From our friends at Platform and their Remember Saro Wiwa program:

remember saro-wiwa UNEP Report: Analysis & action Following coverage in The Guardian today of UNEP’s outrageous decision to “exonerate” Shell over oil spills in Nigeria, we present analysis of this controversial issue. Read on and take action below. Global Outrage at UN Report The UNEP’s report is in direct conflict with local environmentalists and communities who have witnessed and monitored spills for many years. We take a look at the manipulative PR and politics behind Shell’s ‘exoneration’. Read more. What’s Shell & UNEP Trying to Hide? Any child educated in Nigeria knows that oil was discovered in Oloibiri, Nigeria in 1956, and that the history of oil spills is almost as long. So why does UNEP think otherwise? Read more. More Harm Than Good? There are some things the debate over oil spills in Nigeria cannot change. Shell must clean up all oil spills. But the UNEP could undermine the pressure on Shell to take action. Read more. Take Action You can help hold Shell to account: email Mike Cowing , (head of the UNEP study) and cut and paste the following questions. Please personalise, share and add your own views. 1. Why has the UNEP decided to echo Shell’s widely disputed analysis of the number and causes of oil spills in Ogoni? 2. How does UNEP justify announcing its findings on the causes of oil spills when this is not the subject of the study? 3. Why does UNEP claim that oil spills in the Niger Delta have been occurring for only 9 years? 4. What guarantees can UNEP give that its study will not be subject to undue influence from either Shell or the Nigerian government, since both are funding the project?

Share on Facebook

Read the reaction to UNEP’s report on JINN ally website remember saro-wiwa

By Ben Amunwa on August 24, 2010

Today Amnesty International joined the chorus of disapproval and outrage at UNEP’s decision to clear Shell of all responsibility for oil spills in Nigeria. UNEP has been widely criticised for recently using Shell data to announce that the company is only 10% responsible for the causes of oil spills.

“Relying on these figures would be a serious misjudgement, with potentially significant ramifications for those living in the Niger Delta,” said Audrey Gaughran, Director of Amnesty International’s Global Thematic Issues Program. “UNEP must be aware that the figures have been strongly challenged for years by environmental groups and communities. They are totally lacking in credibility.”

Amnesty went on to highlight how UNEP’s use of Shell data raises serious anomalies:

Between 1989 and 1994 Shell itself estimated that only 28 percent of oil spilt in the Niger Delta was caused by sabotage. In 2007 Shell’s estimate had risen to 70 per cent. The figure now given by Shell has increased to more than 90 per cent. Amnesty International has repeatedly asked Shell to produce evidence to support these figures. Shell has been unable to do so.

Friends of the Earth International, the worlds largest network of environmentalists, also condemned UNEP’s uncritical announcement of the disputed Shell data. Nnimmo Bassey, chair of Friends the Earth International and director of Environmental Rights Action in Nigeria said:

We monitor spills regularly and our observations often contradict information produced by oil companies and Nigerian regulatory agencies. If the UNEP team would ask community monitors it would avoid falling into the trap of spinning Shell’s figures. The UN assessment is being paid for by Shell so we are not surprised that it tells Shell’s version of the facts. But the reality is that several studies have placed the bulk of the blame for oil spills in the Niger Delta on the doorsteps of the oil companies; particularly Shell.

Link to article on .

Share on Facebook

Read JINN ally Nnimmo Bassey’s powerful piece from the Guardian UK on the UNEP report financed by Shell:

Report blaming 90% of spills in Ogoniland on locals stealing crude from pipelines allows companies to shirk responsibility

Outrage at UN decision to exonerate Shell for oil pollution in Niger delta

Nnimmo Bassey
guardian.co.uk, Wednesday 25 August 2010 15.13 BST

Oil leaks from the Shell flow station in Eriemu, Nigeria Oil leaks from a Shell flow station in Nigeria. The claim that pipelines have been sabotaged is particularly attractive to oil companies. Photograph: George Osodi/AP

The United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) is preparing to issue a report announcing that 90% of the oil spills in Ogoniland, Nigeria, are caused by the locals stealing crude from pipelines – and that Shell’s aged pipelines and ill maintained installations account for a mere 10% of the spills. Why so little, we might ask?

