Shadows and Light in the Niger Delta

I am currently reading "Curse of the Black Gold: 50 Years of Oil in Niger Delta" by Michael Watts and Ed Kashi.Thins book is filled with a picture story format of the conflict in the Niger Delta and the people that it has affected. Michael Watts, a Berkeley-based scholar, was attracted to Nigeria from Iraq. For more than thirty years, Michael has been studying oil and the resulting conflicts of countries all around the world. In July of 2004, he took a trip to Nigeria and learned first hand about the problems it has been facing. He writes that Delta is "the pivotal point where all of Nigeria's plagues of political gangsterism, corruption, and poverty seems to converge". With a commission from National Geographic magazine, he was allowed to return to Nigeria, and this time, had the opportunity to make breakthroughs to areas and subjects that had been unattainable before. Of all the subjects he covered, he found that MEND, the Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta the most important. MEND are an armed military group based in the cities and creeks of Niger Delta., particularily around the Western area of Warri. MEND is a very corrupt military group and responsible for the attacks on facilities, taking of hostages, and creating an unsafe and inhospitable enviroment for the oil industry. Michael attempted to get in contact with this group. It was very hard as he had to communicate through an obscure figure named Jomo Gbomo who was able to communicate through e-mails and other forms of contact. In the end, Michael writes that it wasn't through Gbomo that he received most of information but through other contacts.