clipped from: english.aljazeera.net   

More than 50,000 barrels of oil a day are produced in the Niger Delta - that is hundreds of thousands of US dollars - yet residents remain desperately poor.
 
As many as 60,000 people live literally on top of this multi-billion dollar industry, but many are unemployed and their lives consist of guns, alcohol abuse and violent crime. Tension on the island are rising. 

King Justus Henry Dappa, a community leader, says he is frustrated by the lack of social and economic progress in Niger Delta, despite oil production.

"If the federal government listens to our cry, and comes in, there will not be any more kidnappings," he says. "The youths will get work, they will be happy, and then everything will calm down."

"Gone are the days when ... we just come to the waterside and there are fishes everywhere."
about four oil spills in the area every year. If this happened anywhere else, it would cause international outcry - but in the Niger Delta, it goes unnoticed, they say.