Akin Yusuf
Last week the Shell Petroleum Development Company, Nigeria (SPDC) told the world that it had decided to settle its lingering case with the Ogoni out of court, and that it had agreed to pay them $15.5 million to compensate the injuries and the deaths of their family members, and also create a trust for the benefit of the Ogoni, as well as pay the costs of litigations. The more interesting part of this agreement for me is the aspect dealing with the establishment of the Kiisi Trust, which I understand means progress in Ogoni language. According to it this trust will allow for initiatives in Ogoni for educational endowments, skills development programmes, agricultural development, women’s programmes, small enterprise support and adult literacy.
By the way, ten Ogoni people including Ken Saro-Wiwa junior had gone to a United States federal court in Manhattan some years ago to challenge the wanton destruction of their environment and human rights following several years of careless oil exploration and exploitation by the Shell Development Company of Nigeria, resulting in the avoidable deaths in 1995 of eight of their prominent sons including Ken Saro-Wiwa. The resulting struggle forced Shell to abandon its operations in Ogoniland. Ken Saro-Wiwa and others were therefore accused by Nigeria’s government of inciting the people to challenge the activities of Shell and other oil companies not only in Ogoni but in the Niger Delta Region. The plaintiffs invoked the Alien Tort Claims Act on allegations that Shell was complicit in the death of their sons. The Alien Torts Act dates back to 1789. It was actually enacted to ensure that the new born American nation would abide by international laws. It allows foreigners (aliens) to sue for justice in US courts over violations of international laws.
Read Also: Shell plans gas plant for Aba business area
Nevertheless, how to ensure a peaceful environment to guarantee oil exploitation in the Niger Delta (upon which Nigeria’s economy almost entirely depends) has remained a problem especially since the 1990s. What initially started as peaceful agitation rather became complicated as from 2003 following the formation of several groups in the Niger Delta representing a plethora of militia camps including: the Niger Delta Peoples Volunteer Force (NDPVF); Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta (MEND); Coalition of Militant Action in the Niger Delta (COMA); Niger Delta Peoples Salvation Front (NDPSF); Joint Revolutionary Council (JRC) among others. These groups have exacerbated the problem, by making dialogue almost impossible leading to more severe consequences both for the country and the local communities.
The crisis has also taken several dimensions including the murder of several people, high spate of kidnappings and hostage takings as well as attacks on oil installations leading to the shut down of production facilities. In all cases Nigeria remains the loser. It is in fact, estimated that the country has lost an average of 500, 000 barrels per day in crude oil production since 1999 to the spate of violence and instability in the region. The human cost and damage to local economies in the region is better imagined.
Even as I write needless gas flaring still takes place in the Niger Delta; the air is completely polluted; a percentage of the population is sick; unemployment is real; the creeks are unsafe; while poverty is intense. To say the least Nigeria’s Nigeria Delta is presently wallowing in abject poverty, high unemployment, collapsed infrastructures and a plethora of abandoned projects. In this place, there are neither good roads nor electrification; pipe-borne water supply is absent, communication is non existent, while economic activities are rather rustic, self-preserving and subsistent. At the same time, and perhaps owing to long years of neglect, schools in the Niger Delta have become factories and breeding grounds for restive youths constantly looking for crisis. It was these socio-economic challenges that ignited the struggle in the first place. Hence Shell’s recent Agreement with the Ogoni can only be meaningful in the long term if it is able to address these issues and lots more.
This is also why I seem to be more interested in the Kiisi Trust, whose objectives are in this direction. Let me say for the umpteenth time that we must follow words with actions by collectively committing to bringing real development to the Niger Delta. Furthermore, companies operating not just in Ogoni but in all other Niger Delta communities must commit to global best practice. They must therefore see corporate social responsibility as an important part of company policy and as a continuing commitment to behave ethically and contribute to economic development, while improving the quality of life of the workforce and their families as well as of the local community and society at large.
The recent agreement between Shell and the Ogoni should not be seen as an end in itself. It should rather signify a new beginning in the relationship between oil companies and their host communities. Although what Shell is paying is a pittance when compared with what they make from these communities and the damages they cause, at the same time the agreement represents a landmark. It is certain that many more oil producing communities in Nigeria are bound to follow Ogoni’s example in the immediate future knowing that it is now possible to seek legal redress successfully. This is also in line with a similar breakthrough in the case between world’s foremost pharmaceutical giant Pfizer and the Kano State Government in which the former agreed recently to pay $75 million compensation for the 1996 Kano Trovan test victims. It is equally in line with a similar case where another US oil giant Chevron Corp. is facing a lawsuit filed by indigenous people in Ecuador for alleged contamination of the Amazon Region by Texaco, which was acquired by Chevron in 2001. The company may pay as much as $27 billion compensation for environmental damages if eventually found guilty.
To all intense and purposes a new dawn in the relationship between oil companies and their host communities especially in Nigeria has just begun.
