KANSAS CITY, MISSOURI: My family's been in K.C. for over a century. Being a traveler, I've taken it upon myself to visit some of Kansas City's sister cities around the world. There's one I'll leave alone for now, in the oil-rich Niger Delta.
I lived for a month in our sister city of Ramla, Israel, a few years back. I tutored English in a community center for at-risk youth, lived in a mixed Jewish and Arab neighborhood, and missed a suicide bombing at the Central Bus Station in Tel Aviv by a matter of hours. I love these experiences-getting to know the people and feeling of a foreign land that is often misunderstood.
I also have plans to visit Xi'an, China, another of our sister cities (a bridge on the glitzy Country Club Plaza lists them all with decorated tiles), this autumn on my Asian investment tour. Xi'an is relatively calm, with the most prominent military presence in that age-old Middle Kingdom capital being the famous army of terra cotta soldiers entombed with the Emperor of Qin around 200 B.C.E.
Another sister city of ours leaves me scratching my head and close to scratching the place off my list of sister cities I'd like to visit. It's Port Harcourt, the capital city of Rivers State, Nigeria. That seaside city of around two million people was founded in the early 1900's by British colonial rulers to ease coal exports from nearby Enugu.
Port Harcourt and Enugu were also part of the Republic of Biafra, a country that existed for less than three years between 1967 and 1970. Nigerian food blockades ended the local secessionist resistance, and no love has been lost between locals and the government in the capital city of Abuja since then.
So why the kinship with Kansas City? We don't have oil or coal, and we're about as far away from an ocean as you can get in North America. My best guess is that K.C. Chiefs football legend Christian Okoye, who is from Enugu, helped to forge the relationship as he ran into the record books over a decade ago.
It probably made for a nice local news story when our cities' mayors shook hands and exchanged local gifts. But these days, Port Harcourt has acquired notoriety as the hub of Niger Delta oil operations and site of over 200 kidnappings since early 2006.
Last century, coal was king. Now, oil is royal and restless ethnic Ijaw militants have assembled the Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta to wage "total war" on multi-national oil operators in the area. "Total war" was the term used by MEND leader Godswill Tamuno at the beginning of his group's guerrilla assault last year.
Tamuno, who has the best rebel name I can think of next to Getoffmyland Johnson, has harnessed the energy of hoards of natives who live in poverty despite the wealth the Niger Delta has brought to Nigeria's elite and the foreign producers stationed there.
As Africa's leader in oil exports (though as I mentioned last week, Libya leads in reserves) Nigeria plays a key role in international petroleum market jitters and supply jeopardy. In addition, a full 95% of Nigeria's export revenue comes from the oil sector, with the Niger Delta dominating export capacity and thus playing an enormous role in the overall economic picture.
Due to pipeline ruptures, explosions caused by siphoning and vandalism, and the rampant kidnapping threat, refinery shutdowns have been fairly frequent. This locks up hundreds of thousands of barrels at a time, with Shell and Chevron, both American oil companies, taking the biggest production hits according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration.
Nigeria is #5 on the list of top U.S. import suppliers, and with the Persian Gulf looking stormier by the day, Washington can't afford to stand by idly for long as Port Harcourt falls apart.
This is an untenable situation politically and economically, and while past military and civilian leaders in Nigeria were unable to squelch MEND's demands for complete corporate withdrawal from Ijaw tribal land, this week we are seeing signs that Nigeria's new president is charting a different course.
President Umaru Yar'Adua is holding meetings with rebel leaders on a truce, amid an indefinite dusk-to-dawn curfew in Port Harcourt. Celebrating 100 days in office after a contentious election earlier this year, the President of Nigeria knows that he's not only handling a domestic situation but an internationally significant energy crisis.
One thing's for sure: No sister city will be able to save Port Harcourt from itself.
Regards,
Sam Hopkins
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