The UNEP has now admitted this figure is based on data from the oil industry and the Nigerian government. It’s not surprising that this is in line with what Shell used to claim in the 1980s – that about 80% of the oil spills were caused by vandalism or sabotage. This claim that infrastructure has been sabotaged is particularly attractive to oil companies, because they are then exempted from paying compensation for any resulting spills. Why accept responsibility for polluting the locals’ creeks, swamps and farmlands and destroying their livelihoods when you can blame the very same people for the mess now coating their own backyards with a toxic gloss?

Yet crucial expertise which could have painted a very different picture was sidelined. Prof Richard Steiner, an international expert on oil spills, was contracted to write the manual on oil damage assessment and restoration by the UNEP in 2004. But when Shell hired the agency to carry out the present study, Steiner’s offer to provide scientific advice and guidance to the Ogoniland report was declined.

Steiner has already said that the findings now uncovered are incorrect, and has gone on to say: “Our earlier results suggest that much of the oil spilled there was due to poor practice by Shell, rather than bunkering and sabotage… it is entirely implausible that 90% of the oil spilled was due to bunkering [the act of criminal gangs stealing oil].” In short, his opinion is that this is not an independent, credible assessment.

The report does indeed rely heavily on figures produced by oil companies and Nigerian state statistics rather than on testimonies from those most affected – the communities in Ogoniland.

The National Oil Spill Detection and Response Agency of Nigeria has reported a total of 3,203 oil spills in the Niger Delta region in the last four years alone.

That list lengthens every day. The records of the Nigerian Directorate of Petroleum Resources show that nearly 2.5m barrels of crude oil were spilt between 1976 and 1996. Most damning of all, 77% of this oil was not recovered and contaminated the local environment. This is an environmental catastrophe which has a long history – some notable past spills include the Escravos spill of 1978 in which 300,000 barrels of crude oil was spilled into the coastal waters and another, in the same year, caused by tank failure at Forcados Terminal in which 580,000 barrels were spewed into the environment.

It is in this polluted environment that the people of Ogoniland have had to live for decades with spill after spill. The UNEP must be, and be seen to be, an independent arbiter of what has really happened there. There should be no room for suspicion that the $10m (£6.5m) Shell paid the agency for this report will influence the outcome.

Nnimmo Bassey is chairman of Friends of the Earth International

Share on Facebook

• John Vidal, environment editor
• guardian.co.uk, Sunday 22 August 2010 18.36 BST

Oil pipelines in Okrika, near Port Harcourt. The UNEP denies it has been influenced by Shell, which paid for its $10m, three-year study. Photograph: Ed Kashi

A three-year investigation by the United Nations will almost entirely exonerate Royal Dutch Shell for 40 years of oil pollution in the Niger delta, causing outrage among communities who have long campaigned to force the multinational to clean up its spills and pay compensation.

The $10m (£6.5m) investigation by the UN environment programme (UNEP), paid for by Shell, will say that only 10% of oil pollution in Ogoniland has been caused by equipment failures and company negligence, and concludes that the rest has come from local people illegally stealing oil and sabotaging company pipelines.

The shock disclosure was made by Mike Cowing, the head of a UN team of 100 people who have been studying environmental damage in the region.

Cowing said that the 300 known oil spills in the Ogoniland region of the delta caused massive damage, but added that 90% of the spills had been caused by “bunkering” gangs trying to steal oil.

His comments, in a briefing in Geneva last week, have caused deep offence among the families of Ken Saro-Wiwa and the eight other Ogoni leaders who were hanged by the Nigerian government in 1995 after a peaceful uprising against Shell’s pollution.

With 606 oil fields, the Niger delta supplies 40% of the crude oil imported by the US. Life expectancy in its rural communities, half of which have no access to clean water, has fallen to little more than 40 over the past two generations.

Communities accept that bunkering has become rife in some areas of Ogoniland, but say this is a recent development and most of the historical pollution has been caused by Shell operations.

Last year, Amnesty calculated that the equivalent of at least 9m barrels of oil has been spilled in the delta over the past half a century, nearly twice as much as the 5m barrels unleashed in the Gulf of Mexico by the Deepwater Horizon disaster.

Tonight the investigation was accused of bias by Nigerians and environmental groups who said the study – paid for by Shell and commissioned by the Nigerian government, who both have massive oil interests in the region – was unbalanced.

