Word: nigeria
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...worked in Eastern Nigeria and Biafra for nine years, and I was struck by your quote from a diplomat in Lagos: "An Ibo would be out of his mind to show up in Hausa towns like Kano, Kaduna or Sokoto. They don't want him there." In this statement the real reason for the secession in 1967 is touched: the fact that the Easterners were not wanted and not safe in their own country...
...Nigeria wants unity, for which she claims to have fought this war, she must make every one of her citizens, including the former Easterners, welcome in the whole of the country. If the quotation is a true description of the situation in January 1970, the Nigerian tragedy has not yet finished...
...rested the region's hopes of sustaining an independent economy. When the oilmen refused to pay revenues to the breakaway state, Biafran planes bombed rigs and installations. Biafran troops sabotaged pipelines and murdered an eleven-man Italian exploration crew. Nonetheless, except for one brief period when all of Nigeria's 263 wells were idle, production never dropped below 300,000 bbl. a day -just over one-half the prewar output. The revenue accrued to the government in Lagos, enabling it to pay for the arms that finished off the Biafrans. For the oil companies the problem...
...eleven companies that have interests in Nigeria, the best-placed is a combine of Shell-British Petroleum, which in 1967 was producing 500,000 bbl. a day. The company suffered the largest damage, and in 1969 spent $125 million in reconstruction. SAFRAP, the French state oil company, is probably in the shakiest position, since Paris backed the Biafrans with arms and cash. When SAFRAP tried to contribute money for relief, it was rebuffed by the Nigerian government...
...Nigeria's oil is particularly in demand for several reasons. It is low in pollution-producing sulfur, some 6,000 miles closer to Europe than Middle Eastern wells, and controlled by a stable government. Oilmen are confident that production will reach 2,000,000 bbl. a day by 1975, enough to give the Nigerian government annual revenues of $1 billion, twice its present budget...