S2 EP7: ‘We All Stand Before History’

He is now, or should be remembered as Africa’s first environmental activist as well, the world’s first environmental activist that happened to be an African. And I wanted to make this memorial because he was killed, and I couldn’t believe that such a gem was killed by the Abacha regime back in the day. You know, it was just such a shock, because Nelson Mandela had been let out of prison, and Ken’s son, Ken Jr, was on television running around, greeting Nelson Mandela. And other world leaders who were welcoming Nelson Mandela. So, you know, there was a buzz at the time that this man had. Obviously, you know, he came out of jail, and very, very important to the continent, and a son from the same area, same continent, was about to be killed. So it was a pivotal moment in ’95 and so, you know, I just didn’t forget that, just because it was something to do with Nigeria. And so when the call out came, to come up with ideas for remembering this guy. I thought I would try this, but I was actually scared, just because, you know, the power that killed Ken, who was a superstar and well connected, and then… myself, who isn’t well connected, and a woman to boot? I just thought this is a little bit scary, just because, as an artist, you can be politically aware, and we are politically aware as human beings. It’s just that not all of us have the opportunity of expressing it, unless we go into politics or something, but artists have this license where they can say things. So I thought, you know, I’d give it a go, and I was one of the winners of this memorial.

Those are the words of the Nigerian-British sculptor, Sokari Douglas-Camp. In 2006, she was commissioned to create a work of art in honour of the memory of Ken Saro-Wiwa. Douglas-Camp created a life-sized replica of a Nigerian steel bus, called Battle Bus: Living Memorial for Ken Saro-Wiwa. It was an artistic symbol of movement and change. In 2015, twenty years after the execution of the Ogoni 9, the human rights and environment rights organization, Platform, planned to commemorate the Ogoni 9 execution and wanted Douglas-Camp’s battle bus to feature at the event held in Bori, Saro-Wiwa’s hometown. But when the battle bus arrived at the Lagos Seaport that year, it was impounded by the Port authorities.

It is now 2024, almost thirty years since the executions happened. Presidents have come and gone, but the battle bus, an artistic work crafted to honour the memory of the Ogoni 9, is still under arrest by the Nigerian authorities. The question then is, what is it about Ken Saro-Wiwa that continues to aggravate and possibly even terrify the Nigerian ruling establishment? And just as important a question to ask is, how have the Ogoni people been able to come to terms with the execution of the Ogoni 9, and deal with the unresolved environmental crisis caused by oil exploration till this day? 

Hello and welcome to The Republic, a podcast about pivotal African figures and historical events. I’m your host, Wale Lawal. In seven episodes, I’m going to walk you through one of the biggest miscarriages of justice in Nigeria’s history: the Abacha regime’s execution of the Ogoni 9 in 1995. To experience what happened, we’ll explore the life and legacy of Ken Saro-Wiwa, and the significance of the Ogoni struggle against oil companies and their environmental degradation of the Niger Delta.

In this episode, we will talk about the immediate aftermath of the execution of the Ogoni 9, and reflect on how their families, and the Ogoni people more broadly have been able to come to terms with the execution of the Ogoni 9 and deal with the unresolved environmental crisis caused by the oil exploration activities of Shell.

In the 1990s, there were at least four events connected to the aftermath of the execution of the Ogoni 9. The first event was the expulsion of Nigeria from the Commonwealth of Nations after the Abacha regime defied the world and went ahead with the executions.

It was not a decision reached in rancor and in anger…that was not the nature of the discussion. It was more in sorrow and sadness but with a determination that the Commonwealth must be seen to live up to the principles that the Commonwealth have themselves enunciated.

I would expect there would be support for the Commonwealth move. It was the right move, it was the move supported overwhelmingly by the  Commonwealth membership and I think it was absolutely the right decision – a decision that had to be made, difficult though it was.

In the previous episode, you heard Nelson Mandela speaking about Nigeria’s expulsion. Here he is again, reaffirming his support for the decision to suspend Nigeria from the Commonwealth:

We are filled with such revulsion and disgust with what Nigeria has done, that that action- this type of action, is inevitable.

The anger in Mandela’s voice is palpable. You hear similar anger in the voices of other prominent international political figures. Here’s Madeleine Albright, the US ambassador to the United Nations, speaking to the UN Security Council when Nigeria’s suspension came up for discussion.

Their conviction was stunning in its absence of any modicum of the due process under law. The unseemly haste of this reported step contravenes all values of the civilized world. The defendants were not given a fair and free trial, were not able to present witnesses or evidence.

One could argue that the Nigerian government had not faced this level of international attention, outrage, disappointment and scrutiny since the 1960s Civil War. By the 1990s however, and following the executions of the Ogoni 9, Nigeria had become a pariah state, cut off from the Commonwealth, as well as the UN. Professor Ben Naanen, an Economic Historian and MOSOP executive secretary under Saro-Wiwa, helped me understand this better.

In fact, if you read the press at the time, you will see, I think, some of the newspapers that were published. I’ve forgotten their names. You read it during that period, about Mandela’s words, you understand the level of rage, that of anger that Mandela felt, and that is how Nigeria was suspended from the Commonwealth. Because, look, you said they were right. They had the right of appeal. And just after a few days while they appeal, or they were preparing for the appeal, lawyers were busy preparing the papers, you just killed the people. So you look at the press at the time and the outrage. So John Major called it, ‘judicial execution’. John Major was the British Prime Minister at the time. And from all the small print that I was reading, Bill  Clinton and the British Prime Minister John Major, even considered a naval blockade against Nigeria. So you could understand the depth of international revulsion.

