Into the heart of the Niger Delta oil war

As our speedboat casts off from Yenagoa, in the heart of the Niger Delta, I feel as if I am being propelled into a more welcoming world. A bracing wind replaces the humid closeness of the town, a monument to disorder clustered around a single, thunderous main road. The foliage on either side of the water is thick and lush, with oil palms peeping over the top of the tree line. The river traffic – mainly canoes loaded with goods such as fish, wood and plantains – clings to the banks to avoid being capsized by our wake.
I am traveling with a few guides and a fellow journalist, Glenn ­McKenzie, in search of the Niger Delta’s main militant movement: the Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta, or Mend. The organisation had attacked oil installations and kidnapped dozens of oil workers, prompting the big companies to send non-essential staff home and shut down hundreds of thousands of barrels a day of production.