by Kia Mistilis

Reprinted from Foreign Policy in Focus: Editor: John Feffer and Jen Doak

Behind fighter-planes and gunboats, Nigerian forces launched a full-scale offensive in the Niger Delta on May 13, displacing 30,000 people and sparking a humanitarian crisis. Thousands of civilians fleeing destroyed villages are now trapped between armed resistance groups and the Nigerian military. These civilians are hiding in the bush without food, water, or medical supplies, let alone Internet access to alert the world of their plight, as Iranians are doing via Twitter.

Suanu Bere speaking at a Shell rally in San Francisco. Credit: Jan Stürmann

Against the backdrop of a world energy crisis, the media are reporting the region’s growing instability, mostly in terms of its effect on global oil supply and prices. For the 12 million people living in the Niger Delta, however, the struggle is about their survival.

Ecological Catastrophe

Nigeria is Africa’s most populous nation, with 150 million people. It’s the world’s seventh-largest oil-producing nation. Nearly all of Nigeria’s oil comes from the Delta.

Since 1970, $350 billion in oil revenue has flowed to Nigeria, yet 75% of Nigerians live on less than $1 a day. Niger Delta communities continue to live in abject poverty, without schools, hospitals, or basic infrastructure, as oil profits fill the bank accounts of multinational oil companies and the Nigerian elite. Nigerian governments have negotiated joint ventures with multinational companies for unregulated oil production since 1958. Over 50 years of exploitation in the Niger Delta has resulted in systematic human rights abuses and environmental devastation.

According to an independent 2006 report by environmental experts from the U.K, U.S and Nigeria, and convened by the Nigerian Conservation Foundation, the Niger Delta is “one of the world’s most severely petroleum-impacted ecosystems and one of the top five most polluted places on the face of the Earth.” More than 1.5 million tons of oil, equivalent to one Exxon-Valdez disaster every year for 50 years, have spilled into the delta, poisoning delicate mangrove and rain forest ecosystems and destroying fishing and farming livelihoods. Constant gas flaring releases toxic chemicals into the atmosphere, causing cancer, birth defects, respiratory diseases, and acid rain so toxic it corrodes metal roofs.

Oil Company Abuses

Evidence given in recent U.S lawsuits reveals Dutch Royal Shell and U.S.-owned Chevron’s complicity with successive Nigerian governments in committing human rights abuses against civilians. From the early 1990s, these companies have provided financing, weapons, and transport to the military to violently suppress community opposition to their oil operations.

Both Shell and Chevron requested the direct intervention of the Nigerian security forces at their sites. The first recorded incident occurred in Umechem in 1990, after Shell sent a letter to the police commissioner, stating: “[W]e request that you urgently provide us with security protection (preferably mobile police force) at this location.” The request was met, and security forces shot dead 80 people and destroyed 495 homes. Col. Paul Okuntimo, head of the Joint Military and Police Taskforce in the 1990s, part of the Nigerian security forces widely known for their corruption and abysmal human rights record, stated that he was paid or directed by Shell.

Nnimmo Bassey, executive director of Environmental Rights Action, cited plaintiff depositions in his testimony before a U.S. subcommittee hearing on human rights and the law last year. “Chevron regularly houses and feeds the security forces, including Army, Navy, and police, and pays them above their government salaries,” he said. “Chevron personnel have reported ‘leading’ or ‘supervising’ Nigerian security forces in the course of their duties. Chevron provides transportation to the military and police in Chevron-leased helicopters and boats.”

According to Nigerian activists, this is a story of people at risk of genocide at the hands of government and corporate sponsored terror. In 2007, Niger Delta Professionals for Development Director Joel Bisina said that “from 1999 to date, more than 20 communities have been wiped out completely and more than 50 000 persons killed by military bullets and no one is saying anything about it.”

One Activist’s Story

As a student leader, Suanu Kingston Bere protested the expansion of Shell’s pipeline from Ogoniland to Northern Nigeria, when Shell was paying the Nigerian military to suppress protests in Ogoniland. He fled Nigeria in 1995, after two arrests and three months of detention and torture, spending five years in a Benin refugee camp before securing political asylum in the United States in September 2000.

Active in the National Union of Ogoni Students, Bere was directly inspired by non-violent activist leader Ken Saro-Wiwa and The Movement for the Survival of Ogoni People (MOSOP) he founded in 1990. After first hearing Saro-Wiwa speak at a rally in 1993, Bere joined MOSOP and began campaigning in towns and remote villages

He was present for key events in the Delta’s history, witnessing the collusion between the Nigerian military and Shell to violently suppress peaceful resistance to their practices in Ogoniland. He currently lives in Oakland, California, and agreed to go public for the first time with what he witnessed and experienced in Nigeria.  Read full article