Daily Independent (Lagos)
29 June 2009
editorial
A palpable wind of restitution recently blew towards Ogoniland with the decision by the Anglo-Dutch oil giant, Shell, to offer to pay $15.5million to the Ogoni people of Rivers State in an out-of-court settlement. In a suit filed by the Centre for Constitutional Rights in New York, USA, on behalf of the family of the slain writer and environmentalist, Ken Saro-Wiwa, and eight others in 1996, the Nigerian subsidiary of Shell was accused of complicity in the hanging of the 'Ogoni nine' and the persecution of other environmental activists in the Niger Delta by the regime of the late General Sani Abacha. While the family of the late Saro-Wiwa and those of the other 'Ogoni eight' have accepted Shell's gesture as a fresh opportunity to move the Ogoni peace process forward, the families of the four prominent Ogoni leaders who were murdered allegedly by some Ogoni youths in 1994, the ripple effects of which led ultimately to the 1996 hangings, have expressed disappointment with the terms of the settlement.
Coming more than 13 years after the suit was filed in the USA, Shell's recent reconciliatory gesture, though certainly welcome, could well be said to be an after-thought. But we urge the Ogoni to accept it in good faith as a major milestone in the process of bringing about the much needed reconciliation and lasting peace in Ogoniland. It may be recalled that the Ogoni crisis escalated following the May 24, 1994 mayhem that claimed many lives including those of four highly respected men in the oil-rich community, during a rally. The much criticised trial and subsequent hanging of nine members of a faction of the Movement for the Survival of the Ogoni People (MOSOP) including Saro-Wiwa on November 10, 1995, sparked off local and international condemnation of the Abacha military junta. This culminated in stringent diplomatic sanctions against Nigeria by the world community. The Abacha regime's anti-democratic policies and deplorable human rights record worsened the sanctions.
Isolated as a result, Nigeria became a pariah in the political calculus of most international bodies including, indeed, the British Commonwealth of Nations which had her son, Chief Emeka Anyaoku, as the then Secretary General. It is also a tribute to the magnanimity of spirit and political will of the General Abdulsalami Abubakar administration, that, on succeeding the Abacha junta in 1998, it ordered the release of the 20 Ogoni youths who had been incarcerated without trial for more than four years at the Federal Prisons, Port Harcourt. This was when the reconciliation ought to have begun. But Shell maintained a hardline stance.
The Ogoni community, like other oil-rich areas of the Niger Delta region, carries the tragic scars of callous environmental degradation and the ruination of a once fertile land, caused by reckless oil exploitation principally by Shell. In Ogoniland, poverty and misery walk on all fours; but just beneath this crushing poverty is the black gold appropriated by the conscienceless Nigerian state and its greedy political elite. Thus, in the midst of wealth, Ogoni has always managed to remain a wasteland. In fact, the Abacha dictatorship, in its oppressive fury, set up a Gestapo-like force, the Rivers State Internal Security Task Force (RSISTF), to terrorise the defenceless Ogoni natives who were determined to peacefully claim their fundamental rights as articulated in the Ogoni Bill of Rights.
Without doubt, the current rapprochement of Shell with the Ogoni offers an opportunity for the troubled community to bury the hatchet and begin the work of healing old wounds. The Federal Government, for its part, should initiate immediate measures to demilitarize Ogoniland and other parts of the Niger Delta for peace to reign. The government must put an end to the re-enactment of the reign of fear and brutality over this devastated community. Also, other multinational oil companies must be involved in the general peace process and in the reconstruction of all polluted oil communities in the Niger Delta. Even if Shell's current move is motivated by necessity, the process of reconciliation should not be made to look like a back-door truce. The views of the Ogoni at the Justice Chukwudifu Oputa Panel constituted by the last Obasanjo government should be revisited and addressed.
It is our belief that those who still do not see any need for engaging in reconciliation in Nigeria will awaken to the sober realization that it is the only viable and sustainable way to go. For now, all social and political indications confirm that there is seething tension in Nigeria. Our position is that the time to commence a national healing process is now. The Ogoni, who have restated their faith in the non-violent pursuit of their rights, should take another look at their Bill of Rights and adapt it as necessary to the current realities.
We note, finally, that the Ogoni had to seek justice against Shell in a distant country, whose liberal laws could hold the oil giant to account: an unflattering commentary on the present state of Nigeria's constitutional framework and judicature.
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You know, I have been hesitating to comment on this so-called settlement out of sheer respect and in the interest of peace in the region. But the more I see this travesty play itself out, the more I realize that even Ken whom I personally knew well, along with Mr. Badey, Solicitor Nwifa, Chief Sunny Nwido and many others who faught long and hard to restore integrity and respect for Ogoni peoples, I do see that perhaps, the mere idea of a payment for the aggrieved should equal the lives lost. This payment does not only constitute an insult to the entire Ogoni Community in the Rivers State, it also demonstrates the lack of value placed on the entire Rivers State and their properties.