In the wake of the international condemnation that followed the aftermath of the executions, the Abacha government doubled down on its actions. Not every voice that spoke out during this period condemned the executions. And these supportive voices certainly bolstered the Abacha regime’s resolve in affirming their final decision to convict the Ogoni 9 of murder. Tom Ikimi, Nigeria’s foreign minister in 1995, was one of such Abacha supporters. Listen to his argument: 

Unfortunately, Mr. Saro-Wiwa, who was not even the original leader of the movement of the survival of the Ogoni people but became the leader because he became more militant, did not want to use civilized means or normal negotiation in order to achieve his ends. He was responsible, along with others, for the gruesome murder of four of the members of that movement who were the original leaders. They include a former minister and a former secretary to the government of River State. We understand that recently since the trials, which took nine months through a court which had been established according to the laws of our country, that there has been overwhelming distortion of the facts in the international media. People are misconceiving what has happened for a trial for murder to be a trial for civil rights, or for politics, etcetera. These are not the truth. We’re talking of someone who was involved in the murder, gruesome murder, of four Nigerians from his own area, and prominent citizens for that matter. 

During the Ogoni 9s incarceration, Saro-Wiwa’s opposition within MOSOP and among the Ogoni elders supported the Abacha regime’s decision to try the Ogoni 9 for murder. Ken Wiwa Jr. writes in his book, In The Shadow of A Saint, that at the time, depending on where you stood, Saro-Wiwa was either a devil or a saint. While the pro-Abacha voices among the Ogoni certainly added a tragic twist to the fate of the Ogoni 9, nothing could have prepared the Ogoni people for the violent military campaign the Abacha regime waged against them in the days that followed. 

Ogoni people were now trapped in a military zone.. the military descended on Ogoni, and moved in their personnel and armed carriers into Ogoni. The drive through all of Ogoni in their army jeeps, killing people. 

Abacha wasted little time in going after everyone connected to the Ogoni struggle, and those who had worked directly with Saro-Wiwa. Professor Naanen, who had been the link between MOSOP and Europe while the Ogoni 9 were on trial, was high on Abacha’s list. He explained the immediate aftermath of the executions to me. Here’s a snippet of our conversation:

So when you now say that you know you had to sneak back into Port Harcourt, is it that there were many checkpoints? How do you, how do we describe, or how, for people who are obviously listening to this, how can we picture what that atmosphere was like. Is it that you’re trying to avoid checkpoints? Was it that there was heavy military presence everywhere? What kind of atmosphere was it?

The key issue, the main problem was the international airports, when you will come in. You know that is where they check your passport and all security information, that is where it is, all right. But often you could fly into, maybe a nearer, neighboring country, and then smuggle yourself into the country. You can more easily evade the land borders than you know, coming by air. And so that is what happened. I could maybe fly to Kono, all right, or Accra, Ghana, and then go across. Of course, there are people there who would help, alright, for example, you know the situation at the border. You could very casually, and then they will send some people to go and bring my luggage. So I could, just like any person walking across, walking in the area, casually cross the border, you see. Once you are in Nigeria, on the road, you also have to be careful that you could get to Port Harcourt and so on. In fact, there was once a flight between Lagos and Port Harcourt when I was really terribly afraid, because, well, on a private basis, the passenger before me occupied the next row on the flight. He was reading The Times of London – he was a white man – where the Saro-Wiwa picture was a center spread. You know, the Times of London. If you really look at the background of that picture, unedited, okay, the place where Saro-Wiwa is raising his hand, you will see me in the background. And so I was very terrified that maybe there could be security agents on that flight that would identify me if they were looking okay, over from the back at the background of that picture, because I know the day that picture was snapped, that iconic photograph, I was there in the background. Alright, I was there. So I was so terrified, and I used the Nigerian newspaper party to disguise myself, covering my face so that people could not identify me. Because, you know, the way security was everywhere during the Abacha regime, you see. So that tells you the kind of situation that some of us faced during the time. And let me also say this that the very night I arrived, the very people, the very person that was looking for me, the commander of the Internal Security Task Force, offered me a drink at the staff club. He didn’t know me because my picture was nowhere. So I just landed, and I thought I could take advantage of the night to visit the staff club. But Paul Okutimo used to come there to play squash, and so he was in the staff club drinking of the university here. I’ve always been a resident of the university. He was at the staff club, you know, after squash, taking a cold drink, and I entered and even sat in the next seat nearest to him. I didn’t know him. He didn’t know me, but it was when I looked at him that I now identify from the picture. He didn’t know me because the government, and that was part of my saving grace, didn’t have my photograph, and so he even offered me a drink, which I politely turned down. But this was the person looking for me. He politely offered me a drink. I politely turned and I quickly exited for the club. By the following morning, by five o’clock, I was on my way to Lagos and out of the country, because that could have triggered a security alarm, and I entered and left the country immediately across the border. You see, sometimes you take a bit of time to arrange your flight from Lagos and then go and pick it up, maybe, in Cotonou.

What do you think would have happened if he identified you?

I would have been like the others that were killed.

The death of the Ogoni 9 did not necessarily mean Abacha granted clemency to the Ogoni Community. The well-documented state-sponsored attack on the Ogoni towns and villages alarmed the International community, triggering flashbacks to the Rwandan genocide which had shocked the world in the previous year of 1994. Professor Naanen recalled the measures the International community took to ensure that learning from the genocide in Rwanda, there would not be an attempt to wipe the Ogoni people off the map of Nigeria.

