Nigeria

On June 9 Environmental Rights Action/Friends of the Earth, Nigeria (ERA/FoEN) has released a press statement describing the outcome of the landmark suit instituted by Ken Saro Wiwa Jr and other Ogonis accusing Shell of complicity in the execution of author and human rights activist Ken Saro-Wiwa and other Ogoni leaders in 1995, among other human rights abuses, as a significant milestone in the search for justice in the bloody oil fields of the Niger Delta.

“I don’t want money. I want my land back…if they give me one million Naira [the local currency] today, I will still go broke, but if I have my land I can always farm to take care of my family and possibly pass the land on to my children.”(Woman from Iguoriakhi)   

If after reading the above articles you (as a woman within an organization, as a member of a women’s movement, as an activist on human rights issues, as an environmentalist, as a journalist, as a member of a consumer’s association, as a campaigner on climate issues, trade issues, health issues, etc) are wondering what you can do to start making changes to the current situation, we have some ideas that we hope may be of use.

By the World Rainforest Movement and Forest and Biodiversity Program of Friends of the Earth International

Did you ever imagine that the tyres of your car may have been produced at the expense of a local community’s livelihood in Nigeria?  Most of the world natural rubber production goes for the manufacturing of tyres for different types of vehicles, ranging from cars, to trucks, airplanes and so on. To have an idea of the huge amount of tyres consumed, let’s take a look at the statistics in 2007 where 1.3 billion tires were produced.

Oil palm and rubber plantations occupy extensive areas in many countries in tropical Africa. In spite of their social and environmental impacts, until now they have received scant attention both at the national and international level.

Nigeria holds 11,700 square kilometers of mangrove forest: the third largest in the world and the largest in Africa. Most of this mangrove is found in the Niger Delta. Nigeria is also a major oil producer and most oil extraction takes place in the Niger Delta. There, petroleum or crude oil abounds in rock formations. The complex mixture of hydrocarbons and other organic compounds that make up the flammable liquid fossil fuel is extracted from oil wells found in those oil fields.

We had already shared (see WRM's bulletin Nº 111) what the ‘Operation Climate Change’ -- launched on January 1, 1999 -- did in the Niger Delta: activists shut down oil flow stations and gas flares. In response, many houses were destroyed, people were killed and women were raped. However, the struggle continued and mainly women started a joint campaign to protect life by putting a stop to the depredations of Big Oil. They won a fight: in January 2006 Nigerian courts ordered Shell to stop the flaring of natural gas in Ogoniland.

A thorough report by Leigh Brownhill and Terisa E. Turner (“Climate Change and Nigerian Women’s Gift to Humanity”) traces Nigerian resistance to massive oil exploitation --which has not rendered any good for the country’s people (see WRM Bulletin Nº 56) -- and highlights women’s leading role in that struggle.

The political instabilities in Nigeria during Abacha's regime in 1993/94, which was an aftermath of the annulment of June 12, 1992 presidential election won by the late business mogul -Chief M.K.O. Abiola- created an acute scarcity of kerosene that was seriously felt in different parts of the country. The kerosene scarcity led to the invention of “Abacha Coal-Pot” – a locally made cooking stove that uses charcoal.

The Omo Forest Reserve –located in the South west of Nigeria- was legally constituted as a forest reserve by Order No. 10 of 1925 and the Order was amended in 1952. The forest was practically unexplored by then. The forest was ceded to Government for reservation on the 8th of October, 1918. The agreement was made between the District Officer, Ijebu Ode on behalf of the British Colonial government and the Awujale of Ijebu Ode on behalf of the Ijebu Native administration.

Thousands of indigenous peoples are displaced from their land, which is militarized and expropriated in an unending genocide. Oil exploitation is carried out – causing damages that go uncompensated – without consulting the communities and with the connivance of the government of the time. Transnational companies such as Shell, Repsol, and Maxus appropriate territorial spaces under the pretext that they are of “public utility”, they contaminate bodies of water and river beds, they deforest virgin forests and generate impacts destroying the future.