escorted by a team of Oben community people, we set out on the hour-long ride along the highway from Benin City to Warri, a road noted for the high number of military check- points.They would make anyone think that Nigeria was at war. We meandered through the hazardous roadblocks made with trash hurled from nearby bushes and veered off the highway at Jesse, just before Sapele, from where we took a narrow winding road to Oben. Jesse is important in the tragic history of the Niger Delta: it was the community where a petrol pipeline fire killed about 1,000 poor villagers in 1998.We got to Oben at about 7pm and were waved through a military checkpoint set up to guard the oil flow station and the belching dragons. Gaining entrance to the heavily guarded facility was easy; leaving was not. As soon as we arrived, a worker whom we happened across gave us a little talk about what went on there. People from the community complained about how they had had to put up with the flares for more than three decades while their dreams of jobs and development projects faded away.The Dutch MP was amazed by what she saw. She was happy she had made this trip, otherwise she would have had to depend solely on the chaperoned visits arranged by the oil giant Shell in a bid to show how environmentally friendly they are. The flames leapt and roared relentlessly. We inched as close as we could before having to turn away because of the unbearable heat. As we turned to leave, the brightness of the village sky contrasted with the darkness of the homes that lacked electricity. But we could not leave.Our cars were surrounded by soldiers of the Joint Task Force (JTF), a military force that became infamous when an armed unit was created specifically to punish the Ogoni people in the 1990s. The soldiers demanded to know by what authority we visited the gas flare site. They would not let us leave without producing an authorisation letter from the JTF headquarters. All our explanations that we were there at the invitation of the community fell on deaf ears. The presence of a Dutch parliamentarian as well as a diplomat meant nothing to these guys, who apparently knew their script. Hours went by. The darkness of the night struggled with the glow of the gas flares. The soldiers stuck to their guns.The JTF men demanded our car keys and threatened to deflate the tyres. We would not leave the location that night, they insisted. Threats followed. Rifles were raised and then lowered. They would not call their superiors. They were the lords working at the behest of capital.Eventually a Nigerian journalist who was on our team placed a call to the media relations officer of the JTF. After much foot dragging the soldiers wrote down the numbers of our cars and took our names, addresses and statements before letting us go at midnight. We rode back to Benin City in silence, each mulling over the hazards faced by communities living in the oilfields and the human rights abuses inflicted regularly on those who monitor or question the evils that go on in the land. To the Dutch parliamentarian, the events of the evening were a good introduction to the Niger Delta and the operations of the oil companies: exploit, degrade, abuse and punish the environment and the people. The scenario replays across the continent.This article forms the preface and beginning of chapter 1 from Nnimmo Bassey's forthcoming book 'To Cook a Continent - Destructive Extraction and the Climate Crisis in Africa', published by Pambazuka Press
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