Nigeria

  Introduction / Background

 

While land grabbing is generally associated with the taking over of land for large scale monoculture plantations, grown for export-crops or conservation projects like REDD, the Ogoni people in the Niger Delta have faced another form of land grab – the loss of their territories, traditional lands, fertile mangrove and river systems to the oil companies that have been devastating the region for decades.

On January 30, a Dutch court ruled that the Anglo-Dutch transnational corporation Shell is responsible for polluting the Niger delta, affecting heavily the lives of people at Ikot Ada Udo in Akwa Ibom State. Shell must clean up the oil pollution, compensate those affected and prevent further leaks from occurring. This case is unique because for the first time a Dutch multinational had to respond in front of a Dutch court for the acts of one of its subsidiaries.

The Singapore based agribusiness giant Wilmar - is expanding its operations in Africa. It already has approximately 50,000 hectares of oil palm plantations in Ivory Coast, Uganda and Ghana. More recently it has expanded to Nigeria going into a joint venture with PZ Cussons to set up huge extensions of oil palm plantations in Cross River State in the south east region of the country while promising the creation of thousands of job opportunities.

Fossil fuels have driven current modes of civilisation for over one and a half centuries. Coal, crude oil and gas enabled the world to shift from humans and animals as energy generators to machines that opened the highway to endless consumption. Crude oil appears cheap because the real costs are externalised. Today, with the days of easy oils ending we are seeing a push into extraction in deep waters and fragile ecosystems.

Mangrove is a thriving and fragile ecosystem that depends on other nearby ecosystems – the river and salt marshes. In turn, the health of the sea and of coral reefs depends on a healthy mangrove. Everything is connected.

West Africa used to be the centre of the palm oil industry. The export of palm kernels began in 1832 and by 1911 “British” West Africa alone exported 157,000 tonnes of which about 75 percent came from Nigeria. In the 1870s, British administrators took the plant to Malaysia and in 1934 that country surpassed Nigeria as the largest exporter of the product. By 1966, Malaysia and Indonesia had surpassed Africa’s total palm oil production.

With a population of some 150 million people, the Nigerian economy has been relying for more than 50 years on oil extraction by foreign large corporations - with Shell at the top - in the Niger Delta remote region of mangrove creeks.

In November 2009, 117 Nigerian organisations signed on to a statement to the government with a challenging message: leave oil in the ground. They expressed they were “united in our opposition to new oil blocs and call on all progressive-minded peoples and organizations to support our call that new oil finds be left in the ground and bitumen left in the soil.”