Blog

Last month, it was widely reported that another chapter in Shell’s dirty and disastrous eighty-seven-year operations in the Niger Delta was coming to an end, with the company selling its onshore business.

A Go Fund Me page has been created to help the widows of four Ogoni whose husbands were murdered by the Nigerian military back in 1995, along with the writer Ken Saro-Wiwa. The widows finally gave up their decades-long legal struggle against Shell last year and are in desperate financial straits. Please help them.

On Monday, British Cycling, the UK’s national body promoting cycling, which has helped the country produce a string of elite Olympian athletes, announced that it had signed a “long-term partnership” with oil giant Shell.

In 2017, Esther Kiobel and three other widows of the Ogoni 9, brought a new legal case against Shell in the Netherlands for complicity in murdering their husbands. And today was judgement day in the Hague. A day for hope. A day of dreams. However, those dreams were to be shattered. But this is not the end of the fight.

Two prominent African environmentalists are pushing back against those advocating for more fossil fuel drilling on the continent. They argue that “far from generating prosperity and stability in sub-Saharan Africa, investments in fossil fuels cause real harm,” noting “Decades of fossil fuel development have failed to deliver energy to much of the continent" and "have deepened inequality, caused environmental damage, stoked corruption, and encouraged political repression.”

There is a great and timely book that has been published entitled Crude Britannia, which looks at how oil has shaped society and the political landscape of the United Kingdom.

The UK Supreme Court has ruled that two Nigerian communities – of more than 50,000 people - can bring their legal claims for clean-up and compensation against Royal Dutch Shell and its Nigerian subsidiary in the English courts.

Last Friday, in an historic judgement, Shell’s day finally came. A Dutch court ordered that Shell’s Nigerian subsidiary pay compensation for oil spills in the Niger Delta that stretch back decades.  Do not underestimate this moment.

To do anything less than stopping all public money to fossil fuels dishonors the memory and sacrifices of Saro-Wiwa, the Ogoni 9, and countless others who have risked and lost their lives to defend their lands and communities.

On November 10, 1995, Ken Saro-Wiwa and eight other Ogoni activists — Saturday Dobee, Nordu Eawo, Daniel Gbooko, Paul Levera, Felix Nuate, Baribor Bera, Barinem Kiobel, and John Kpuine — were hanged by the Nigerian dictatorship in Port Harcourt. Their only crime? Exposing the devastating impact that Shell Petroleum Development Company’s extraction of fossil fuels from the Niger Delta had on the Ogoni land, lives, and livelihoods.