More than 5,000 Ijaw Youth gather in the ancient Kaiama Town, Bayelsa state, proclaiming the “Kaiama Declaration” and start peaceful protests against oil corporations for the years of environmental abuse and neglect of the region. The major demand of the youth is ‘resource control and self-determination’. The government and oil corporations respond with violence through the deployment of military troops into the region, targeting the Ijaw communities – Yenagoa, Mbiama, Bomadi, Port Harcourt etc. Many youths are killed by the military.

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.