Ben Ikari, an Ogoni activist, said: “Nobody from Ogoniland would be surprised, because the federal government of Nigeria and Shell are the same cabal that killed Ken Saro-Wiwa and others.”

Ben Amunwa of London-based oil watchdog group Platform said: “The UNEP study relies on bogus figures from Shell and incomplete government records. Many Ogoni suspect that the report’s focus on sabotage and bunkering will be used to justify military repression notorious in the Niger delta, where non-violent activists, including Ken Saro-Wiwa, were executed.”

Cowing defended the UN report. In a series of emails seen by the Guardian, he said: “UNEP is not responsible for allocating responsibility for the number of spills being found in Ogoniland. Rather, we are focusing on the science. The figures referred to are those of the ministry of the environment and the department of petroleum resources.

“This is a Nigerian issue, not a UNEP issue. However, I would add that from our extensive field work throughout Ogoniland we have witnessed, on a daily basis, very large scale bunkering operations.

“It’s very controversial. We cannot say whether a particular spill is from one cause or another. Our observation is that there is a serious [bunkering ] problem. I am being seen to be siding with the oil companies, but I am not.

“We were provided with the official spill site list. This is given by the oil companies themselves but is endorsed by the [government] agencies. We are not on the side of the oil companies.”

He denied the UN was being influenced by Shell or the government. “We believe that it is correct that Shell [Nigeria] fund the study, as this is in compliance with the internationally accepted norm of the ‘polluter pays’. No party … will be able to influence the science.”

The full report, due to be published by December, is expected to warn of an environmental catastrophe.

“This is not directly comparable to the spills that occurred in the Gulf [of Mexico],” said Cowing. “But we have a serious and profound problem.”

Tonight, environmental groups expressed shock at the report. Nnimmo Bassey, chair of Friends the Earth International and director of Environmental Rights Action, Nigeria’s leading environment group, said: “It is incredible that the UN says that 90% is caused by communities. The UNEP assessment is being paid for by Shell. Their conclusions may be tailored to satisfy their client. We monitor spills regularly and our observation is the direct opposite of what UNEP is planning to report.”

A June 2009 report by Amnesty International called the damage in the delta a “human rights tragedy”, and blamed the government and oil firms, mainly Shell, for years of pollution. It recognised that oil bunkering had caused spills, but said “the scale of this problem is not clear”.

The UN report saw more than 1,000 soil and water tests and other investigationscarried out, and hundreds of communities consulted. The data generated is the first step towards a massive clean-up.

Oil production in the delta started during the 1950s, but was suspended in the 90s due to unrest. The oil fields in Ogoniland have since remained dormant.

Share on Facebook

Since December 2009, Exxon has had six oil spills in one small area in the Southeast.

Photo credit: Sahara Reporters

The latest on July 18th follows spills previously reported on December 4, 2009 and March 24, May 1, June 20 and June 21, 2010.  Read more here from Nigerian media news site 123Next :

“We got reports of crude floating on the waters in the high seas at the weekend and verified the report before contacting the Oil Spill Detection and Response Agency (NOSDRA) and Mobil officials,”  [the Secretary of the Artisan Fishermen Association of Nigeria] said. “By Monday, the oil spill had landed on the coastline. Officials of the company and the agency, had come to see the site, our fishermen that came back from the sea had their nets and fishing gear contaminated by crude oil.”

Mr Irvin Obot, the Zonal Director of NOSDRA, confirmed that the agency had received reports of the oil spill incident at the Qua Iboe oil fields. “We got a report from the community and visited the site; there were traces of crude oil on the shoreline but we are yet to get a report from the operator of the oil fields,” he said.

Share on Facebook

Photo credit: Kendra E. Thornbury for Sweet Crude

After his assault and arbitrary detention on April 5, Asume Osuoka reported the following incident, which he says “may or may not be linked to” those events:

“On Wednesday 7 April I was held by the Nigerian State Security Service (SSS) for an hour and half at the Port Harcourt International Airport as I was trying to check into an Air France flight out of Nigeria. SSS officials searched my bags and picked out copies of publications of Social Action and Niger Delta Citizens and Budget Platform including

• Beyond Amnesty: Citizens Report on State and Local Government Budgets in the Niger Delta, 2009
• Carry Go: Citizens Report on State and Local Government Budgets in the Niger Delta, 2008
• Fuelling Discord: Oil and Conflict in Three Niger Delta Communities
• Communities and the Petroleum Industries Bill
• Flames of Hell: Gas Flaring in the Niger Delta

I was taken to the Director of the SSS at the airport who insisted that I don’t travel with the reports, which portrays the country in bad light and would “discourage foreign investors”. I responded that those portraying the country in bad light are the leaders of the ruling PDP that loot public funds and prevent free elections.

