MEND for the eradication of poverty and pollution

Okay! Now I have to make up for my narrow minded conclusions on the Poverty and Pollution issue. How could I have omitted to mention the troubles in Nigeria’s Niger -Delta Region? With news of kidnapping of expatriates, filtering into the Federal Capital Territory it’s almost too easy to be indifferent to the chaos happening in some parts of the country. The relatively clean and peaceful city of Abuja has a numbing effect on one’s sense of societal conscience (no wonder our politicians love it here). Here in this tranquil town of Nigeria’s central region, it’s so easy to forget that militias in the south of the country have taken up arms to fight the oil companies and government for the apparent lack of development in their region. Their activities have made international headlines, but their questionable method of kidnapping expatriates causes one to wonder what their true intentions are. One of the groups Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta as the papers put it, have remained a “Shadowy and faceless group”. For these people in Nigeria’s south, pollution means poverty.
Why can’t Nigeria be like the Middle East where oil money has made the average man there almost like royalty, instead of what it has turned us to – kidnappers and beggars. In the Middle East oil means wealth, not pollution and even more poverty.