Odi, an oil-bearing community in Bayelsa State is razed to the ground by Nigerian military troops and about 2,483 persons - mainly women, children and the elderly-- are massacred on the order of President Olusegun Obasanjo. The reason given by the government for the invasion: some 9 police officers that had gone into the community to arrest a notorious gang in the state, but were allegedly killed by the gang. The President threatened to declare a state of emergency within 14 days.

In the events unfolding across the oilfields of the Niger delta, the Yar’Adua government is facing one of the most profound political crises since the civil war. The Nigerian government now confronts an insurgency - there is no other word to describe the spectacular descent into militancy and state violence since the 1990s, and most especially since the dramatic emergence of MEND in late 2005 - and in turn launched a full-scale military counter-insurgency on May 13th 2009. In the decade since the Kaiama Declaration, the region has become largely ungovernable. The events of the last two months have pushed Nigeria to a tipping point.