Ogoni was a major issue that engaged the attention of the UN General Assembly, because the Human Rights Commission, which reports to the General Assembly, was at the center of it. They sent two missions to Nigeria. But, you know, Nigeria is a sovereign state, and so the United Nations is a state-based organization, so it had to cover the rest of Nigeria. The Secretary General’s mission a fact finding mission to Nigeria, which focus on two things, Ogoni and June 12, and also the Special Rapporteur that was appointed on torture and extrajudicial executions, appointed by the Human Rights Commission. All this was reported to the General Assembly. So that was the picture in Ogoni, as it were.

While the UN looked for ways to cease Abacha’s military attack on the Ogoni people, the family members and affiliates of the Ogoni 9 were also being targeted by the military government. In The Politics of Bones by J Timothy Hunt, Dr Owens Wiwa recalled how he, his wife Diana and young son, Befii had to flee Nigeria for their safety.

A quote from the book goes like this: ‘Over the next two days, the Wiwas checked into six different hotels. Sometimes it would only be an hour or two before a desk clerk would look at them oddly or they’d overhear a bit of conversation and they’d feel too frightened to stay. This was no way to live.’

For Dr Owens Wiwa, his connections with the Canadian Consulate in Lagos, gave him added leeway to escape into Ghana. Nonetheless, the journey was far from easy. According to the Politics of Bones:

Crossing a small stream, the guides led them another five kilometres into the night, bypassing military checkpoints and shrines filled with voodoo fetishes. In the wee morning hours, the Wiwas reached the Ghanaian border town of Aflao. Through the dark jungle, they had crossed the international boundary without even knowing it.

Professor Naanen also told me about his family’s interactions with the armed forces: 

My wife didn’t even know. I’d left my young wife and my little kid, because I didn’t hope to stay away for long. And they were there. We just returned from Canada, and you know that young family. So when the military squad that was sent to arrest me, you know, invaded my residence here at the university, they invaded. My wife didn’t even know what had happened, okay, but all of a sudden, maybe she saw two plain cloth people come through the main door asking for me. And she innocently, she thought that they were my graduate students coming to look for me. She didn’t even know that they were security people. And she innocently told them that I was out of the country, that I was in the Netherlands and so on. But while that was going on, the armed squad broke through the back, entering the house, entering every part of the house, searching every  part of the house, and even the househelp that my wife just hired wasn’t aware of what had happened. She innocently told them that she doesn’t even know the oga of the house, you see? So they became convinced that I wasn’t around. But my resident was kept under security surveillance.

The Ogonis had become enemies of the Nigerian State. The UK Parliament Select Committee on Foreign Affairs First Report of January 1998 explained that the Ogonis were targeted for two reasons after the executions. The report said:

(i) confronted with a well organised and disciplined non-violent democratic mass movement by the Ogoni people, first of its kind in our part of the world, the military regime, in alliance with Shell oil company, is determined to use the Ogoni as a frightening deterrent to other opposition groups who may want to organise like the Ogoni people. 

(ii) the government here seems to hold the Ogoni people responsible for what has happened to its international image following the execution of the Ogoni leader and activists.

The report also detailed the military government’s decision to withhold the corpses of the executed men. The government also outlawed mourning for the executed men to the extent that any Ogoni person found wearing black in public was stripped, arrested and detained. The military also monitored all religious gatherings in Ogoni, to the extent that ministers were detained for using the pulpit to mobilize the Ogoni or for praying for the souls of the Ogoni 9. On November 11th 1996, the military government disrupted the remembrance services students at the University of Lagos and University of Ibadan planned to host. 

In the same month, Amnesty International launched an international campaign to end contempt for human rights in Nigeria. Soon after, three Amnesty International workers were arrested in Lagos on their way to a diplomatic reception at Sheraton Hotel. They were Patrick Vahard, Development Officer West and Central Africa, Eke Ubije, Lagos Executive Secretary and David Omounzuafo, Group Development Officer. There was no information provided as to why they were arrested but Amnesty International claimed they were detained ‘purely because of their peaceful activities in the promotion of human rights.’

Simply mentioning the name Ken-Saro-Wiwa or possessing one of his books led to detention. The UK Foreign Affairs Committee report detailed an event on August 27, 1997 where, Major Obi Umahi, commander of the Internal Security Task Force, impounded all Ken Saro-Wiwa’s books a book vendor displayed for sale at the entrance of the state secretariat complex. The Internal Security Taskforce was the special military Task Force the government set up specifically to pacify the Ogoni people and was headquartered at Kpor in the Gokana local government area of Ogoni. The books Umahi seized included: On a Darkling plain; Sozaboy; Genocide in Nigeria; the Ogoni Tragedy; Ogoni Today and Tomorrow; the Ogoni Bill of Rights; the First Letter to Ogoni Youths; the Second Letter to Ogoni Youths; A Forest of Flowers and Similia: Essays on Anomic Nigeria. In addition, the vendor was arrested and forced to deny newspaper reports of the seizure while the Port Harcourt correspondent of the Punch and Vanguard newspapers that reported the story were tortured and detained.

Beyond the Ogoni 9, there were 45 Ogonis who were extra-judicially executed or unaccounted for by the military government. Another 345 were arbitrarily detained and tortured while in custody. Dum Syl Aminikpo, the director of the Ken Saro-Wiwa Foundation in Port Harcourt, told me what this moment meant to Ogonis.

