The Director of Environmental Rights Action (Friends of the Earth Ngieria) Nnimmo Bassey testifies before the US Senate Judiciary Subcommittee on Human Rights and the Law….

This submission describes the deleterious human and environmental  impacts of the operations of multinational oil companies in the Niger Delta in Nigeria. It provides information about the population of the Niger Delta and the harmful effects of the oil industry on the region’s delicate environment. Oil companies, including Chevron and Shell, have repeatedly used the Nigerian military to violently repress Delta inhabitants’ peaceful protests, causing deaths and injuries, and creating an environment in which ordinary citizens are unable to exercise their rights to free expression. Finally, recommendations are presented for improvements in corporate practice by extractive industry companies, as well as suggestions for further inquiries by the Subcommittee. 

The Geographical, Economic, and Cultural Context The Niger Delta region is a coastal plain covering approximately 70,000 km2 in southeastern Nigeria. Over 12 million people live in the states of the Niger Delta; a large  percentage of the inhabitants come from diverse minority ethnic groups like the Ijaw,
Ilaje, Urhobo, Ibibio and Itsekiri, who have been marginalized historically in Nigerian political and economic life. Farming and fishing are key livelihood activities for the region’s inhabitants.  Continue reading

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Niger Delta
Nigeria
Environmental Rights Action

Multinational oil companies operating in the Niger Delta have time and time again colluded with the Nigerian government in police and military action against local communities including women and children. In Etche Ogoni Egi and Ijaw, Shell Elf and Chevron have all paid for and employed the services of the para military police locally known as MoPo as well as the Nigerian army to attack local communities protesting against the environmental destruction of their lands. Shell and Chevron have particularly been guilty of pursing and directing acts of violence such as rape, beatings, destruction of land and property through their proxy army of Nigerian government militia.

The relationship between the oil companies and the Nigerian state is a complex and shifting one which goes back to the colonial period and the beginnings of the militarization of commerce in the Niger Delta. Initially the oil companies had complete control and through legislation such as the 1959 Petroleum Profit Tax Ordinance where able to keep a disproportionately large share of the profits from oil. As the Nigerian state became more and more dependent on oil it sought ways to strengthen it’s relationship with the oil companies and increase it’s control over the Niger Delta. The oil companies who in turn sought the protection of their profits along with the freedom to operate outside of international standards and environmental laws.

Now finally after years of trying to prosecute oil companies for these crimes, a landmark case is due to take place against Chevron…The law…….

suit is based on a 1998 incident in which Nigerian soldiers shot nonviolent protesters at Chevron’s Parabe offshore platform. The soldiers, who were paid by Chevron, were ferried to the platform in Chevron-leased helicopters and supervised by Chevron personnel. Two protesters were killed in the brutal attack and others were injured. Another protester brings claims based on the subsequent torture inflicted on him by the Nigerian authorities after Chevron claimed that he was a pirate.

In a recent ruling, U.S. District Court Judge Susan Illston found evidence that Chevron’s personnel “were directly involved” in this attack, transporting the soldiers despite knowing that they were “prone to use excessive force,” and concluded that the evidence would allow a jury to find not only that Chevron assisted the soldiers knowing that they would attack the protestors, but also that Chevron actually agreed to the militarys plan.

But having got this far in a show of solidarity with the multinationals (success against Chevron would set a precedent in a series of prosecutions against multinational which would include huge sums in compensation to local communities) the United States government is refusing to give visas to the many villagers who could testify against the brutal attacks in 1998 against women by Chevron…………

The lead plaintiff in the case, Larry Bowoto, has visited the United States three times without encountering visa problems. “But now that the trial is going forward, women and children whose husbands and fathers were tortured and killed, and individuals who witnessed the killings, are being blocked,” added plaintiffs’ counsel Marco Simons, Legal Director of Earthrights International (ERI). “The U.S. government should be facilitating justice for human rights victims, not hindering it.” Chevron has not answered questions about whether it has had any role in the denial of the visas.

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Nigeria
Niger Delta Chevron

The discussion on Climate Change has tended to focus on the impacts for the West. But this report on the sinking coastal regions of West Africa is a wakeup call for the continent.

