Re-posted from Social Action
Saturday, 17 September 2011

Over 700 families in Ogoniland are angry with the Rivers State government over what they allege was a forceful land acquisition by the state Ministry of Agriculture.

Consequently, the families, under the Ogoni Solidarity Forum and Ogoni Civil Society Platform have joined forces with two non-governmental organisations – the Social and Economic Rights Action Centre (SERAC) and Social Action (SA) – to show their displeasure and concern over what they described as the “grave human rights and due process breaches” by the Rivers State government.

The said farmland of about 200 hectares is being acquired to enable a Mexican investor, Union De Iniciativa S.A De C.V, undertake a commercial banana plantation project. As a result of this, families in the Nyokhana, Tai and Babbe kingdoms of Ogoniland stand to be affected by the land acquisition.

According to some of the affected family members, heavily armed military men have been coming every week in vehicles to patrol the area and survey new lands since May 16, 2011. They force anyone in their way to lie on the ground and people report being afraid to challenge the military for fear of the consequences.

Although the farmers have been explicitly forbidden by the military to return to the land, some now sneak back onto the land to harvest the few crops that remain in order to feed their families.

Full article

Nigeria: Oil-polluted Ogoniland could become environmental model

UN says clean-up operation following two massive oil spills in the Niger Delta could benefit other African countries developing their oil reserves

By John Vidal
Reposted from  guardian.co.uk, Tuesday 9 August 2011

Ogoniland is one of the most oil-polluted places on earth but it could become a model for other countries wanting to clean up their environments or avoid making the same mistakes, the UN has said.

“This could be the world’s biggest oil contamination clean-up,” said Nick Nuttall, spokesman for the UN’s environment programme (UNEP) director, Achim Steiner. “It is up to the government of Nigeria what happens now, but [from talks with President Goodluck Jonathan in Abuja this week] there appears to be a willingness to act,” he said while in London.

Preliminary cost estimates to decontaminate and restore the devastated ecology of the 1,000 sq km of land and water are nearly $1bn for the first five years, with much more money possibly needed over the full 30 years it will take to clean up the region, said UNEP chief scientist Joseph Alcamo in London.

But he said that if governments and oil companies were prepared to put up the money to act, it could provide work to train tens of thousands of Ogonis, leave the area “pristine” and help many other African countries that were on the point of commercially developing their oil reserves.

São Tomé, Ghana, Uganda, Sierra Leone and Ethiopia all expect to produce oil in the next 10 years. “One in 10 barrels of oil in the world presently comes from Africa. It is very likely that oil production will increase on the continent. Countries can learn from this painful experience,” said Alcamo.

As well as immediate measures, such as warning Ogoni people if they are drinking from polluted wells and proposing that the oil companies rethink their clean-up procedures, the UN recommended that a global centre for excellence for environmental restoration be set up in Ogoniland.

Full article

image: UNEP Environmental Assessment of Ogoniland

Amnesty International Press Release
For Immediate Release
Thursday, August 4, 2011

Amnesty International, Responding to United Nations Report on Disastrous Oil Pollution in Nigeria, Demands Accountability from Shell Oil Company

Reposted from Amnesty International

Urges Institutional Investors to Urge Shell To “Clean Up Its Act” in Niger Delta

Contact: Suzanne Trimel, 212-633-4150, strimel@aiusa.org

(New York) – Amnesty International said today that Shell oil company has had a disastrous impact on the human rights of people living in the Niger Delta and must be held to account.  The organization was responding to a United Nations report – the first of its kind in Nigeria — on the severe and widespread effects of oil pollution in Ogoniland in the Delta region.

The report from the United Nations Environment Program is based on two years of in-depth scientific research. It found that oil contamination is widespread and severe, and that people in the Niger Delta have been exposed for decades.

“This report proves Shell has had a terrible impact in Nigeria, but has got away with denying it for decades, falsely claiming they work to best international standards,” said Amnesty International Global Issues Director, Audrey Gaughran, who has researched the human rights impacts of pollution in the Delta and is the author of a groundbreaking 2009 report, “Petroleum, Pollution and Poverty in the Niger Delta.”

The U.N. report, which was conducted at the request of the Nigerian government and paid for by Shell, provides irrefutable evidence of the devastating impact of oil pollution on people’s lives in the Delta – one of Africa’s most bio-diverse regions.  It examines the damage to agriculture and fisheries, which has destroyed livelihoods and food sources. One of the most serious facts to come to light is the scale of contamination of drinking water, which has exposed communities to serious health risks. In one case water was found to contain a known carcinogen at levels 900 times above World Health Organization guidelines. The U.N. Environment Program has recommended emergency measures to alert communities to the danger.

“This report should also be a wake-up call to institutional investors. In the past they’ve allowed Shell’s public relations machine to pull the wool over their eyes, but they will now want to see the company cleaning up its act in the Niger Delta – that means putting real pressure on Shell to avoid spillages, compensate those already affected and disclose more accurate information on their impacts,” said Gaughran.

The report reveals Shell’s systemic failure to address oil spills going back many years and  describes how sites that Shell claimed were cleaned up were found by UNEP experts to be still polluted.

Full press release

Shell accepts liability for two oil spills in Nigeria

By John Vidal

Wednesday 3 August 2011

Reposted from guardian.co.uk

Oil giant faces a bill of hundreds of millions of dollars following class action suit brought on behalf of communities in Bodo, Ogoniland

The impact of an oil spill near Ikarama in the Niger delta. Photograph: Amnesty International UK

Shell faces a bill of hundreds of millions of dollars after accepting full liability for two massive oil spills that devastated a Nigerian community of 69,000 people and may take at least 20 years to clean up.