It sort of erased a lot of our educated elites. It wasn’t just Ken, even the Ogoni four and the other Ogoni. It sort of cut off an entire generation of Ogoni people. And till date, they are still struggling to meet up politically. It took us back, you know, because these were highly exposed men, our top brains now. So killing those guys was like cutting off an entire generation for our development. It gave us a gap that we have not been filled till date.

One outcome of the government’s brutal repression of the Ogoni and MOSOP activists was the Ogoni Refugee Crisis. By September 1997, there were over 1,000 Ogonis located in refugee camps across West and Central Africa, in countries such as; Benin Republic, Cameroon and Ghana. 

When I spoke with Dr Domale Keys, whose family directly experienced the refugee crisis, she explained the reality of fleeing Ogoni. 

So my family fled Ogoni, like I said, we were in Bori. My family was in Bori, and Bori was heavily hit when it came to the retaliation. I remember many nights for months, even my mother and I would be in the small apartment, and we’d have to shut the doors and put those, forgetting what they call them. But there are these iron bars that close the doors. And you’d have to stay within those because you didn’t want anybody to know that you were home. So we would stay in there. And at night, you could go and figure out how to get food, and then you come back. And then there were some nights when there were guns just blazing all over the place. And so there was, there were many nights when we had to rush to the forest areas, right? And it would just be so many, just hordes of people, running, rushing into the forest, and you’d have to sleep there for a day, two days.

In 2009, the Canadian Council for Refugees recorded that about 1,000 Ogonis had been living in the Kpomasse refugee camp in Benin Republic for about ten years and needed resettlement. Meaning, the brutality the Ogonis experienced from the Abacha regime was so severe that over a decade later, years after the Abacha regime had ended, they were still displaced.

On June 8, 1998 Abacha died.

… when Abacha died, I was very young then. I could feel it. There was rejoicing, and not just Ogoni, but the entire Rivers state. People killed their goats, cows. They made food to celebrate Abacha’s death. What Abacha did was something we can never, ever recover in years to come. We are still suffering from it.

Abacha may have died, but the effects of his regime’s actions rippled through subsequent decades. By June 1998, the Saro-Wiwa family had been in court for two years seeking justice against Royal Dutch Shell, its subsidiary company, SHELL NIGERIA, and Shell Nigeria’s CEO, Brian Anderson. The lawsuit the Saro-Wiwa family filed in 1996 against the defendants included charges for complicity in human rights abuses of the Ogoni People, summary executions, crimes against humanity, torture, violation of right to life and liberty, and wrongful death. I asked Saro-Wiwa’s daughter, Noo, about the lawsuit. 

You know, the emotional toll that it took on particularly my uncle Owens, Dr Owens and my brother, Ken Jr. You know, the two of them were instrumental in bringing the case to court. And it takes a huge toll on you, and so we felt that, you know, Justice has to be…we have to be creative. When it comes to justice, it’s not necessarily about winning a court case. Even if they paid out 100 million, it doesn’t solve the fundamental problem that my father was fighting, which is the environmental degradation of the Niger Delta and the lack of opportunity given to people because of government corruption. 

And for international observers like the NGO, Stakeholder Democracy Network’s Alexander Sewell it was the lawsuit that exposed all that had been happening in the Niger Delta to the world.

Actually, as a young boy, the case with Shell and the Nigerian government was one of the sort of case studies that really sort of caught my attention learning about the environmental situation, the Ogoni mobilization, the repressive reaction by the government and and the denial of the oil companies. And it struck me on so many levels, especially the injustice of multinational extractive companies versus peaceful indigenous groups. 

The Saro-Wiwas filed their case against Shell in the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York. But why New York or America, and not Nigeria where the crimes were committed? The reason is simple: In 1789, the ALIEN TORT STATUTE was passed into law in the United States, and the statute gives non-US citizens the right to sue in American courts for human rights violations. The Saro-Wiwa family, as noncitizens of the United States, were seeking to hold Shell responsible for human rights violations and so they relied on the Alien Tort Statute. From what Noo told me, they may have also been motivated by the possibility that they stood a better chance of getting justice under the American judicial system than in a Nigerian court. 

And I think also the fact that we were able to take Shell to a New York court was important too. I think within the Nigerian context, there was a sense of impunity among all you know…anyone who operates in Nigeria, especially in the 90s. There was the sense that the government didn’t care about its people, and corporations could operate with a certain level of impunity.

But it didn’t take long for the Saro-Wiwa family to find out that taking Shell to court was one thing, while getting justice was another.

So when you fight, when you take big, big companies like Shell to court, they have unlimited resources. They’re also a multinational company. They’re not a family, if you see what I mean. They hire their lawyers, and then they get on with their lives, and they have this endless supply of money. And you see this all the time with these sorts of cases where, had we not settled and we won, Shell wouldn’t have paid out. They would have just continued to appeal. They have the resources to keep doing that, and they don’t have the emotional attachment. 

Without any emotional attachment to the sufferings and trauma that the families of the Ogoni 9 had suffered, Shell filed its defense, requesting the court to dismiss the case. Shell’s motion was denied by the court, and Shell appealed the ruling. This began a pattern where Shell would appeal every ruling made by the court at every stage of the trial. The result of this was a slow, drawn-out trial that spanned thirteen years, costing the plaintiffs valuable time and resources. And then on June 8, 2009, the parties reached an out-of-court settlement with Shell agreeing to pay $15.5 million to the plaintiffs. It’s interesting to note that while Shell agreed to pay the settlement fee, they did not admit any liability to the charges against them. 

