Ed Kashi

Since my first trip to the Niger Delta in July 2004, with Michael Watts, a Berkeley-based scholar who has studied oil and conflict for over 30 years, I have been obsessed with telling this difficult but profoundly important geopolitical story in a visual way. This exhibition shows the consequences of a half century of oil exploration and production, exposing the reality of oil’s impact and the absence of sustainable development in its wake.

Nigeria is the sixth largest producer of oil in the world—and now one of the major suppliers of U.S. oil in what has been called the scramble for African oil. Virtually all of Nigeria’s oil is pumped from the nine states that make up the Niger Delta in the southeast of the country. Yet the delta remains the poorest region in the nation. Political gangsterism, corruption, and poverty seem to converge there.

Since the first wellhead in 1958, more than $500 billion dollars has been pumped out of the Niger Delta’s fertile grounds. Petroleum production causes devastating pollution from uninterrupted gas flaring and oil spillage. The traditional livelihoods of fishing and agriculture are no longer productive enough to feed the region.

After my first visit with Watts, I returned on my own to the Niger Delta in late 2005 and faced severe restrictions and frustrations. But a year later I went back with a commission from National Geographic, making breakthroughs to areas and subjects that had been virtually impossible before.

One of the most important subjects I photographed was the Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta, an armed and formidible militant group responsible for disrupting and shutting down large parts of Nigeria’s oil industry through direct attacks on facilities, the taking of hostages, and the creation of an inhospitable and unsafe environment for the oil production. The struggle for the control of oil creates secrecy and shadows across a landscape of historic exploitation, influential transnational corporations, violence encouraged and supported by politicians, and the turmoil of leaderless groups, gangs, and cults.

The Niger Delta is one of the most difficult places I’ve ever worked. The people are hesitant and suspicious of outsiders, the terrain is tricky with out-of-the-way places only reachable by small boats, and dangers lurk along every road and waterway. In June 2006, while attempting to photograph flow stations in the creeks of Nembe, I was arrested by the Nigerian military. My fixer and I were locked in a room for four harrowing days, our possessions and equipment confiscated. We were released through the great work of family, friends, and colleagues, but others are less fortunate and endure a much longer, more painful incarceration. This event left me even more determined to create a visual body of work to tell the untold story of the Niger Delta.

We must always remain open in our hearts and minds. This is what makes life worth living and allows us the opportunity to witness the unimaginable. I am forever grateful for my chance to work in the Niger Delta, and to attempt to shed some light into its world of shadows.

—Ed Kashi, February 2008