United in Oil

I won't even open this with a lie. I am lacking a lot of information about the oil war in Nigeria. So much so that I heard the term "bunkering" for the first time last month. For the record, "bunkering" is when ordinary Nigerians tap into pipelines and refine it for sale to gain personal profit. It started as a means of survival for some who were being driven to the very edge of their existence by the callousness of oil companies whose arrogance is costing Nigeria dearly.However, as is usually the case in these sort of situations, there are no longer any good or bad parties.

Rabble- rousers like Asari-Dokubo whose Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta (MEND), one of many such "movements" whose initial aim to disturb the destructive practices of big oil conglomerates has degenerated into the farce of kidnapping and terror, now hold the oil-rich Niger Delta in a vice-like grip. MEND and other groups now prosper from arms proliferation and the desperation of the people to wage a war that seems as though it will perpetuate, while the government in its desire for oil control and denial of adequate compensation to the Niger Delta has also begun to lose the trust of the companies whose business they protected by shunning the welfare of Nigerian citizens in the affected areas.I admit I am not very knowledgeable on these matters so I might come off sounding a touch dogmatic and undetailed. I will come back to this matter when I have done my research. But in anger at the kidnap of a dear friend's mother, I have written a poem.
Enjoy:

UNITED IN OIL
We Nigerians are united in substance
United in oil
Divide it we boil I
n rage from scores of old-aged sores
That bleed and burn like misplaced ointments
Mislaid maps that chart a displaced peoples’ past.

We are in thrall to mute oil barrels
That have commanded our daily lives
Since 1958, the year when, buzzing like beehives
We discovered it, crude and black
Like baked blood
We drilled it, fluid and cracked
Like a fake flood
And stuck it in pots like honey for sale
Sweet and fresh to slake the thirst
Of the fat cats
In whose best interestNigeria exists

United in Oil
Divide it we boil
Ignited we blow
Chancers like Asari- Dokubo
Malcolm X to the soft preaching
Of the Ogoni Martin Luther King- Ken Saro Wiwa
Hanged by the powers that be
For daring to write his own history
And now we are fed on the dubious gospel
Of pious preachers who are themselves sinners
Killers and spies who masquerade in the blood of the dead
Revolutionaries and leaders who sell their souls to armed dealers

United in Oil
We should borrow a leaf from Yugoslavia, the USSR
You cannot force a people to be together
United in oil
We should have ended it at Biafra
Accepted that you cannot patch wood with fire
United in oil United by oil
Enthralled by mute barrels, empty barrels
Making noise as prices catch fire
And light up the green- fingered elite
Whilst the river Niger runs red and black
With blood of bodies and crude from spilled vats
You will cry the day you see bodies roasted like groundnuts
United in oilunited with oil united we’re oil united on soil
That beggars its spoils
United in oil,
Look around you, the shooting.
United, Recoil.