Poisoned Wells: The Dirty Politics of African Oil (review)

Nicholas Shaxson's Poisoned Wells: The Dirty Politics of African Oil examines the role of oil and gas in the socioeconomic and political realities of Africa. In this book, Shaxson traces the roots of violence, corruption, poverty, disease, military rule, and dictatorship in parts of Africa by using the presence of such natural resources as oil and gas as the center of his analyses.

Shaxson's thrust is that the oil wells in Africa are poisoned in varied ways—contaminated by avarice, exploitation, violence, and other social vices that are characteristic of oil-rich nations. To Shaxson, the natural resources, which could be generating wealth, have been shaped by neglect, nepotism, and abuses, largely supported by African politicians, local leaders, oil companies, and Western nations. He opines: "Politicians in oil-dependant countries lose interest in their fellow citizens, as they try to get access to the free cash [sic]" (p. 5).

Poisoned Wells is engaging and easy to read and appreciate because the author deliberately utilizes simplified expressions and examples that address the points that he seeks to highlight. He selects for illustrative purposes a number of individuals, politicians, and African leaders, thereby authenticating his claims. Meanwhile, the causes and effects of oil and gas are his main concern. Therefore, he places a lot of weight on the detrimental effects of these sources of energy to show how their discovery and distribution have taken precedence over the basic needs of the masses.

Beginning with the origins of the Nigerian civil war of the 1960s and series of military coups d'état in Africa, Shaxson demonstrates how violence became entrenched in the politics of oil. He explains how oil and gas have been, and still remain, obstacles to peace, stability, and unity among African nations that are blessed with oil wealth. Part of Shaxson's book explores the correlation between the rise in oil exploration and socioeconomic progress, indeed concluding that oil and gas are liabilities, not assets. He underscores the connection between the rise in oil sales and revenue, coupled with deepening crises in poor communities. According to Shaxson, the rise in oil and gas discovery and production has not guaranteed advancement from the bottom up in impoverished societies on the African continent; rather, the expansion of these wells runs parallel to the spread of poverty, diseases, and death.

Access to such natural resources has created a stark economic disparity among politicians, indigenous chiefs, military leaders, local and foreign oil agents, residents of small African towns and villages, and, indeed, Western nations. Shaxson therefore writes about a wide range of abuses orchestrated by African and Western oil companies, managers, and leaders. He maintains that oil and gas production is affecting the daily lives of the local people, and that they are interrupting their livelihood as people in these locales sacrifice their healthy environment for pollution that affects not only their health but their farmlands. Oil, as he has documented, has created other social problems, especially in economic development; it crippled the agriculture sector in Nigeria in the 1980s, as farmers and their families migrated to coastal areas and cities to seek financial benefits through oil labor.

Meanwhile, the inequality between the haves and the have-nots—a distinction that is largely created by oil and gas discovery—has not been resolved since the demise of colonialism. Shaxson reminds his readers that ordinary citizens in Africa have adopted their own solutions to the problem. In the context of societal problems, a segment of Poisoned Wells has been used by the author to chronicle the roots of social rebellions and justifications for these reactions. These oppositions came from such musicians as Fela Anikulapo-Kuti, the late king of Afrobeat music, and Pedro Motu from Equatorial Guinea. Grassroots militancy and insurgencies by armed citizens against Exxon, Mobil, Shell, and other oil companies are components of the book.

Shaxson explains that Nigerians, for example, are not immune to violence, claiming that "oil's destabilizing push-pull effect … pushes Nigerians apart...