I’d also like to add, and I think this is really important. It gets reported a lot in the papers that my family was awarded $15 million by Shell. This gets repeated so much, and it has to be corrected, because it’s completely and utterly wrong. People forget that when you have these settlement cases, a third of the money goes to the lawyers. We also agreed from the outset that a third would go to the community, and so you’re left with a third of that, split between 10 families, because there were 10 claims in this case. My father wasn’t the only man who died. So I just really want to put that out there. Whenever I read that my family were given, you know, $15 million, it gives the impression that we’re somehow millionaires. Which, you know, which, A isn’t true and B, you know, does not compensate even remotely, for what happened to our father. So, you know, that’s very important to put that on the record. But I think also when you have a settlement, I think the court of public opinion will side with you. They believe that the party that pays out the settlement is doing so because…that’s how we felt. And that at the back of that, you know, changes could be made in the Niger Delta to actually improve lives for people and so that’s what it was about.

A settlement might have been reached with Shell; it may also have been seen, in the court of public opinion, as an admission of guilt; but how did settlement translate into any change in policy and behaviour towards the Niger Delta on the part of Shell? Saro-Wiwa had lived and died fighting against the degradation and pollution of the Ogoni and Niger Delta environment. But how far had the struggle, and the protests of the Ogoni people gone in putting an end to Shell’s impunity in the oil-producing communities of the Niger Delta? 

So this court case changed that a little bit. And the subsequent court cases against Shell in which it’s been asked to pay further settlements to other communities, as you know, really sort of showed that companies can’t do what they want anymore. So it sets some boundaries, and that’s important.

In episode 5, we discussed the court case led by Ogoni 8 wives, Esther Kiobel, Victoria Bera, Charity Levula and Blessing Eawo against Shell in 2017 with support from Amnesty International. Based on the Amnesty International report, their case included accusations of Shell being instrumental in the unlawful arrest and detention of their husbands; the violation of their husbands’ physical integrity; and the violation of their right to a fair trial and to life, and their own right to a family life. The wives sought damages and a public apology from Shell. They also requested that Shell hand over around 100,000 internal documents that were marked as confidential during US proceedings between 2002 and 2013.

Mark Dummett Head of Business and Human Rights at Amnesty International said,

These women believe that their husbands would still be alive today were it not for the brazen self-interest of Shell. This is an historic moment which has huge significance for people everywhere who have been harmed by the greed and recklessness of global corporations.

But in March 2022, the case was dismissed by the Dutch courts on the grounds that there was insufficient evidence of Shell’s complicity with the military government to enforce the executions. According to a BBC report, presiding judge Larissa Alwin said: 

The witnesses’ testimony relies for a large part on assumptions and interpretations and cannot be enough to conclude that the money that they received at the time actually was from SPDC, and that actual employees of SPDC were present.

And yet, these women did not feel discouraged by the verdict. Victoria Bera told the BBC she was happy to have the opportunity to tell her story to the world and that her husband would be proud. Esther Kiobel told the Guardian she was happy to have had her day in court to seek justice for the Ogoni 9.

Following the verdict, Shell wrote that ‘Today’s ruling does not diminish the tragic nature of the events of 1995. We have always denied the allegations made against Shell in this case, and today the court confirmed there is no basis for these claims. The claimants were given ample opportunity by the court to provide evidence in proceedings that took place over the last number of years.’

The wives submitted an appeal against the dismissal. But in November 2022, they decided to withdraw their appeal and ended the court proceedings.

So what’s the state of Ogoni today?

I am currently standing on oil. Just below the oil is water and there is spilled oil as far as the eye can see. In the distance, Mangrove trees are dying, there are no birds in the sky and the air reeks of crude oil. This is Bodo, a town about 10 kilometers from Saro-Wiwa’s hometown. This is the Niger Delta, which feels eerily like a petro-dystopia.

What brings me to Bodo? The oil spills here happened as recently as 2018, 23 years after the Abacha regime executed the Ogoni 9 for speaking out against oil pollution. Even though Shell is no longer present, their legacy casts a dark shadow over Ogoniland. 

‘It has become a very degraded environment that is polluted for its people and its flora, its fauna, and it’s really sort of undeveloped compared to other parts of the country.’

Ogoniland and the Niger Delta more broadly, have continued to suffer from environmental degradation caused by oil spillages. Additionally, in a 2018 Amnesty International report, Shell reported it had lost 110,535 barrels or 17.5 million liters of oil along its network of pipelines since 2001.

‘The oil pollution has still persisted, because the pipelines laid by oil companies and multinationals are still in the ground, and from time to time when it may get corroded, it will burst and it will cause oil spills, and that will further deteriorate and degrade the environment. So it hasn’t ended. It’s still there. We are still suffering from it. So even if you stop oil exploration in Ogoni land, you haven’t stopped the degradation in Ogoni land, you haven’t stopped the continual, incessant pollution of the environment, it’s still very much there.’

That was Dr Gentle Wilson Komi, a lecturer in the Department of Animal & Environmental Biology at the University of Port Harcourt. When I visited Port Harcourt, I asked him what exactly it means when people say environmental degradation has happened.

‘Now, before you say an environment has degraded, there should be a baseline. What was it before? And what is it now? Now, if you had an environment that had sufficient biodiversity, all the organisms were there, aquatic and terrestrial. All the microorganisms were there. The bentic were there, the phytoplankton, the zooplankton, all of them were in abundance. And after a while, there was oil pollution. The oil pollution, the oil sheen on the surface of the water reduces the dissolved oxygen in the water and kills most of the aquatic organisms, because they will suffocate for lack of oxygen. Now, that suffocation, that death of organisms, degrades the biodiversity in the water. Now, when the oil spills to the land, it keeps the microorganisms in the soil. And also further makes the soil impotent, if you want me to say that, but it makes the soil sterile, because, for example, if earthworms can no longer survive, and you know that earthworms make holes. Now, those organisms are dead. It makes the soil sterile. Now the oil also kills the plants, the vegetation around. If you go to places where we have oil spills, you will see that the vegetation is dead because the oil will clock to the roots. Clock to the leaves, clock to different parts of the plant, and will eventually kill the plant, suffocate the plant. They can’t breathe, they can’t get water. It won’t be available.

