Burning from the Inside

Nick Peterson:
When I embarked on this project, I first studied the country inside out and other places in Africa for three years. I needed to know why such a beautiful continent could be so violent. Half way through the interview process, I thought "hell" somehow it's the same in Britain. It's different but it's still there. The violence is behind closed door or it's a mental one and as far as the corruption is concerned it's omnipresent too, from the left to the right of the political divide. This is the human condition: we're not players here, we are being played.

Sokari Ekine:
This is what people have to live daily with for 35 years now. All the gas... We can actually see it burning. We can feel the fire... Right now.

[Looking at the streaming gas... ]

Ibiba Don Pedro:
We have corrupt leaders. With the African culture, women are always in second place. The women today are struggling hard to make sure that they get somewhere. There is still is a long way to go because it is a male dominant society, so I don't think they are well represented, I wish it was because the country would have been turned around to be a better country.

Felix Tuodolo:
Hostage taking are taking place in two dimensions; one: by locals there, two: by criminals in the society. These are the two stages of hostage takings. The plain situation is that the government and the oil companies have been unable to address the problem of the Niger Delta. When you push the people to the wall, when the people are impoverished and they are deprived of their right and dignity to life, it results to all sort of things.

Ibiba Don Pedro:
The nation is so corrupt from top to bottom that we don't know where we're heading right now.

Ibiba Don Pedro:
I believe some bombs went in there and it shut down the place and there are signs on the skin of the boys... From the information they are passing out to us that chemicals were used on them and I believe that is against the Geneva convention to use chemical weapons on people whether they are armed or innocent citizens but they are also innocent citizens.

Father Ebri:
I think it is corruption and mismanagement and with that we can also tie in the Ijaw question for example petroleum, which almost all the wealth of Nigeria comes from and the elite takes the money for themselves, for their families and friends and the poor in Ijawland or in Ogoland or in other parts are left with nothing.

Rowland Ekperi:
My recollection of the civil war is a very sad recollection you see people that have been killed on both sides. It's a sad experience and the way you go through that experience you pray that you don't see another civil war in any part of the world. Sad experience! People admitted that 1-2 million people died in the civil war... Normally in any civil war you lose life. They all died; all these people...

Ibiba Don Pedro:
A sense of feeling of being overwhelmed by injustice, being overwhelmed by failure of the system to be able to carry out things that they should have carried out like the protection of women, like protection from looting, from being kidnapped and being taken out across the border.

Samuel Owonaru:
The international community shouldn't just stand by and watch what is happening there because in the end it will affect all of us.