The Burning Ground: Oil and Militancy in Nigeria

They killed her father for speaking out

For decades, the oil-rich Niger Delta—an important wetland and farming region—has seen its environment devastated by oil extraction that has brought little economic benefit to its people. After a nonviolent campaign for environmental and human rights, Ken Saro-Wiwa and eight colleagues were executed by the military dictatorship in 1995. Their deaths sparked an armed insurgency marked by sabotage and oil theft in a bid for “resource control.”

Thirty year...