Port Harcourt — Militant groups are fighting for a greater share of the Niger Delta’s vast oil wealth The sand is still hot under our feet. The oil thieves must have run the illegal oil refinery, which is hidden from the sea by thickets of mangrove, until just a short while ago. “Destroy everything, boys,” the commander of the Nigeria Security and Civil Defence Corps unit, Helen Amakiri, orders. The job of the stocky, crew-cut woman is to combat oil theft, estimated to cost Nigeria a tenth of its annual oil production. It’s a rate of loss that has dethroned Nigeria as Africa’s largest oil producer. A paramilitary NSCDC trooper, wearing a balaclava and flip-flops, obeys Amakiri by firing his automatic weapon into the rusty oil containers at close range, setting them on fire. The flames stink sweetly of diesel. It’s pouring with rain as we surge away in […]