In 1991, Ken Saro-Wiwa called attention to the subjugation of Nigeria’s Ogoniland arising out of the activities of Shell. In 1989, AJ Klinghoffer published Oiling the Wheels of Apartheid — Exposing South Africa’s Secret Oil Trade. The book by Klinghoffer laid bare the illegality facilitated by Shell and other oil companies to lubricate the operations of the architects of apartheid.

Saro-Wiwa and Klinghoffer may or may not have been aware that, as they were berating Shell, the African National Congress (ANC) was busy moving its furniture into Shell House on Plein Street in Johannesburg. Once Shell saw the writing on the wall, it swiftly became the landlord-benefactor of the would-be ruling party of South Africa.

Shell came to Nigeria with colonialism and dug its drilling fangs into the heart of Ogoniland from 1958. By 1990, the company had criminally acquired about 96 oil wells connected to five flow stations and seven oil fields in Ogoniland alone. Shell choked the fertile earth of Ogoniland to belch out 900 million barrels of crude oil worth an estimated $100-billion over a period of 30 years. Shell took advantage of all the ethnocentric trappings that flourish in Nigeria’s quasi federation, and the license which draconian military regimes provide, to annex Ogoniland. The Ogoni people wrote in their Bill of Rights how Shell’s desire for crude oil was promoted to the detriment of their burgeoning agrarian economy:

“That the search for oil has caused severe land and food shortages in Ogoni, one of the most densely populated areas of Africa (average: 1,500 per square mile; national average: 300 per square mile). That neglectful environmental pollution laws and substandard inspection techniques of the Federal authorities have led to the complete degradation of the Ogoni environment, turning our homeland into an ecological disaster.”

The mind of every Ogoni person is imprinted with what Shell has done to our land.

I was born in Bane, a coastal village of the Ogoni people. My family bears testimony to what Shell does to the environment. I saw my grand-uncle’s fishing business come to an abrupt stop and my father relocate to the periphery of the city where he spent the rest of his life as a fisher around the city. If my family’s testimony is not enough, read this collective account of the Ogoni people:

“Ogoni has suffered and continues to suffer the degrading effects of oil exploration and exploitation: lands, streams and creeks are totally and continually polluted; the atmosphere is forever charged with hydrocarbons, carbon monoxide and carbon dioxide; many villages experience the infernal quaking of the wrath of gas flares which have been burning 24 hours a day for 33 years; acid rain, oil spillages and blowouts are common.

“The result of such unchecked environmental pollution and degradation are that: The Ogoni can no longer farm successfully. Once the food basket of the eastern Niger Delta, the Ogoni now buy food (when they can afford it); fish, once a common source of protein, is now rare. Owing to the constant and continual pollution of our streams and creeks, fish can only be caught in deeper and offshore waters for which the Ogoni are not equipped.

“All wildlife is dead. The ecology is changing fast. The mangrove tree, the aerial roots of which normally provide a natural and welcome habitat for many a seafood — crabs, periwinkles, mudskippers, cockles, mussels, shrimps and all — is now being gradually replaced by unknown and otherwise useless plants. The health hazards generated by an atmosphere charged with hydrocarbon vapour, carbon monoxide and carbon dioxide are innumerable.”

The Ogoni people did not need science to notice the drastic changes that occurred in their agriculture and marine life. My grand-uncles saw fish species diminish in number, they witnessed declined fecundity of fauna. Our mothers testified to the paucity of their crops. They checked their conscience and knew that they had not offended the gods. They checked their indigenous skills and confirmed that they have not derailed nature in any way. They looked around and realised that the cause of the plagues imposed upon them was Shell.

The women concluded that the appearance of invasive plants was the outcome of aggressive interference with the environment and called the invasive plants “Shell grasses”. Only now is science backing them up.

After years of denial by Shell and Nigerian administrations, the United Nations Environment Programme’s (Unep) environmental evaluation in Ogoniland in 2011 concluded that it would take 25 to 30 years for the environment to be remediated. It was even discovered that the water in Ogoni land was poisoned with benzene 900 times over the safe level. The Unep evaluation of the pollution of Ogoniland examined the medical records of 5,000 Ogonis, which showed that the people in the area are exposed to carcinogenic substances.

If South Africans understood the suffering of the Ogoni people, and if South Africans understood how Shell supports the elites who benefit from oil exploration and treat harshly those who oppose them, they would not sacrifice their unique and beautiful Wild Coast to Shell. DM

Barry Wugale is an Ogoni activist and author of Africa in Captivity: It’s time for the Churchs to stand up.