In case you didn't know about Port Harcourt and Niger Delta...
It's the second biggest city in Nigeria. A classic "exploding city" with an estimated 6 million people in the metropolitan area. Thanks to extremely inequitable oil extraction (see above diagram for where the resources go) over the past few decades, it has become known as one of the most polluted places on earth.
Paramilitaries have been clearing informal waterfront settlements this past fall and winter to make way for a South Florida-style development, under the auspices of all the familiar, 19th century "anti slum" reasons.
Oil extraction is largely unregulated, dangerous, and only a tiny fraction is refined or even used in Nigeria (refineries would where the potential jobs would be). Illegal gas flares are common place, visible from outer space and arguably the single largest to c02 emissions on the planet.
The Delta is also home to a number of armed rebel groups, such as the Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta.
MEND is interesting because in some ways they seems to be more in-line with industrialized-world groups such as the ELF. This sort of eco-marxist rhetoric is often at odds with the way in which many guerrilla groups are portrayed in the west, i.e. written off as tribal feuding.
