Women of Nigeria's delta hold 700 oil workers hostage as protests spread

More than 150 women who are demanding jobs for their sons and electricity for their villages have besieged an oil terminal owned by the American multinational, ChevronTexaco.

The remarkable and thus far peaceful protest in the delta regions of south-east Nigeria went into its fifth day yesterday, and appeared to be spreading into other parts of the oil-rich but impoverished region.

At the Escravos facility, around 700 workers, including Americans, Britons and Canadians, have been trapped inside by the protest. The women have been holding talks with company officials in a village hall, surrounded by armed police and soldiers wearing orange lifejackets emblazoned with the company logo. But the talks have so far failed to yield results.

The women, from the neighbouring Igborodo and Arutan communities, want to meet ChevronTexaco's Nigeria managing director, and have vowed to stay until their demands are fully met.

The women's blockade marks a departure in the Niger Delta, where armed men frequently resort to kidnapping and sabotage to demand jobs, protection money and compensation for alleged environmental damage.

On Thursday police, army and navy personnel patrolled the rivers and swamps around the oil terminal, as ChevronTexaco negotiators sought to end the protest.

The security forces were under strict instructions not to harm the unarmed women who forced their way into the terminal on Monday.

The protest was peaceful but the chanting women – many of whom wore bright, printed dresses and carried bundles of food – had frozen movement on the docks, the airstrips and the oil tank farm.

The protest is not expected to prevent the company from meeting its July production quota, despite the fact that Escravos accounts for most of the group's Nigeria exports.

The people in the Niger Delta are impoverished, despite living on land that yields £13bn in oil exports annually. Nigeria is the world's sixth largest oil exporter and the fifth biggest supplier of American oil imports.

The absence of efforts by the government to develop the region has prompted activists to focus their demands for roads, water and schools on the multinational corporations pumping the oil.

The Niger Delta was recently declared one of the world's worst kidnap risk zones by the insurers Aon and Broker Asset Management, because of the practice of locals taking foreign and Nigerian oil workers hostage and demanding ransom. Hostages are rarely harmed.

Oil companies publicly deny giving ransoms, but some executives have privately admitted to paying.

The region's oil riches have also pitted Niger Delta state governments against the federal authorities.

States in the Niger Delta are demanding a greater share of the oil wealth. At the moment, they receive 6 per cent of oil revenues, but they also want a share of offshore earnings. In May, a Nigerian Supreme Court ruling gave the federal government full claim to offshore reserves.

The struggle between multinational oil firms and local communities drew international attention in the mid-1990s, when violent protests by the tiny Ogoni tribe forced Shell to abandon its wells on their land.

The late dictator General Sani Abacha responded in 1995 by hanging nine Ogoni leaders, including the writer Ken Saro Wiwa – triggering international outrage and leading to Nigeria's expulsion from the Commonwealth.