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The last month marked the end of an era in Nigeria. Royal Dutch Shell, the company which in 1956 discovered oil at Oloibiri in the swamps of the Niger Delta and helped make it an illustration of the resource curse, announced its intention to end its onshore operations in the region.
CEO Ben van Beurden blamed the drop on the risk profile of the Delta, which has been rocked by community tensions and crime for generations. “We cannot solve the community problems in the Niger Delta – maybe it is up to the Nigerian government to solve them,” he said. “We can do our best, but at some point we also have to conclude that this is an exposure that no longer matches our appetite for risk.”
The delta is teeming with lush mangroves gushing from the water that sparkles with an oily, rainbow luster. While crude worth billions of dollars has been mined from its shores, it shows little sign that the industry has been operating there for decades. Yet it is riddled with “community issues”. They sank with its oil, which has wreaked economic and environmental havoc, sowed poverty, destroyed farmland and fisheries, enriched corrupt politicians, and strengthened organized crime syndicates.
For many who live there, the region is what it is today in large part thanks to Shell. The business “has huge historical and legacy issues with communities. . . this cannot be desired, ”said Ledum Mitee, former leader of the Ogoni People’s Survival Movement. “They certainly have a responsibility to resolve the problems in the Niger Delta caused by their activities.”
Mitee took over Mosop from Ken Saro-Wiwa, the famous activist and writer who led a peaceful protest to demand justice from the Ogoni for the environmental devastation of their homeland until the military government of Nigeria executed him and eight others. in 1995.
“There is no doubt in our minds that Ken and my [other] colleagues were executed in an attempt to allow Shell to operate unhindered, ”Mitee said. A Shell spokesperson said the company had “always denied in the strongest terms” any responsibility for the state’s executions of the Ogoni Nine.
Shell claims it contributes to the Nigerian economy. It has 2,700 employees and more than 9,000 contractors, and poured $ 4.6 billion into the country’s coffers in 2019 alone. The company says its withdrawal from onshore production would be done in collaboration with government and local communities, and that it will continue to meet its obligations in the event of an oil spill.
“The challenges of the Niger Delta are complex and extensive, affecting communities where we may never have operated,” the spokesperson said. “Where we operate, we create jobs, support local supply chains and invest in the education and health care that people rely on, while providing billions of dollars in revenue to the Nigerian government.”
The perception that Shell has been a negative actor has made it a convenient scapegoat for Nigeria’s corrupt political class, says Idayat Hassan, director of the Abuja-based Center for Democracy and Development. “The problem is the lack of governance, not just business,” she said.
Mike Karikpo, a Delta-based lawyer from Friends of the Earth International, helped negotiate a long-delayed $ 1 billion cleanup of Ogoniland, which is largely funded by Shell and the state-owned oil company. Nigeria, but was rocked by allegations of corruption. “We hold the company accountable for nearly 70 years of reckless, self-regulating operations in our communities,” he says. “No matter how much Shell tries to escape responsibility for the destruction of our ecosystem, local livelihoods and the socio-cultural fabric of our communities, it will fail.”
Karikpo cites a landmark judgment from a Dutch court that held Shell’s Nigerian subsidiary responsible for oil spills in the delta and could open the door to more such cases. “Shell has to pay for cleaning up and restoring our environment,” he says. “It is a debt he owes to our generation and to future generations of people in this region and it is a debt that we will work diligently and relentlessly to extract every last penny.”
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