In Nigeria the impacts exceeded environmental degradation, it also destroyed their society causing greed, corruption, and violence.
The Niger Delta oil exploitation initially caused a change in the government structure of Nigeria. The oil industry drilling was met with citizens attacking oil workers (which were brought by the company) and attacks of the oil rigs. As a result the government turned against their own citizens as the elite were bought, as a result casting the citizens into poverty and imprisonment.
The sadness of the citizen tragedy didn’t stop there. As it became obvious the government would do nothing to stop the air and water pollution resulting in the loss of food from coastal waters and inland rivers, the people were left little alternative but to harvest wasted oil floating in the water and scarring their land.
In order to sell the harvested oil the Nigerians developed crude processing technics that immersed human labor in oil making them ill, and causing chronic disease no different that what occurred in Ecuador.
Children in both these countries suffered from birth defects and disease. The women experienced miscarriages due to exposure to toxins.
These tragedies expose the petroleum industry for what it is, ruthless, much like the USA president that promises them the moon while destroying the living atmospheres of Earth.
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Ecuador not only saw huge increases in cancer, but, the beauty and the land are irretrievably damaged. They lost habitat and any chance for the land to be used productively again.