Swathes of West Africa’s coastline extending from the orange dunes in Mauritania to the dense tropical forests in Cameroon will be underwater by the end of the century as a direct consequence of climate change, environmental experts warn.

“The coastline [as it is now] will be completely changed by the end of this century because the sea level is rising along the coast at around two centimetres every year,” said Stefan Cramer, Nigeria director of Heinrich Boll Stiftung, a German environmental NGO.

Lagos has been slowly sinking ever since I can remember with areas like Lagos Island and in particular Victoria Island constantly under water while the Atlantic sea claims inches each year to the point there is no longer a beach front for miles of the coast.

Thinking of climate change, the environment and pollution, I see plastic bags as probably the main environmental and educational challenge faced by Nigeria. There are simply millions of these everywhere including the sea. Beaches that 10 years ago were clean and bag free are now full of black and blue and white plastic bags; mountains of plastic rubbish - bags, bottles, containers - litter the roadside as there is no environmental consciousness. While the Europe cleans itself up, it uses Africa as a dumping ground of it’s own waste particularly electronic waste. But waste, whether plastic bags, electronic or toxic belongs to all of us. Batteries and computers dumped in Africa not only pollute locally but eventually the effects of the pollution come back to where they started - Europe and elsewhere.

Photos from “Curse of the Black Gold: 50 Years of Oil in the Niger Delta

The lure of oil is its cheapness. What we mean is that oil is a cheap source of energy. It is cheap partly because oil’s costs of extraction—in the Niger Delta and much of the tropical world—are not reflected in the price at the pump, and what Calvino called the “puny power of paper money,” .

One consequence of the unfettered and wreckless exploration and exploitation of oil in the delta is that the poor people continue to subsidize the costs of crude oil through the losses they suffer in environmental services, quality of life, and extreme environmental degradation. In turn, opportunistic groups— oil bunkerers, gangs, militants—find space to extract (and extort) financial gains from the system.

Rather than getting better, the crisis in the Niger Delta appears to be getting more intractable. Meetings, programs, projects, and commissions multiply—yet the many-headed hydra that is mass poverty in the Delta simply grows more appendages. The path of crude oil development is strewn with skeletons and soaked in human blood across the world.

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Nigeria
Niger Delta
Oil
Shell + Nigeria

The West has been using Africa to dump it’s toxic waste and unwantables for years and continues despite being illegal since 1992. In 1998 the EU implemented a ban against exportation of hazardous waste the West. [the USA, Canada and New Zealand refused to sign]. Just after the Tsunami of December 2004, barrels of medical and chemical waste left on the shores of Somalia were broken open and the contents spilled. Some of the waste had been there since the early 80s when warlords received large payments from the West to dump the waste mainly from Switzerland and Italy. In the late 80s large amounts of toxic waste from Italy were found in Koko Beach, Delta State Nigeria resulting in burns, vomiting blood and partial paralysis by those who came into contact with the waste. In 2006 a Dutch ship dumped tons of caustic washings used to clean oil drums on Abidjan leaving people complaining of nausea, headaches and vomiting.

The dumping of toxic waste has been replaced by dumping of electronic waste, computers mobile phones which contain “cadmium, lead, mercury and other poisons”. In 2006 the Independent reported

Two years later the dumping continues. The figures are astounding. Each year the EU produces 8.7 million tons of E-waste of which 6.6 million tons leaves Europe each year - where does it go? Mainly to Africa and often under the guise of “charitable donantions” where it is left in landfills and ponds and where much of it is burnt sending out huge quantities of lead and mercury which then enter the food chain. The dumps become “working” areas for poor people mainly children searching for scraps of metal and other bits they can sell. Every month about 500,000 used computers are arriving in Lagos alone with only a small percentage working and the rest end up as toxic waste. NGOs, businesses, unscrupulous local businessmen but most of all the EU are all complicit in the trade of electronic waste arriving in West Africa from Europe as this video shows.

Links: Cheap Monkeys
; Bleeding toxins from dead PCs

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Toxic Waste
E-Waste + Nigeria
West Africa