Conflict in the Niger Delta Jonathan’s defeat in the March 2015 elections, the amnesty program seems likely to end in December 2015 and with patronage to former militant leaders terminated, local discontent is deepening. A February 2016 explosion in a pipeline operated by Shell Petroleum Development Corporation, a Royal Dutch Shell subsidiary to the Shell Forcados export terminal halted both production and imports. Speculation centered on militants using divers. Emmanuel Ibe Kachikwu, the minister of state for petroleum and the head of Nigeria’s oil company, said Nigerian production was down 300,000 barrels a day as a result. On May 11 Shell closed its Bonny oil
Enclaves of Forcados and Badjibo families and servants. The lease was for a renewable period of thirty years in each case, and included conditions such as a requirement to enclose the area and to forbid retail trading. The annual rent was set at one franc per year. The enclaves were mentioned in French textbooks in 1926 and described as unoccupied in 1929. The leases were not renewed at the end of the initial thirty year period. The name 'Forcados' (meaning 'forked') was given to the area by the first Portuguese slave traders to explore the Niger delta in the current Bayelsa State. The leased area