17 JULY 2002: “OUR WOMEN
ARE WITHOUT FEAR.”

Women occupying the ChevronTexaco
oil export terminal in Escravos take their afternoon nap at the terminal’s
airport on Tuesday, July 16, 2002. The women said that they will occupy
the terminal until they get final documentation from the company offering
local residents jobs, schools, water, electricity and other amenities.
(AP Photo/Saurabh Das)

Nigerian Women Storm ChevronTexaco

Wed Jul 17,10:02 AM ET

ESCRAVOS, Nigeria (AP) –
Unarmed women stormed four ChevronTexaco oil pipeline stations in southeastern
Nigeria, a prominent activist said Wednesday.

    The takeovers
came as signs of an ethnic dispute emerged in a separate 10-day occupation
of the company’s main oil terminal in the Niger Delta region.

    Kingsley
Kuku, spokesman for the ethnic Ijaw Youth Council, said hundreds of
unarmed Ijaw women captured four pipeline flowstations in boats on Tuesday.

    An unknown
number of employees at the sites were “allowed to leave,” he said. He did
not know if any workers remained inside.

    Wole
Agunbiade, a spokesman for ChevronTexaco’s Nigeria subsidiary, could neither
confirm nor deny the reported takeover.

    Kuku
said the latest protests occurred near the villages of Opueketa, Abiteye,
Makaraba and Otunana.

    They
are some 50 miles east of Escravos, ChevronTexaco’s multimillion-dollar
oil export terminal where a separate group of unarmed village women has
been holed up since sneaking inside on July 8.

    “Our
women are without fear. They are participating actively in our struggle
and have embarked on this action without the use of arms, not even brooms,”
Kuku said.

    He warned
that Ijaw men would “burn down all Chevron oil facilities” if police or
soldiers tried to forcibly remove the women protesters or otherwise harmed
them.

    The latest
action was launched to force the oil giant to grant jobs and help improve
living conditions of nearby villagers, Kuku said.

    Lucky
Lelekumo, a spokeswoman for the Ijaw women, said in a statement quoted
by the daily Punch newspaper that the action was to draw attention to widespread
poverty in villages with “nothing to show for over 30 years of the company’s
existence.”

    The protesters
also hoped to force the state government to give assurances that Ijaws
would be granted favorable municipal council boundaries delineating the
tribe’s lands from rival Itsekiri areas, Kuku said.

    The Ijaws
accused the women who raided the Escravos terminal of using their siege
to pry government concessions in a yearslong land dispute between Ijaws
and Itsekiris. Although the Escravos protesters include women from several
different ethnic groups, the core group is Itsekiri.

    Anino
Olowu, a representative of the women still inside Escravos on Wednesday,
denied her protest was linked to the land dispute, or to the Ijaw action.

THANKS TO JOSHUA B.!