Shelling Nigeria Ablaze

by 

Claude Ake

Shell Petroleum Development Company of Nigeria shows no sign of remorse for causing the strife in Ogoniland which has thrown Nigeria into one of the deepest crises of its history. It insists defiantly that it will not change its ways and denies any part whatsoever in the environment degradation of the Niger Delta, which it blames on indigenes conniving at oil spills to collect compensation.

Shell's vehement rejection of all blame has clearly undermined the Niger Delta Environment Survey, NDES, which it has been trying to sell as an independent and objective judge, for it has put NDES under pressure to exonerate Shell. In any case, NDES has already ceased to be a serious proposition. The designated representative of the communities has resigned over Shell's role in the death of Ken Saro-Wiwa and his colleagues and doubts about the effectiveness of NDES. The World Conservation Foundation, represented on NDES to give it international legitimacy, is being asked by Nigerian and European environmentalists to resign amidst concerns of receiving funding from Shell. The NGO representative in NDES in [sic "is from"] the Nigerian World Conservative Foundation which was started by a former Nigerian Petroleum Minister who is now a director of Chevron. That leaves apart from the chairman just representatives of government and the oil industry.

Neither NDES nor Shell's well-financed campaigns across the world can hide the disaster it is perpetrating in the Niger Delta. A World Bank Study ("Defining an Environmental Development Strategy for the Niger Delta, 1995") estimates that as much as 76 per cent of all the natural gas from Petroleum production in Nigeria is flared compared to 0.6 per cent in USA, 4.3 per cent in the UK, 21.0 per cent in Libya. The flaring is a serious hazard. At temperatures of 1,300 to 1,400 degrees centigrade, the multitude of flares in the Delta heat up everything, causing noise pollution, and producing CO2, VOC, CO, NOx and particulates around the clock. The emission of CO2 from gas flaring in Nigeria releases 35 million tons of CO2 a year and 12 million tons of methane, which means that Nigerian oil fields contribute more in global warming than the rest of the world together.

Nigeria's major oil-producing states, Rivers and Delta, suffer about 300 major oil spills a year (often covering several miles) which discharge about 2,300 m3 (metre cubed) of oil. This estimate would be much higher if it included minor spills which are far more numerous and invariably unreported. It would be higher still if it took account of the fact that the Nigerian crude oil is very light and evaporates rapidly, an estimated evaporation loss of about 50 per cent in 48 hours.

Neither Shell nor other oil companies in Nigeria invest much in the treatment of effluents. According to an European Community study "Mangroves of Africa and Madagascar", the waters of the Niger Delta contain at least 6 percent of petroleum and often up to 60 ppm. An environmental impact study of Shell (Resigner Industries, 1993) put an average hydrocarbon content of petroleum hydrocarbons in waste water in Oloma Creek at 62.7 mg/l. At the Bonny Terminal in Rivers State where Shell does its separation of water from crude oil, the mud at the bottom of the Bonny River has a lethal concentration of 12,000 ppm. But Shell lies that the wastewater at Bonny Terminal averages 7.8 mg/l. As the World Bank Report quoted above has noted, the industry is using API (techniques ?) and TPF facilities which are unsuitable for separation of better than 50 mg/l.

While degrading the environment and abusing human rights, Shell and the other Petroleum multinationals in Nigeria firmly discourage resistance against their misdeeds. Environmental activism in Nigeria has thus become as hazardous as the environment of the Niger Delta. Ken Saro-Wiwa was not the only environmental activist charged with murder. Professor Jaja Ohinwa, a former Vice-Chancellor and spokesperson for the Obagi community in Rivers State, was also charged with murder and detained. He was lucky to escape [with] the dismissal from his university appointment.

In the wake of the Ogoni crisis, another ugly aspect of the methods of Shell and the oil companies has come to light, namely bribing officials to terrorise environmental and human rights activists in the oil producing communities. In the last two weeks, Nigerian newspapers and even some foreign ones have carried reports accusing Shell of giving money to some state officials in the oil-producing communities to conduct punitive security operations. I call for an independent investigation of this matter, especially the issues raised by the editorial in AM News of Monday, January 8, 1996.

On several occasions, I have raised the question of the privatisation of the state by Shell with Shell officials. The privatisation of the state is evident in the swarm of police men and women in Shell residential headquarters and offices supposedly securing Shell; the presence of armed troops in the operational bases of the company, and in the prerogative of Shell and other oil companies to call on the police and the military for their security. In 1989, Shell called in the Mobile Police Force into Umuechem where it was having problems with the community and blood was shed. By official accounts, 15 people were shot in the single operation but newspaper reports indicate the death toll of about 80 persons.

It is indicative of Shell's privatisation of the state and its prerogatives that it buys substantial quantities of firearms through open tender for its own use. ThisDay [Newspaper] of Friday, December 22, 1995 reports a case before a Lagos High Court in which an arms dealer, Humanitex Nigeria Limited, sued Shell Nigeria for N100 million (?) for a breach of contract in seeking to open again for bidding an arms supply contract which Shell awarded in 1993. In a 17-paragraph affidavit sworn by the chief executive of the company, Gabriel Akinluyi, the company says that Shell was making the purchase to update the firearms of its security forces across the country. We see here the bizarre and frightening novelty of accumulation of terror. I call for an independent inquiry inot the acquisition and use of firearms by Shell.

These tendencies have been replayed in Ogoniland on an extended scale with more tragic consequences. By all indications, there is worse to come. Shell remains unrepentant and belligerent. At the same time, consciousness and resentment [grow ?] in the oil-producing communities as the events of January 4, 1996 [Ogoni Day] showed. Ogoniland is unbowed. Unless something gives there will be more strife and they will be far more catastrophic.

What is at issue is nothing less than the viability of Nigeria, as oil is the real power and the stuff of politics in Nigeria as well as what holds the country in a fragile dialectical unity of self-seeking. It is time to call Shell to order and to account.

 The above article was published in TELL, January 29, 1996, page 34