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My name is Kenule Beeson Saro-Wiwa. I live at Simaseng Place, 9 Rumuibekwe Road, Port Harcourt. I am a writer, publisher, environmentalist and human rights activist.
I am the President of the Ethnic Minority Rights Organization of Africa (EMIROAF). I am also the current President of the Movement for the Survival of the Ogoni People (MOSOP) which was founded in 1990 to struggle non-violently for the political, economic and environmental rights of the Ogoni people. The motto of the movement is “Freedom, Peace and Justice”.
The Ogoni are a distinct ethnic group, numbering 500,000 and inhabit the coastal plains terraces to the north of the Niger delta in south-east Nigeria. Living in an area of 404 square miles, Ogoni is one of the most densely populated rural areas in the world.
Oil was discovered in Ogoni by Shell in 1958 and about 900 million barrels of oil of estimated value 30 billion US dollars have been mined from the area since then. There are in Ogoni 96, oil wells connected to five oilfields where gas has been flared twenty-four hours a day for thirty-five years. Shell’s oil pipelines criss-cross the surface of Ogoni lands dangerously. There are, as well, a fertilizer plant, two oil refineries, a petrochemical plant and a seaport. Most of the oil wells in Ogoni are operated by Shell. Chevron operates the balance.
In 1990, the Ogoni took stock of their condition and found that in spite of the stupendous oil and gas wealth of their land, they were extremely poor, had no social amenities, that unemployment was running at over seventy per cent, and that they were powerless, as an ethnic minority in a country of 100 million people, to do anything to alleviate their condition. Worse, their environment was completely devastated by three decades of reckless oil exploitation or ecological warfare by Shell. In brief, the Ogoni were faced with environmental degradation, political marginalization, economic strangulation, slavery and possible extinction.
The Chiefs and leaders of Ogoni therefore adopted an Ogoni Bill of Rights (OBR) in which they demanded (a) the right to self-determination as a distinct people in the Nigerian Federation; (b) adequate representation as of right in all Nigerian national institutions; (c) the right to use a fair proportion of the economic resources of their land for their development and (d) the right to control their environment. These demands were presented to the Government and people of Nigeria in October 1990.
Petitioning governments for rights is common and is an undeniable prerogative of individuals and communities in the country. Ordinarily, therefore, the OBR would not have raised an eyebrow. The Babangida military dictatorship ignored the demands. So, the Ogoni embarked on intense publicity at the national and international levels. And MOSOP embarked on the mass mobilization of the Ogoni grassroots, in preparation for non-violent struggle.
On 3rd November, 1992, the Ogoni people, under MOSOP, and after extensive popular consultation, issued the oil companies operating in Ogoni with a thirty-day Demand Notice: pay back rents and royalties, pay compensation for devastated land or quit. The oil companies, Shell, Chevron and the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation, ignored the demand.
On 4th January, 1993, the Ogoni situated their struggle in an international milieu when, in celebration of the United Nations Year of the World’s indigenous Populations, 300,000 Ogoni men, women and children staged a massive peaceful protest march against Shell’s ecological war and the Nigerian government’s denial to the Ogoni of all rights.
A protest march of 300,000 people anywhere in the world is an event; for such a march to happen without a stone being thrown is a rare phenomenon. This single event underlined the non-violent nature of the struggle which the Ogoni had embarked upon; it showed the high discipline of the Ogoni people under the leadership of MOSOP. It was peaceful because the security agencies who were crawling all over Ogoni on the day, did not themselves resort to violence. The march alarmed both Shell and the ruling Nigerian military dictatorship.
THE ALLIANCE OF SHELL
AND THE NIGERIAN MILITARY DICTATORSHIP
Shell and the Nigerian military dictatorship are violent institutions and both depend heavily on violence to control those areas of Nigeria in which oil is found.
Shell has waged an ecological war in Ogoni since 1958. An ecological war is highly lethal, the more so as it is unconventional. It is omnicidal in its effect. Human life, flora, fauna, the air, fall at its feet, and finally, the land itself dies. This is violence at its height although society (particularly in the Third World) is not aware of its methods and effects. Generally, it is supported by all the traditional instruments ancillary to warfare — propaganda, money and deceit. Victory is assessed by profits, and in this sense, Shell’s victory in Ogoni has been total.
The Nigerian military dictatorship survives on the practice of violence and the control of the means of violence. Since it also depends for survival on the availability of oil money, its violence is directed at oil producing areas such as Ogoni. Apart from physical attacks, it takes other forms: the denial of employment, of political power, of oil royalties and rents to landlords. Looking the other way while multi-national oil giants such as Shell and Chevron devastate the environment is also violence.
Between oil companies such as Shell and the Nigerian military dictatorship, there is an alliance. The military dictatorship holds down oil-producing areas such as Ogoni by military decrees and the threat or actual use of physical violence so that Shell can wage its ecological war without hindrance and so produce the oil and petrodollars as well as the international and diplomatic support upon which the military dictatorship depends.
This cosy, if criminal, relationship was perceived to be rudely disrupted by the non-violent struggle of the Ogoni people under MOSOP. The allies decided to bloody the Ogoni in order to stop their example from spreading through the oil-rich Niger delta.
The methods of the allies have been well-rehearsed over the years. Shell alleges that under Nigerian law, when a threat to any of its installation or oilfield is perceived or suspected, it is required to immediately call in the military dictatorship to visit the threatening community with physical violence. No such law exists to my knowledge. However, in October of 1990, the Etche community in Rivers State (neighbours of the Ogoni), had a taste of the power of the allies when, following a peaceful demonstration by a few youth at one of Shell’s locations, the Mobile Police Force (popularly known in Ogoni as `kill and go’) were drafted, at the specific request of Shell, into the village of Umuechem. Eighty people were massacred and four hundred and ninety-five houses burnt down. A Judicial Commission of Inquiry which was later set up recommended that the members of the marauding Force be prosecuted for this offence. To date, no one has been prosecuted. The Rivers State Attorney-General who should have prosecuted the criminals has returned to his legal practice and now holds Shell’s briefs.
What is evident from the foregoing is the close collaboration between Shell and the military dictatorship in the violation of human rights in Nigeria. Also, Shell has the capacity of calling on physical violence to assist its even more lethal ecological war which makes the Company extremely dangerous to human existence in the Niger delta where most of its activities are situated.
This is not the end of this statement. Due to the length of the statement, we have decided to publish it in series. Parts 2, 3, 4, 5, and 6 will be published in due course. Please keep an eye on this page.