But another thing is the birds, the aquatic birds, the aquatic birds, come to the river to feed.’ Now, by the time they touch the water, and it has oil, the oil clings to their wings, to their feathers, and clock it as such, they can’t fly. So you see the birds that used to fly can no longer fly. Maybe it will work, but after a while it will fall, and that will be the death of that bird. You can’t fly. So you see that the biodiversity changes. So in that state, we can describe it as degradation. The environment has degraded because even the biodiversity has depleted. So that’s environmental degradation. I know that erosion is part of degradation, but with respect to oil pollution, that is actually what degradation means. You devalue the quality of the environment.’

The years of oil spillages not only affected the environment but also reduced the living standards of the Ogoni and Niger Deltans. In 2006, a decade after the Abacha Regime executed the Ogoni 9, the Nigerian government commissioned the United Nations Environmental Programme to carry out an assessment of Ogoniland. A project Shell funded. 

Five years later, in 2011, UNEP released the report. The report revealed that petroleum hydrocarbon pollution within the soil, surface and ground water of Ogoni, had shortened lifespans in Ogoni. As of 2011, the average life expectancy in Ogoni was 45 years, five years lower than the Nigerian nationwide average. 

They have suffered from that transnational oil company’s activities. Their land will no longer grow food. If you go to that area today, cassava is expensive. Okra is very expensive. Things are so expensive. The garri of the Ijebu variety they bought were so expensive. So they said, we are a fishing population. We no longer fish. We cannot farm. That those extractions destroy their land, destroy their environment, destroy their livelihood.

In a joint report, Amnesty International and the Center for Environment, Human Rights and Development [CEHRD] highlighted the following as the human rights impact of the continued environmental degradation of the Niger Delta: 

Violations of the right to an adequate standard of living, including the right to food—as a consequence of the impact of oil-related pollution and environmental damage on agriculture and fisheries. 

Violations of the right to water—which occur when oil spills pollute water used for drinking and other domestic purposes. Violations of the right to health—which arise from the failure to secure the underlying determinants of health, including a healthy environment, and the failure to enforce laws to protect the environment and prevent pollution and much more. 

A link to this report and all our sources will be available in our show notes.

Earlier this year, London-based activist, Mikaela Loach, also commented on the impact of the continued environmental degradation on the lives of the Niger Delta people.

Why has there been very little accountability? Well, according to the Amnesty International 2018 Report, the spills have two main causes: 

1) Operational faults and poor maintenance and 2) Third Party interference. 

In 2002, an internal Shell presentation revealed that, ‘the remaining life of most of the [Shell] Oil Trunk Lines is more or less non-existent or short, while some sections contain major risk and hazard.’ In 2008, According to Wikileaks, a US Pipeline Expert reported that ‘73 per cent of all pipelines [in the Niger Delta] are more than a decade overdue for replacement. In many cases, pipelines with a technical life of 15 years,’ the report said, ‘are still in use 30 years after installation.’ 

And in 2009, a Shell employee warned that,’[the company] is corporately exposed as the pipelines in Ogoniland {in the Niger Delta} have not been maintained properly or integrity assessed for over 15 years.’

According to Amnesty International, Shell began to publish its oil spill data in 2011. Yet, Shell has reported that these operational failures only amount to 18.7 percent of oil spills whilst a majority is as a result of third party interference. Chimeka Garricks, the author of the Niger-Delta novel, Tomorrow Died Yesterday, seemed to agree with this.

Then there’s also complicity from our people, right. In many ways. So in my experience, as of the time I was litigating, most of the oil spills, let’s say about 80 percent of the oil spills, were caused by sabotage. And sabotage being sabotaged by our people. And it’s an uncomfortable truth, uncomfortable is an uncomfortable thing to say, but it has to be said.

So who are these third parties? These saboteurs? In his 2003 book, Curse of the Black Gold, Michael Watts highlighted that between 1970 and 2000, the population of Nigerians who live on less than $1 a day had risen from 19 million to 93 million. We know that most of Nigeria’s wealth comes from oil; but less known is that the Niger Deltans who are the custodians of this black gold are among the poorest in Nigeria. Even Saro-Wiwa once said, ‘We find it most intolerable that we who sit on oil should be one of the poorest, if not the poorest, people in the country.’

‘The Niger Delta is, like, 35 million people, if you add up the population from all the states. So it’s a sizable place, and let’s say, like, roughly, like, less than half live in the riverine area. So this is we’re talking like over 10 million people, I’d say like living amongst oil. Now the truth is that in a lot of these riverine communities, this oil business will happen in a fenced compound next to the community. It’ll have barbed wire running around it, and, you know, 12 foot, 12 feet walls, and there’ll be no way for the community to get inside. This compound will house the workers who extract the oil, who will have constant electricity, food and everything brought to them, they’ll fly in and out on a helicopter most of the time. Don’t even have to touch the water, while outside the walls, the communities are living in this state of perpetual underdevelopment, lack of investment. So it’s really striking, juxtapositioning the quality of life between those working in the oil industry and those not. And you’d think all of these communities would get people to work in these oil companies, because, you know, that’s where it’s coming from. But the answer is, the oil industry as a whole employs very, very few people in the country. I think it’s like 4.01 per cent of the workforces in the oil and gas industry, and the percentage of those people that are coming from Niger Delta communities is tiny, very, very small. So they’re not living in those conditions. The relationship between the communities and the companies is in a very, very interesting area that obviously goes back a long time.’

