bright future for the principal 20 years ago. 20 years ago, the agents failed. The heart ticks on. Slowly but...