Experts who studied video footage of the spills at Bodo in Ogoniland say they could together be as large as the 1989 Exxon Valdez disaster in Alaska, when 10m gallons of oil destroyed the remote coastline.

Until now, Shell has claimed that less than 40,000 gallons were spilt in Nigeria.

Papers seen by the Guardian show that following a class action suit in London over the past four months, the company has accepted responsibility for the 2008 double rupture of the Bodo-Bonny trans-Niger pipeline that pumps 120,000 barrels of oil a day though the community.

Ogoniland is a small region of the Niger delta which threw out Shell in 1994 for its pollution but then saw eight of its leaders, including the writer Ken Saro-Wiwa, executed by the government.

The crude oil that gushed unchecked from the two Bodo spills, which occurred within months of each other, in 2008 has clearly devastated the 20 sq km network of creeks and inlets on which Bodo and as many as 30 other smaller settlements depend for food, water and fuel.

No attempt has been made to clean up the oil, which has collected on the creek sides, washes in and out on the tides and has seeped deep into the water table and farmland.

According to the communities in Bodo, in two years the company has only offered £3,500 together with 50 bags of rice, 50 bags of beans and a few cartons of sugar, tomatoes and groundnut oil. The offers were rejected as “insulting, provocative and beggarly” by the chiefs of Bodo, but later accepted on legal advice.

Shell’s acceptance of full liability for the spills follows a class action suit bought on behalf of communities by London law firm Leigh Day and Co, which represented the Ivory Coast community that suffered health damage following the dumping of toxic waste by a ship leased to multinational oil company Trafigura in 2006.

Many other impoverished communities in the delta are now expected to seek damages for oil pollution against Shell in the British courts. On average, there are three oil spills a day by Shell and other companies working in the delta. Shell consistently blames the spills on local youths who, they argue, sabotage their network of pipelines.

“The news that Shell has accepted liability in Britain will be greeted with joy in the delta. The British courts may now be inundated with legitimate complaints,” said Patrick Naagbartonm, coordinator for the Centre of Environment and Human Rights in Port Harcourt.

Full article

MOSOP Statement On Land Seizure In Ogoniland

Reposted from  Sahara Reporters New York
July 21, 2011

Press Statement

RE: REVOCATION OF RIGHT OF OCCUPANCY NOTICE IN RESPECT OF LAND REQUIRED FOR THE SERVICES OF THE FEDERAL GOVERNMENT OF NIGERIA FOR  PROPOSED NEW TOWN DEVELOPMENT PROJECT PARCELS A AND B AT NYOKURU AND BEERI COMMUNITIES

Members of the Movement for the Survival of the Ogoni People (MOSOP) has become aware of an advertorial by the Rivers State Government (RSG) published in The Nation Newspaper of Friday, July 15, 2011. The RSG in the advert says it intends to expropriate over 258,954 hectares of land from the Ogoni nation purportedly for overriding public purpose – to wit the development of a new town by the Federal Government.

The advert called on anyone who has right or interest in the expropriated lands to put in their claim within two weeks from the date of the advert. May we remind the state government that many of the affected landowners and farmers, do not have access to national dailies and so would not be aware that the state government is about to take their lands. It is also pertinent to once again call the attention of the government to the fact that there is an intrinsic link between the survival of the Ogoni nation and their lands. It is therefore imperative that in this democratic dispensation, the state government should imbibe and espouse the benefits of wide and adequate consultations in situations where they would deprive communities and individuals of their livelihoods and their ability to survive.

We find it difficult to rationalize government’s insistence on seizing another 258,954 hectares of land in Nyokuru and Beeri communities in Khana local government area of Ogoni immediately after an earlier controversial land grab of over 100,000 hectares spanning Tai and Khana LGAs and which has claimed three innocent lives. We are concerned that government has deliberately ignored the fact that its spate of land seizure in Ogoni would have dire implications on local communities.

MOSOP is aware that the discredited Land Use Act, the abrogation of which the governor himself has championed; vests authority over land in the State Governor. We are however concerned at the tone of the advert and the willingness of the state governor to take advantage of this obnoxious law to deprive communities and individuals of their right to livelihood and survival without transparent and adequate consultation.

This coercive tendency no doubt betrays sinister intent as this appears not to fit into the development agenda of the present national government. It is suspicious that while the story circulated earlier related to an industrial estate, we are now reading about development of a new town. It is on record that past regimes have seized colossal amount of lands from Ogoni communities for new town development only to abandon the project. Besides, huge amount of our lands have been captured for oil and gas production, many others grabbed by past administrations for some other development initiatives but abandoned and are wasting. We condemn this colonizing scramble for Ogoni through land grabbing, which will no doubt generate unmanageable land shortage for local subsistence food production and other uses especially housing development.

Internationally recognized best practice in land resettlement schemes require that when government expropriates lands from communities for overriding public purpose, it must first offer those who have lost lands, an alternative and suitably situated land, acceptable to them and on which they can continue their farming. It also requires that adequate compensation be paid to affected landowners and farmers for crops and other improvements on the land, taking care to compute the life span of perennial crops and the aggregate income landowners and farmers would have earned during the lifespan of such crop. The two weeks time frame set out in the advertorial is certainly grossly insufficient to resolve these issues.

Full article

Image attribution: Flag of the Ogoni People by Mysid [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons

Ben Amunwa, Niger Delta activist and Platform researcher provides analysis of the conflict, politics and root causes of the Niger Delta crisis. Subjects include the struggle of Ogoni women who succeeded in seeing Shell withdraw from Ogoniland in 1993, the origin of MEND and the December bombings of Ayakoromo.

Watch the full video and join the discussion by adding your comments here.