Environmental activists from Africa, Europe and North America, however, are concerned that the new project may turn into a nightmare for the ecology and human rights - as happened with the Shell exploration programme in the Niger delta. The World Bank is considering making a 370 million dollar loan for the four billion dollar project through the International Development Association and the International Finance Corporation, branches of the multilateral institution that advance loans to the world's poorest countries and to the private sector. He points to Ogoniland in neighboring Nigeria where more than 30 years of Shell oil exploration has polluted drinking water, and caused fish to disappear from the rivers. Crops now cannot grow on large stretches of now-infertile land in the ogoni region. There is a lot of talk about the coming oil bonanza in N'Djamena, but Chadian human rights monitors fear that the oil will lead to an increase in repression and human rights violations in the South,'' says Irene Mandeau, who heads Amnesty International's working group on Chad.
Local people report that problems have already arisen.
About three years ago Dingamtolem Ajikolmian, a local peasant, heard that an airplane was to land on a nearby field, so he decided to take his children to witness the rare event. Nervous Chadian security forces protecting Exxon staff shot and killed Ajikolmian in front of his children, according to Claudia and Martin Duppel, volunteers from Germany who lived in the Doba region for several years. Activists also do not believe that the wealth from this new project will trickle down to those in need. Transparency International, an international coalition fighting corruption in international business transactions, ranks Cameroon among the world's 10 worst offenders in corrupt practices. In Chad corruption is so severe that Western donors have insisted that public finances be controlled by a Swiss company called Coteca, according to the British Economist magazine.