I told the SSS director that I would prefer to be arrested than to travel without my literature. After long discussions the SSS requested for assurance from me that copies would be sent to them for “analysis”. I later invited my colleague Ken Henshaw (who accompanied me to the airport) to meet with the SSS director. Ken Henshaw’s phone details and office address were extracted from him before I was allowed to travel with my documents. My passport details were also recorded by the SSS.

After this and the experience of Easter Monday it is clear that there is need for vigilance.”

Share on Facebook

Six armed policemen from the Rivers State Police Command assaulted and arbitrarily detained human rights activists Asume Osuoka, Celestine Akpobari, and Ken Henshaw, of Nigeria-based NGO Social Action, on April 5, 2010.  Mr. Osuoka said that the police did not ask them for any form of identification but knew who they were; their NGO Social Development Integrated Centre is known for its work in human rights and environmental justice, including its publications on gas flaring and oil-induced conflict.

Mr. Celestine said he was “repeatedly hit with the butt of a gun, poked with a barrel in his arms and legs and slapped in the face, as at least six armed men, including at least three uniformed police officers, forced the activists out of their car and into a white van without asking the victims for any form of identification.” Mr. Celestine added that he was denied medical treatment for his injuries. The three men were taken to Olu Obasanjo police station in Port Harcourt, where they were denied access to legal counsel. They were later released without charge at around midnight on April 5.

On April 9, Amnesty international called on the Nigerian government to launch immediate investigations into the assault and detention of these human rights defenders. More from Amnesty here.  More from a spokesperson of Nigeria’s Civil Liberties Organisation, a local human rights group, printed in the Guardian (Nigeria), here.

Excerpt below:
The three activists, all staff of Social Action, a Non-Governmental Organisation based in Port Harcourt, were trailed from their Oromineke Lay Out office in D-Line, Port Harcourt about 9 p.m. by over six heavily armed policemen operating in a white Hilux police van. They were double-crossed at Garrison junction, dragged out of their vehicle and beaten mercilessly. The policemen used their gun butts and gun nozzles, boots, batons and horsewhips to unleash mayhem on the law-abiding citizens. Celestine Akpobari sustained serious injuries and was later hospitalised on the following day, Wednesday, April 6 in a private hospital in Port Harcourt.

After the physical assault, the policemen bundled them into their Hilux van and took them to the Olu Obasanjo Police Station where they were detained until about 12 midnight before they were released. They were not told the offence they committed for which they were arrested, beaten up, humiliated and detained. But we suspect that the action of the police may not be unconnected with the campaigns of the activists against forced evictions of residents of Waterfront by the government of Rivers State headed by Mr. Rotimi Amaechi, as well as other campaigns against mis-governance in the state. They had received several threats from agents of the state prior to the attack.

Before the April 5 attack on the three activists, another activist, Kentebe Ebiaridor, a staff of Environmental Rights Action (ERA) and member of the CLO, was manhandled by policemen at Agip Estate, Rumueme, Portharcourt on Friday, April 2, 2010 about 1 a.m. He was returning from work when he was accosted by the battle-ready policemen who beat him up, bundled him into their vehicle and into the Rumuokpakani Police Station’s cell at Ada George road, Port Harcourt. Kentebe, who refused to pull off his clothes and enter the cell as ordered by the policemen, was brutalised and jerked up by several policemen on duty and thrown into the cell. He was later released about 9 a.m. following the intervention of the CLO.

Share on Facebook

We hope you enjoyed April Fools this year as much as we did, thanks to the stellar jokesters the Yes Men who have a habit of impersonating corporate spokespeople.  The people of the Niger Delta still need you to

email Shell’s CEO, Peter Voser, or call Shell’s headquarters at (031) 70 377-9111, or US office at (713) 767-5400, to

encourage Shell to make real amends by ending gas flaring in the Niger Delta and investing in job training and educational opportunities for every resident of a village whose self-sufficient lifestyle was damaged by Shell.