This dynamic bred a strong dissatisfaction with their living standards and environment in the Niger Delta, especially among young men, who struggled to find employment and adequately support their families. Such youth formed the militant group known as the Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta [MEND] in 2006. MEND had three objectives: 

 

Unlike MOSOP, MEND adopted a decentralized structure to ensure flexibility and also protection of their leadership so they could not be easily targeted. In 2006, they were reported to have held four foreign Shell workers hostage. That same year, they also vandalized and damaged several oil fields, including two Shell owned oil fields. This led to the loss of an estimated 477,000 barrels per day, according to the US Council on Foreign Relations. 

MEND also adopted oil bunkering as one of their strategies. In March 2007, the US Council on Foreign Relations reported that MEND’s actions ‘have hurt Nigeria’s oil exports—costing at least eight hundred thousand barrels per day, or over 25 percent of the country’s oil output, according to Nigerian officials.’

‘So going back 70 years, the oil companies and the government, when they come in to get these resources or to build the infrastructure to extract it, they need some kind of entry, community entry. So they’ve learned that you can work with the powerful people in communities, make sure that they get a share of the resources and they will do your bidding on the ground. You know, it’s often referred to as a sort of divide and rule tactic. Whether oil companies will side with one chief or community ruler, or over time, it increasingly became the youth groups as everything became more and more sort of violent. So they side with one faction. They drive out all the opposition. If there’s an oil spill in the community, don’t worry, we’re in control. We’ll do, you know, one basic investigation, and say there was no spill, and you can just carry on producing so that is how the resource curse is… locally. It created this system of power that works for the interests of the oil companies, often against local interests, and allows environmental pollution to continue, allowing accumulation of wealth at the top end of the structure to continue. And it leads to all these other horrible consequences, like insecurity, drives people into other illicit ways of making income because they’ve been armed and they’ve been given the mandate to do these terrible things. And now they feel like they can steal oil, they can kidnap seafarers and do sea piracy, or they can help rig elections. So, like, it just has turbocharged this sort of, like, illicit economy and network of violence.’

In 2009, the Nigerian government extended amnesty to MEND and this led to a ceasefire. However, there are several other guerrilla militant groups that still operate in the Niger Delta such as the New Delta Avengers, the Asawana Deadly Force of Niger Delta, and the Niger Delta Red Squad. When I spoke with Chimeka Garricks, he offered a more cynical perspective on the motives of the militant groups.

‘The militants you know…for me, my experience with them, they were opportunists, understand? So back to your question, the name was based on my cynicism. I’ve seen many things right. I’ve seen how…I was beginning to understand how the oil industry works. I was beginning to understand the crisis. I was beginning to understand people’s roles in everything, and I realized that we didn’t have a future. And you know, I keep saying I want to be proved wrong, you know, but I don’t really see a future for our people. I’m happy to be proved wrong any day. But either, you know, and the way I saw how things happened, and the way the trajectory of, you know, how things were going, you know, I just didn’t see. So, for example. The first militant, the first proper ones that we knew, I won’t mention his name, but the fat loud mouth, right? In 2003 but there was a BBC article…I read something on the BBC, you know, they interviewed him, you know. And he was saying, oh, he’s fighting for these people. And, yes, you know. But what the BBC didn’t realize was that prior to that time, he had been…let me be fair to him, because I like to try and to be fair to people. Maybe he always had this, you know, he has always been concerned about the Niger Delta issues and all that. But prior to that time, he had come into prominence in River States as a thug for the governor who had just gotten into power. He and one other militant, that one is now a chief, they fall out, and he’s chased into the creeks. So he’s armed and…you know, saying, Oh, I’m now fighting for the Niger Delta. And they do this whole BBC thing, you know, and they interview him or something… did an expose on him in 2003 and I’m reading it, and I’m pulling my hair out because I’m thinking, no, this guy was in talk, like, five minutes ago. And just because he has fallen out his political master, he’s now been chased out, you know. And that’s how that struggle started. That whole struggle, you know. A very, very opportunistic, you know. So then, of course, we know what happened. Goodluck Jonathan comes and gives them amnesty, basically paying salaries to people who aren’t doing anything, you know. And it goes downhill from there.’

Militant groups are in some ways an outcome of continued environmental degradation. So what has been done to resolve this issue? Following the UNEP report, which alerted the world to the severe damage the Niger Delta had experienced, several parties including the government, oil companies and NGOs joined hands to launch clean up programmes in the Niger Delta. But how exactly do clean ups work? Will it be possible to 100 per cent clean up the region? Is a 100 per cent clean up even necessary?

