The new documentary film, Sweet Crude, directed by Sandy Cioffi, offers a rare visceral look at the enormous problems facing the people of Nigeria’s oil-rich Niger River delta.
Everyone interested in energy knows the complexity of the problem: massive oil reserves, oil companies only too willing to get into bed with corrupt military dictators (or now elected officials) in the name of if-I-didn’t-someone-else-would, extreme environmental degradation, excessively violent Nigerian security forces supposedly policing the area, violent militants kidnapping oil workers and stealing oil, aggravated ethnic tensions, desperate poverty for the local people — and the mind-boggling corruption that makes Nigeria the poster child of the resource curse.
But few outside the energy field know or care much about the situation; it’s simply below the radar, another messed-up African country.
Cioffi’s passionate film doesn’t pretend to be fair or balanced — she openly sides with the local activists in one small part of the delta whom she had come to know personally. The movie’s best parts offer glimpses of the infinitely sad lives of the residents.
It may be too much to expect balance from a filmmaker who was arrested, detained and whose footage was confiscated by Nigerian forces for making this film. Yet Cioffi also seems unwilling to explore evolution of the organization MEND (Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta) — she claims her friends are the true MEND and are non-violent. But someone is out there as a much more violent and militant version of this group, and she doesn’t help her case by blithely dismissing these supposed pretenders so easily.
And she doesn’t talk to any major figures (corrupt or otherwise) inside the government at any level or any of international NGOs working on this issue. There is only one vague chat with an oil company manager. There is no exploration of why this issue has been so unbelievably hard to resolve.
Perhaps no film could tell the whole story of the Nigerian tragedy. But a more complete set of characters and deeper understanding of all sides would have given this film much more power and credibility.
