Oil, the 'devil's excrement', has ruined Nigeria. Other African countries must hope none is found in their waters

By David Blair World 

An oil pipeline on fire in Nigeria, 2005

Almost four decades ago, oil was dubbed the “devil’s excrement” by Juan Pablo Pérez Alfonso, a Venezuelan minister who was among the founders of Opec. Anyone inclined to question the wisdom of his judgment should look at the latest figures on theft and corruption in Nigeria. According to an official report commissioned by the oil ministry – and seen by the BBC – about £4 billion worth of crude is stolen from Nigerian pipelines every year. A single price-fixing scam cost the Nigerian government £18 billion over the last decade.
In all, oil revenues totalling a staggering £250 billion have been stolen in Nigeria since independence from Britain in 1960. That figure, incidentally, is pretty close to all the bilateral aid ever given to Africa.
So let’s be blunt: Nigeria’s possession of 37 billion barrels of oil reserves has been the biggest spur to corruption and grand larceny that could possibly be imagined. It has allowed a tiny elite to live in luxury, while most of the population endures abject poverty. The non-oil economy has been throttled and the political process reduced to an odious scramble for a share of the country’s oil wealth.
At the moment, oil exploration is taking place along the length of the West African coast. Plenty of other countries could become tomorrow’s oil producers. In the waters off Liberia and Sierra Leone, companies are busily searching for the “devil’s excrement”. For the sake of the people of those two countries, we must hope that nothing is found.