Had these blatant abuses of the environment been in an European or American setting, the dollar value of such abuses would've run in the billions, especially if the perpetrators can cart away quarterly profits of $14-Billion US Dollars, as is often reported in their Profit & Loss Statements. Frankly, I do not know why the aggrieved settled so easily. Perhaps, they weren't sure if the American Judiciary would favour them. They should've done some research on the psyche of the American public and to understand that in this country, the under-dog is always favoured, especially if the well documented environmental degredations were allowed to come into play. The American public is a very sympathetic one. And, just like the SS Valdez incident in Alaska, the Oil Company was found culpable for the criminal acts of its employee. Therefore, whether its employee was found drunk as he did, or if he put the vessel on cruise control while he made out with a nefarious character, the responsibility for any damages caused to the environment while the vessel sailed the Alaskan waters rested squarely on his employer.
What prompted me to write this commentary is the over-use or excessive referencing of the amount awarded the aggrieved. Now suppose let's say, for instance; that from the entire Ogoni land, Shell extracted daily, say 300,000 barrels of crude per day. And, let us further suppose that say, Shell began to extract raw crudes from Ogoniland since say, 1961. And let us further suppose that there are 365 days in a year. If you were to subtract 1961 from 2009, you will have a total of 48-years. If you were to multiply 48 by 365 days, you will come up with approximately 17,520 days.This will give you an approximate quantity of crude extraction of Five Billion, Two Hundred and Fifty-Six Million barrels in 48-years.
Now, let us further suppose that the price of crude oil, taken at an average of $35.00 USD per barrel. Boy, I can't even begin to count how much in dollar terms this figure would be. So, let us further assume just for the sake of assumption that a 2-day extraction, at the going daily quantity of 300,000 barrels per day would yield approximately $21-Million dollars. The amount of settlement was $15.5 Million dollars, and the Ogoni people are happy? Already, legal costs to this litigation comes to about $8.7-Million Dollars. The so-called balance are to be distributed by the grieving family of Nine who were hung. Now, I am not trying to downgrade anyone. But to me, KB was worth more than these measely estimates of what people are clamouring about. The question is: What price Freedom? As you may notice, I did not take into consideration the amount of Gas Condensate. This was not figured in the above equation.
While the award may spell moral victory for the Oil Producing Communities, we need to be somewhat realistic about the quality of restoration efforts these companies may be wanting to engage in in the communities which they operate. I am not blaming Shell because if you look at the distribution of shares when the company was incorporated in Nigeria, I do believe that the Federal Government (NNPC) has a lion's share of the Common Stock of the Corporation, I believe to the tune of 49% (percent). Our government is equally to blame for the utter neglect and abuse of the environment. I would personally hold all the stakeholders responsible for much of the abuse and neglect the entire region have suffered all these years. If a father does not nourish his children and direct them properly, the children would grow up to be hoodlums.
To make matters worse, the Nigerian Government, after successfully prosecuting a war against its citizens under the banner of the Nigeria/Biafran conflict, members of the 3rd Marine Commando stationed in the Rivers State helped to birth so-many children without fathers. Many moved on to the various war fronts, and abandoned these women, and continued their exploratory adventures of Rivers women. The result was that these victims of war, in what some of the military generals called spoils of war, are today criminals who have taken on weapons to fight for their survival. Worst still, the Nigerian Government did not see it fit to ask the vanquished biafran soldiers to surrender their weapons when the war ended. In my up-coming book, I shall chronicle the attrocious history and a calculated government's neglect or derecliction of its responsibilities to its citizens. Had the government taken strides to correct these shortsighted mistakes, the problems we have today in the Niger Delta could have been avoided. The point was, the marouding Nigerian soldiers saw the Niger Deltans as different people. They spoke none of the dominant languages of the North and the West, and had different customary practices, and were ardent ppeace lovers. They would give you the shirt off their back so that the visitor would feel welcome. This was a basic weakness which the visitors saw and capitalized on. With the brandishing of weapons to a peace loving people, unnatural fears were rife among the rank and file of the besieged populace. People who knew no violence now began to learn how to protect and defend themselves against a heartless group of people. This was the genesis of the current problems in the Niger Delta, and it appears the Nigerian Government has yet to understand the reasons for the resistance to adapt to hollow calls of friendship.
If you were to look at the above formula postulated above, it may be easy to understand why suspicions abound even at the olive branch the president has extended. There is a disproportionate amount of dollars generated from oil and oil by-products which has never trickled down to the ordinary man or woman in these aggrieved areas. If you were to take a census of the contractors who ply to and from the refineries in these regions, you will seldom find a Niger Delta indigene who possesses a single license to haul oil by-products from these refineries. What one wants to know is: How did these people obtain these licences whilst the local residents living in the general areas are neglected? Where did the Dantatas and the other oil moguls and bank owners obtain their capital? The Nigerian Government must not, in their attempts to solve these problems treat these aggrieved people with sugar-coated solutions. We know how to calculate or tabulate what we have lost all these years. Therefore, there must be a genuine effort by the government to redress the concerns of these citizens from whose backyards the survival of the nation depends.