If you missed the prank, read the statement below and watch the video above of Shell’s apology to the Niger Delta.

A huge thanks to the Yes Men for driving a 100% increase in traffic on JINN’s Facebook page over the last week!

from http://shellapologises.com/statement.html:

The Hague, 27 March 2010

Today, Royal Dutch Shell is holding back the tears no more. Shell apologises to all inhabitants of Nigeria’s Niger Delta for the many years of human rights violations, for which Shell takes full responsibility.

Confronted with massive evidence of human rights violations that can only be attributed to its operations in the Niger Delta, Royal Dutch Shell is extremely proud to be the first international petrochemical company to publicly say:

We are sorry.

Since Shell first discovered oil in the Niger Delta in 1956, the company has ravished the land and polluted the environment. “We thought these people didn’t know what was good for them,” explains Bradford Houppe, Vice-President of Shell’s newly established Ethical Affairs Committee. “We never knew that we were bringing them impoverishment, conflict, abuse and deprivation. Now we know.” Shell acknowledges that it is responsible for large-scale oil spills, waste dumping and gas flaring. Each year, hundreds of oil spills occur, many of which are caused by corrosion of oil pipes and poor maintenance of infrastructure. “Our failure to deal with these spills swiftly and the lack of effective clean-up greatly exacerbate their human rights and environmental impact,” says Houppe. “And that is wrong. It’s just really wrong.”
Read the rest of this entry »

Share on Facebook

In honor of International Women’s Day, Justice in Nigeria Now highlights the work of an inspiring, accomplished women’s leader in the Niger Delta: Emem Okon.

Ms. Okon, the Executive Director of Kebetkache Women Development & Resource Centre, uses her passion for mobilizing and empowering women to promote human rights, democratic principles, and social justice in the Niger Delta. Ms. Okon helps women to develop their leadership potentials and project their voices in Nigerian political, social, and cultural spheres.

Based in the Niger Delta, where women face particular adverse impacts of violence—both in terms of violence against women and in the effects of violent conflict on economic and social livelihoods—Ms. Okon advocates for peace and capacity-building, with and for the women of the Niger Delta.

Much of Ms. Okon’s work stems from the challenges that women in the Niger Delta face living in the shadow of oil companies’ operations, where resulting gas flaring and oil spills afflict harm on the people and the environment.

Read this profile on Emem Okon in the National Catholic Reporter as part of its series, Women: Birthing Justice, Birthing Hope:

http://ncronline.org/news/women/first-hand-account-organizing-women-nigeria.

Share on Facebook

Photo credit: Pius Utomi Ekpei/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

Yesterday marked 78 days since Umaru Yar’Adua left Nigeria for medical treatment in Saudi Arabia without officially transferring his presidential powers.

Yesterday also marked the Nigerian legislature’s official recognition of Mr. Goodluck Jonathan transition from Vice President to Acting President of Nigeria.

Mr. Goodluck Jonathan, 52, who is from the Niger Delta, governed Bayelsa state from December 2005 to May 2007 and is a member of the ruling People’s Democratic Party. In Nigeria, the ruling party alternates leadership between the North and the South, making the transition of power to Mr. Jonathan a moment of promise for the Niger Delta.

However, Mr. Jonathan’s position is far from secure.

Since Mr. Yar’Adua’s departure in December and a federal court’s handing of power to Mr. Jonathan as Acting President in January, some challenged Mr. Jonathan’s authority, arguing that the President had not followed official procedures requiring a formal statement transferring his power. Both houses of Nigeria’s legislature voted yesterday to accept the broadcast of the President’s statement to this effect (in a January 12 interview with the BBC) as sufficient notification to satisfy the constitutional requirement.

Whether Mr. Yar’Adua’s supporters, among others, will accept this statement as legally binding remains in question. As Nobel Prize winner Wole Soyinka told CNN, the ruling party has acted slowly to address the president’s absence because “certain elements within the ruling party love this hiatus, they love the headlessness of government because they can proceed to loot and create their own little empires while the president is away.”

Watch CNN International’s Christian Amanpour interview with Mr. Soyinka and Nigeria’s Attorney General, followed by a 3-minute video clip from the film Sweet Crude (featuring interviews with Oronto Douglas and Michael Watts):

For further reading, see articles from these media outlets:

BBC

Sahara Reporters

New York Times

Next

Share on Facebook