Black Gold (Struggle for the Niger Delta)

  ”Black Gold (struggle for the Niger Delta)” is a Nigerian movie directed by award-winning, JetaAmata. It is inspired by the events surrounding the Niger Delta Crisis. The movie is set to be released in spring, 2011.

     Watching the trailer of this movie stirred up a plethora of emotions. There were paradoxical feelings of gladness and sadness with a sprinkle of pride among other ineffable emotions. The gladness and pride emanated from the fact that from the trailer, this promises to be a new Nigerian movie with a very relevant and interesting theme and plot and also realistic and competent acting. However, seeing the living conditions of the residents of the Niger Delta made me really feel the pain of the citizens.

     This wasn’t my first exposure to the Niger Delta crisis, but there is a way that movies make emotions even more tangible, they place your feet further into the shoes of the characters in a story. So this trailer was for me, another constant reminder of the adverse effects of corruption on Nigeria. The poverty, hunger, unemployment, violence, kidnapping and all the other complications that come with corruption.

     There are quite a number of Nigerians (especially the conventional upper-class youth) that I feel are kind of trapped in a cage of ignorance. They know corruption exists and they know the ills of the society but few understand the extent to which these ills affect families or they just choose to ignore it. They choose to ignore (or deny) the fact that the 2010 Global Monitoring Report (GMR) of the United Nations Education, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO), revealed that about 92 per cent of the Nigerian population survive on less than $2 daily, while about 71 per cent survive on less than $1 daily and almost half of 15-24 years olds in Nigeria are jobless. That the majorities of federal universities in Nigeria are under funded,lack quality staff and basic facilities and are also perpetually on strike, that successfully passing through the Nigerian university is a very stressful and in some cases traumatizing experience and it is simply unacceptable to go through that, graduate with a degree and end up jobless, unable to live comfortably. It annoys me when some people here in the U.S talk about Nigeria in derogatory manners, saying that it is a poor country and then Nigerians with all annoyance say that is not true that “there are a lot of people who live comfortably and go to good schools in Nigeria.” What “a lot”? I think to myself, that in secondary school, your parents might have given you 200naira or 500naira to spend during lunch break at school, doesn’t eradicate the fact that more than half of your country’s population lives below 150naira a day and whether you like it or not, in terms of standards of living, that makes your country a majorly poor one. Now I am not saying that people have the right to judge places or people from media representations or that people who have never even been to Africa have any right to talk so confidently about it. However, as Chimamanda Adichie notes, “ The problem with stereotypes is not that they are untrue, but that they are incomplete. They make one story become the only story”. So while it is true and important to note that some of these poor people may be amazingly talented at music, or crafting or other arts, it is also true that they do live in poverty, that they might not eat three meals a day, that their talents may never be appreciated because they live in a society that doesn’t offer a wide range of opportunities for versatility of talents. Since the glass is always half empty and half full, it is important for everyone (both wealthy Nigerians and people whose idea of Nigeria comes only from the media) to seek and recognize the empty and full halves of the glass. Thinking about the situation in Nigeria always just brings me down and now I am tired of writing because I feel helpless. I feel like I am not doing enough to change all these things I am writing about and I am not sure what to do. Sometimes, I feel like even if I go back and try to talk to people they wouldn’t listen and mostly because I am a young female. This brings me to another thing I love about this movie trailer, the hero of the movie, the one who empowers the crowd with oratory, is a young female and the crowd listens to her!

     I hope this movie doesn’t just win awards, but also has some impact, however little it may be, on the way people understand situations in the Niger Delta and enables people to empathize better with its residents. I hope it changes the views of those who simply judge the actions of the Niger Delta militants. One line that stood out for me in this trailer is ” I have become who the government has made me be.” I hope that people after watching this movie, are in some ways driven to participate in the rehabilitation of the Niger Delta


Please see the link above and tell me what you think. Enjoy!!