Reading Soiled Palms

In A Swamp Full of Dollars Michael Peel connects the oil pollution rapidly devouring the livelihoods of the Niger Delta indigenes to the monstrosity of corruption spreading its tentacles throughout Nigeria’s systems.

Written by Odafin Odafe Okoh

May 18, 2022

Photography by Ron Bousso

If the Nigerian state were an oil well, Michael Peel provides a bold, deep dive through its crude content in A Swamp Full of Dollars. In the book spanning three parts across nine chapters, Peel set out with two key objectives in mind: first, to present Nigeria as a case study for any group of people hoping for fortune on finding oil; second, to distinguish, by way of trying to understand, the voices of the Niger Delta people, muffled over the years by prolonged violence, from the disorder of that violence itself.

In achieving both objectives, Peel draws from a series of interviews with many of the key players involved in the political economy of oil in the Niger Delta; a region, he explains, ‘whose fundamental problem was not precisely mass poverty, but the marginal richness that oil brings.’

An initial eye-opener is the nuanced water-world Peel presents of Alhaji Mujahid Dokubo-Asari, an audacious warlord, and his followership of Egbesu-deifying militants tucked away in the creeks across Abonema town in Port Harcourt, Rivers State. The militia, from here, targets the government and oil multinational companies in agitation for control over the oil pumped from and regardless of their land.

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About the Author

Odafin Odafe Okoh

is a history writer and researcher from the Niger Delta who writes about culture and history.

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Reading Soiled Palms