Nigeria, Guns, and Oil



1 / 18 Chevron Chevron Children in front of a refinery's gas flares in Ebocha, Rivers State.

Over the last four decades, Nigerian officials have stolen or squandered an estimated $400 billion, much of it coming from an oil industry that now ranks as the fifth-largest supplier to the United States. Most of Nigeria’s oil is pumped out of the Niger Delta, an impoverished region of tin-shack slums, nearly nonexistent public health care, and woefully inadequate schools. Now the local population’s anger against its government and the multi-billion-dollar oil companies that trample its delta homeland is taking the form of armed militants—men who kidnap Western oil workers and kill Nigerian security officials in what they call an effort to spread the oil wealth.

Michael Kamber is one of the few photographers to have captured these insurgents on film. He and contributing editor Sebastian Junger traveled to the delta for the February 2007 issue of Vanity Fair. Herewith, what could await the U.S. as it considers an increased reliance on West African oil. —AUSTIN MERRILL