‘No, we have natural attenuation, and we have aided the process. Naturally the environment will clean up itself, reinforce, plants die, tree falls, the soil is washed and all that. It cleans itself, but it takes a longer time to wait for that natural attenuation to happen, for the soil and environment to be cleaned…Cleaned up process that is aided or done conducted by companies is to fasten the process wherein you scoop the oil from where it has spilled, and you may mix other soil or mix organic, depending on what you are using to do the clean up. Whether you’re using chemical dispersant or you’re using natural means, or you’re using plants (because plants also can help in absorbing some of these petroleum substances), is it 100 per cent sure that it’s clean? Though, it’s not necessary to be 100 per cent sure because at certain percentage crops can grow, animals can survive, like mangroves will survive within ten per cent or five to ten per cent clean. So you still have some oil droplets to some level, but mangroves will survive. So with that mangrove and other trees you plant that survive, they will also help in cleaning up the environment. You remember when the oil was high, when the pollution was high, dense, the mangroves were wiped off, the trees were wiped off and all the animals. But for the fact that the mangroves can now grow, it means that the soil and the environment has started regaining or recovering from that pollution. So, yes and no. Yes, because after a long period of time, it will be cleaned up; and  no because you can’t clean it perfectly immediately. It has to take some time, but it can happen by aided means, which is what we have in Ogoni land, where the contractors are coming to site to clean up the environment, bring you new soil, and then do all what they are doing. It’s an aided process, and it makes it faster than waiting for the natural attenuation where the soil microbe will now heal itself. So it makes it faster and it’s better.’

In June 2016, the Muhammadu Buhari government launched the Ogoni Clean-Up Project, in response to the recommendations of the UNEP 2011 report. Here’s the vice president at the time, Prof. Yemi Osinbajo, discussing the project:

We are therefore laying a solid foundation today for the restoration of the fragile ecosystem of Ogoniland and the Niger Delta. This is an epoch-making event to the history of Nigeria. The methodology for the cleanup will ensure job creation for young people. The agro-allied industry required for the processing of the agricultural produce will also be put in place in the course of the clean up project. The host communities as well as transit communities are enjoined to keep their environment clean, devoid of oil pollution. The reports of oil pollution in the Nigerian environment show that a significant percentage is due to sabotage and wilful vandalism of oil company facilities and so I enjoin the traditional rulers, the elite opinion leaders, the press, women, as well as young people of the Ogoniland and the Niger Delta to work conscientiously and to ensure that we put an end to all forms of oil installation vandalism and sabotage. Let this day mark the beginning of the restoration of not just the environment of Ogoniland but of peace and prosperity to the great land and people of the Niger Delta.

In 2017, the Nigerian government, established the Hydrocarbon Pollution Remediation Project, commonly known as HYPREP, to execute on its clean-up promises. This billion dollar project included remediation sub-projects such as the Ogoni Trust Fund to manage the allocated funds. Shell’s SPDC Joint Venture was a major contributor to this project, and pledged $900 million to be paid over a period of five years. As of 2022, according to Odinaka Anudu’s 2023 article on Dataphyte, SPDC had contributed 64 per cent of the pledge. 

But HYPREP has faced several challenges since its establishment.

‘HYPREP has faced so many challenges over the years, is really in summary, not doing what it was set out to be to do. It’s not achieving those results. It’s caught up in the whole Nigerian system as well, which is making it really difficult. And we at SDN, who, you know, strongly believe in environmental justice, really want this to work, and we want it to become a model for cleaning up the whole region. So one of the things we do at the moment is monitor this cleanup. We take soil tests, water tests regularly to see if the cleanups worked. And we also speak to communities to work out their level of satisfaction with the cleanup and the contractors and dispute mechanisms, and we engage with HYPREP, then to try and get these improvements instituted to make that clean up work.’

In 2022, HYPREP was found to have falsely claimed to have completed or nearly completed 57 remediation projects. But during investigations of this claim, journalists found it difficult to access the projects HYPREP had included on their list. According to an article from Dataphyte, HYPREP had included a non-existent location into their list of completed projects. 

HYPREP had claimed the site was remediated by a company called Andelsta Limited which received 20 million naira to carry out the project. While Andelsta Limited is a real company and can be found on the Corporate Affairs Commission in Nigeria, The company didn’t have any of its projects listed on their website at that time and even during the writing of this podcast. When I spoke with MOSOP leader Fegalo Nsuke, he seemed to feel that HYPREP was under-performing.

‘They made sure that Shell had representation on the board of HYPREP to protect the interest of Shell in the implementation process. And that’s what is going on. They’re covering up and giving the impression that, oh, it’s so easy to implement the reports. If you ask UNEP, if you have any encounter with them, you ask them, is HYPREP addressing the issue of underground water pollution? The answer is no. There is a thick layer of oil sitting on the underground water, a thick layer of oil that, in fact, one researcher has estimated that if that oil is extracted and sold, that about $50 million can be recovered from that thick layer of oil sitting on the water that Ogoni people are drinking. HYPREP is not talking about that. So what they are simply doing is to use mud to cover this surface pollution. And they say they are cleaning up, and $1 billion is gone. They are spending 400 billion naira in 2024 and Ogoni does not have water. 400 billion naira is more than twice the budget of Ondo state in 2024. So HYPREP is budgeting 400 billion in one year, and they are not even able to provide water for Ogoni. We are talking about the state that pays civil servants construct roads, addresses hospital needs, addresses education needs. I mean, running an entire state with less than half that amount of money.

What are they doing? So that is why I tell you that it’s all a compromise space. It’s all a looting game. And that is why sometimes it looks like we are a problem to them, because we are not able to be silent in the face of all of these things. If they were doing what is right, by today, Ogoni will be getting clean water to drink. So Ogoni cleanup is simply a show. Nothing is going on there, because you cannot have underground water pollution, which is a bigger problem, and because we are not seeing that one you’re leaving that to address the surface pollution. And even the soil pollution you are addressing…you go to the site, and see oil still flowing on the floor because they just simply covered it with mud. So when the rain comes, It exposes the oil.’