Shell’s Nigerian pollution condemned. HURRAH !
29th January 2021
Good News from the BBC: Shell is held responsible for its filthy habits
I have visited Bayelsa Province in the Nigerian Oil States. Over the past twenty years I have had meetings with Shell officials in London and in Nigeria, both Black one and White ones. Shell is definitely guilty of pollution in Nigeria. I can state that many Shell officials are racists who care nothing about Nigeria so long as they get their own fat salaries; and I believe Shell has also been guilty of complicity with Nigerian government corruption during the military dictatorships that ruined Nigeria.
Polluted fields where farmers can no longer grow crops – and where fishing is often destroyed as well - in the Niger Delta region of Nigeria, in the so-called Nigerian Oil States.
Those are my opinions. Now here is the much more reasonable and moderate report from BBC:
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-africa-55853024
A Dutch appeals court has ruled that the Nigerian branch of oil giant Shell is responsible for damage caused by leaks in the Niger Delta.
The court ordered Shell Nigeria to pay compensation to Nigerian farmers, while the subsidiary and its Anglo-Dutch parent company were told to install equipment to prevent future damage. A group of farmers launched the case in 2008, alleging widespread pollution.
Shell says the leaks were the result of "sabotage". In a statement on Friday, Royal Dutch Shell said it was "disappointed" with the verdict. The ruling can be appealed against. [Robin regrets this. Yet another appeal means plenty of opportunity for Shell yet again to delay: more years of procrastination and prevarication. Why are corporate leaders not willing to behave like responsible citizens? And why do our political leaders not demand honesty and cleanliness from our corporations?]
The judgment could have implications beyond Nigeria, in terms of corporate responsibility and the duty of care multinationals have to the people in the places where they operate, reports the BBC's Anna Holligan from The Hague. While the oil spills in this case happened from 2004 to 2007, pollution from leaking pipelines continues to be a major issue in the Niger Delta.
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The court said Shell had not proven "beyond reasonable doubt" that saboteurs were responsible for the leaks affecting the villages of Goi and Oruma, rather than poor maintenance. "This makes Shell Nigeria responsible for the damage caused by the leaks" in these areas, it said. It added that the amount of compensation would be "determined at a later stage".
Kunle Falayi, BBC News, reports from Lagos
This is the first time individual farmers who have had their sources of livelihood taken away by the environmental destruction in the Niger Delta hope to get justice. It is being received with excitement among environmental activists, as it may open a floodgate of more litigation against Shell and other corporations involved in oil exploration in the region.
Kentebbe Ebiarido, who represents some of the farmers, said people in the area had been "cheated environmentally and economically" and that no matter how much the multinationals had misbehaved in the past, the communities now have hope.
For many years, Shell has been accused of being responsible for the contamination of the region through leaks from oil exploration - allegations it has always denied. There have been settlements in the past. But in those instances - like in 2005 when Shell agreed to an $84m (£60m) deal for fishermen in the Bodo community - thousands of residents of the Niger Delta were lumped together. When such settlements eventually got to each of them, it did not amount to much.
But this time, even though no-one knows what the compensation will be, there is little doubt that it will different to before. [BBC news report]
SOME BACKGROUND:
Shell started business in Nigeria in 1937 as Shell D'Arcy. In 1956, Shell Nigeria discovered the first commercial oil field at Oloibiri in the Niger Delta and started oil exports in 1958.
Ken Saro-Wiwa was one of the first to protest about oil pollution in his native Ogoniland. Initially as spokesperson, and then as president, of the MOSOP (Movement for the Survival of the Ogoni People), Saro-Wiwa led a campaign of non-violence against the pollution and environmental degradation of Ogoniland – especially by Royal Dutch Shell. He was also an outspoken critic of Nigerian military governments, which did not enforce environmental regulations on the foreign petroleum companies operating in the Oil States. A world-famous author, Ken Saro-Wiwa was executed by the Nigerian authorities on 10 November 1995 at the age of 54. He was hanged while Commonwealth leaders were meeting, as a direct snub - by Nigeria’s brutal and corrupt military dictator Sani Abacha - to their calls for Saro-Wiwa to be freed. As a result, Nigeria was suspended from the Commonwealth for three years.
That is the same General Sani Abacha who died in the arms of a Philippino prostitute from an overdose of Viagra. (This, of course, is not an official medical judgement: it is what every Nigerian believes, and so it must be true.)
President Sani Abacha heard that the Ogoni leaders were complaining, so he took some Chiefs to visit his new Capital city of Abuja. “See what wonderful things I am building with Nigeria’s oil money!” he told them.
The Elders replied: “You have big buildings and wide paved streets, and we see bridges flying over these streets in a place where you have no rivers. We live in a land of rivers, in the Niger Delta, and you have not built us one single bridge.” That is when the non-violent protests in Ogoniland began to become violent.
Decades of indiscriminate petroleum waste dumping, leaking wells, polluted streams and fields rendered sterile from petroleum led to Ken’s activism. The fact that it is only now, in 2020 that justice is being offered provides a perfect illustration of how post-colonial Africa has been exploited and impoverished by European and American corporations. Will China be a better partner for Africa’s social economy? Probably not; but Chinese Communism could hardly be worse for Africa than Western Capitalism and the sham ‘democracy’ that its leaders peddle in Africa.
Previous court judgements:
In 1996 a group of NGOs brought lawsuits against Royal Dutch Shell and Brian Anderson, the head of its Nigerian operation. Wikipedia informs that suits were under the Alien Tort Statute, a 1978 statute giving non-US citizens the right to file suits in US courts for international human rights violations, and the Torture Victim Protection Act, which allows individuals to seek damages in the US for torture or extrajudicial killing, regardless of where the violations take place. On 9 June 2009 – days before the court appearance in New York – Shell agreed to an out-of-court settlement of US$15.5 million to victims' families, including that of Ken Saro-Wiwa. However, the company denied any liability for the deaths, stating that the payment was part of a reconciliation process.
Like the non-governmental organizations, United Nations agencies have also been trying to hold Shell to account for spills in Ogoniland that contaminated the community’s drinking water sources. The UN said in 2015 that the clean-up process would have an initial cost of $1 billion, and could take up to 30 years to complete. http://thehigherlearning.com/2015/01/08/shell-agrees-to-84-million-deal-for-2-oil-spills-that-devastated-a-nigerian-community/
BBC Nigeria correspondent Will Ross described in 2015 how the oil-rich west African nation experiences hundreds of oil spills every year. Some are caused by leaks, others are a result of sabotage by oil thieves. These I know are often run by mafia organizations, many of which have links to the military during the time of Sani Abacha. On Wednesday January 7, 2015 the community of Bodo finally got some relief: Shell – who has been engaged in a three-year legal battle over the spills – agreed to an $84 million settlement to avoid further legal action.
Lawyers from the law firm Leigh Day, which represented more than 15,000 fishermen from the Bodo community in the lawsuit against Shell, described the announcement as a great success, and claimed that it’s one of the largest payouts to a whole community following an environmental disaster.
“It is the first time that compensation has been paid following an oil spill in Nigeria to the thousands of individuals who have suffered loss,”
The hypocrisy of Royal Dutch Shell is sickening. The 2021 Dutch court ruling will hold Shell legally and morally accountable. 40 years too late.