They fled in dugout canoes, a few clothes and schoolbooks thrust into bags, and rowed through the mangrove swamps that night to reach safety. The villagers of Bille had been caught up in bloody clashes between Nigerian troops and heavily armed militants.
Soldiers claim to be protecting them from criminal gangs and militants claim to be fighting for their rights against a corrupt government, but the voices of ordinary Nigerians have been drowned out in the gunfire. Villagers live in terror the military might hold them responsible for the actions of the heavily armed fighters, and take brutal revenge.
“They say 12 soldiers died in this thing and it is this town’s boys that killed them,” said Obubeleye Igani, referring to a series of attacks on the military near her town last week. “But it is nothing like that.
“I am afraid, I am still afraid of the army. Maybe they will come to fight us.”
The slim 18-year-old fled to nearby Port Harcourt with her family when news of the attacks first began to trickle through. The five lived for six days in a single cramped room until Igani’s mother decided Igani was missing too much school.
The family returned Sunday to a community living in fear.
“Many people have left. Many are still not back,” said Chief Ibiba Ikombonimi, fingering the silver chain that is the mark of his rank. “They are afraid that since the presence of the militants, there may be a possible clash with the military.”
In the guerrilla conflict of the swamps, soldiers often find it hard to tell a fighter from a fisherman. It’s also true that militant groups do receive at least tacit support from some communities.
The Nigerian military denies that its troops commit reprisal attacks.
“The Nigerian military is highly professional,” said spokesman Maj. Sagir Musa. “We do not attack our brothers and sisters. We are there to protect and serve.”
But people in the south often speak of the Nigerian military’s razing of Odi town in 1999 and its killing of over 200 unarmed civilians in Benue state in 2001, both in retaliation for the killing of government forces. Earlier this year, a kidnapping by the militant group the Movement for the Emancipation for the Niger Delta in Delta state triggered an attack on a local community, Gbaramatu, which in turn triggered another kidnapping by MEND.
More recently, an Italian working for a subsidiary of Italian oil giant Eni SpA was kidnapped from a cluster of huts and homes that stretched around the company compound. The Italian, who was taken in August, was later released unharmed but a soldier was shot dead during the raid. Within an hour of the attack, local people say, enraged troops arrived and began setting fire to the houses and shops of Aker Base.
“People were trying to rescue their belongings but the soldiers were taking it from them and throwing it back in the fire,” recalled Kingsley Emenike. “But we had nothing to do with it. The militants came with their guns firing in the air. We ran. They took the white man and shot the soldier. Later, the soldiers came with their guns. We ran. Then they set our houses on fire. This fire incident has turned people to beggars.”
Two months later, what was once a community of around 2,000 is a blackened ruin. Children pick through charred generators, crates of burst bottles, and scraps of burned cloth.
A few people have set up makeshift shelters using plastic and sheets of twisted zinc that had once been the roofs of their homes; others sleep on the floor of local churches. Some are so poor, says Emenike, that they are washing their only clothes in the river at night and hiding naked in the bush until the clothes are dry enough to put back on. One man who was badly burnt remains in hospital, unable to pay his medical bills.
Although Aker Base residents said they used to be on friendly terms, resentment toward the soldiers, and to a lesser extent the oil company that they protect, is now widespread.
Military officials said the raid was carried out not by their troops, but by militants in military uniforms who had returned to the scene of their crime. But Aker Base residents say they recognized some of their attackers as soldiers.
The trouble around Bille last week has not so far been followed by attacks on the villagers. The villagers remain nervous, but some hope that the federal government may be backing off. But it will take years to repair the trust.
After a series of attacks last week, most of which it said were the work of others, MEND militants put out a statement saying it was sending out 500 fighters into the creeks to defend civilians from the military. Shortly afterward, it said in another statement that a community near Bille, Elem-Tombia, had been razed.
Local boatmen refused to go to the village, saying it was too dangerous. Around Bille, mothers said that they were beginning to run low on food for their children because the fishermen were too scared to venture out.
“We have been trapped. We are really helpless,” said Margaret Omualabo, as worried elders nodded around her. “This is hell.”