Nature, Medicine, Politics: The Nigerian Example

To bring extra clarity toward the frequent interaction between nature, medicine, and politics, let's look at the increasing state of oil spill toxicity off the coast of Nigeria. Situated on Africa's west coast, Nigeria has recently slipped from the fifth to the eight leading oil exporter to the United States. The reason for the slip is due to several reasons. The most violent one is that there is currently war between a people's militia and the federal Nigerian government.

This militia is destroying the infrastructure of Shell Oil (of Dutch/British origin), which has been the corporate petroleum-drilling presence in Nigeria since the British discovered oil in Nigeria in the 1950's. The reason that militants are destroying Shell Oil pipelines, etc, is that they have "accused Shell of "being insensitive to the plight of the people of the area by refusing to implement agreements reached with them in various Memorandum of Understanding signed with the people""

In other words, the promises that Shell Oil has made to the people of Nigeria have been broken time and time again. Perhaps the worst of these broken promises has been the one in which Shell Oil has allowed the Niger Delta, from which the oil emits, to become a toxic dump of accumulated and uncleansed spills dating back 60 years.

Explained at length in this article: http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/may/30/oil-spills-nigeria-niger-delta-shell , these accumulated spills dwarf by perhaps fifty times the amount of oil already released in 44 days worth of BP's ongoing Gulf Coast debacle here in the United States. Whereas in the US our federal government is likely to bring criminal charges upon BP, in Nigeria the federal government, modeled on that of the United States, has instead joined forces with Shell Oil in order to keep profits flowing maximally into their coffers. The families living along the Niger Delta have had many civil rights ignored, their livelihoods lost along with the health of their families and their surrounding natural environments...

Due to politics and profiteering, Shell Oil and the Nigerian Government have greatly damaged that aspect of nature which is the very source of sustenance for untold numbers of families on the Niger Delta. The health of the people, plants and animals in this region has suffered for decades, without adequate medicine -- as there is no adequate medicine if one's water and soil is saturated with oil and other untended toxic pollutants from an unregulated oil industry or any other source. Now, the rage of the citizenry has exploded into civil war, in an ever-worsening scenario for the political, natural, and medicinal status of the Nigerian federal republic.

Almost every story of life can be viewed through the filter of these three lenses. Watch the world through them yourself, and create lenses of your own. There are thousands of lenses through which to view the universe. Nature, Medicine, Politics...are merely three of my own.