LBmuskoka
Death of a Village
Posted on: 08/06/2011 09:09
Niger Delta villagers go to the Hague to fight against oil giant Shell
This once self-sufficient community suffered from the excesses of oil firms and corrupt officials. Now, the villagers are blamed for everything and the arms dealers are having a field day
Goi is now a dead village. The two fish ponds, bakery and chicken farm that used to be the pride and joy of its chief deacon, Barrisa Tete Dooh, lie abandoned, covered in a thick black layer. The village's fishing creek is contaminated; the school has been looted; the mangrove forests are coated in bitumen and everyone has left, refugees from a place blighted by the exploitation of the region's most valuable asset: crude oil.
Last Thursday, a long-awaited and comprehensive UN study exposed the full horror of the pollution that the production of oil has brought to Ogoniland over the last 50 years.
The UN report showed that oil companies and the Nigerian government had not just failed to meet their own standards, but that the process of investigation, reporting and clean-up was deeply flawed in favour of the firms and against the victims. Spills in the US are responded to in minutes; in the Niger delta, which suffers more pollution each year than the Gulf of Mexico, it can take companies weeks or more.
"Oil companies have been exploiting Nigeria's weak regulatory system for too long," said Audrey Gaughran of Amnesty International. "They do not adequately prevent environmental damage and they frequently fail to properly address the devastating impact that their bad practice has on people's lives."
Goi, 40 miles (70km) from Port Harcourt, is a typical case. Just a few miles from where Shell first found oil in Ogoniland in 1958, it is only 20 miles from Bane, the ancestral home of Ogoni writer and leader Ken Saro-Wiwa. People from Goi joined the great Ogoni protest march of 1994, when one in three people from the small kingdom of 900,000 rose peacefully against the company, preventing it from working any of its 30 wells in the area. Two years later, Saro-Wiwa and eight Ogoni leaders were tried on a fabricated murder charge and executed.
A quiet fishing community of fewer than 100 people, Goi was steadily weakened and then broken by a series of oil spills that, over 20 years, made the network of swamps, lagoons, rivers and creeks around it unusable. "People used to drink the water in the creek, fish, cook and swim in it. It was a perfect place," says Dooh. "We wanted for nothing, but the spills came, the tide washed in pollution from elsewhere and in 1987 a massive oil fire burned uncontrolled for weeks. By 2008, most people had left."
Dooh and the last people of Goi then finally gave up. "We kept being polluted. We could not stay any longer," says his eldest son, Eric. "Shell said they would fix things, but a contractor came and scooped some of the oil up and that was it. The spills just got bigger and bigger." In 2009, a third large spill made the last house uninhabitable.
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Comments
waterfall
Posted on: 08/06/2011 10:31
We don't have to go too far from home to see this sort of thing do we? It's terrible how we bastardize and disrepect our natural resources. The other day someone mentioned how clean Lake Huron was compared to Lake Erie. I mentioned that Lake Erie is the most shallow lake of the Great Lakes. We're going to see the "symptoms" of pollution faster, but Lake Huron, although it appears clear and beautiful, is still a cauldron of toxic waste. I think we have collectively developed the ability to tune out the consequences of our continuous abuse on the earth. If we can't see it, then it isn't there. Much the same as a self sufficient rural community in Africa that has been destroyed, is so far away, we can't see it, therefore we do not have to deal with the reality of it's existence. But there will be consequences. The ripple effect will happen and unfortunately it won't be until it hits us all squarely in the eye that we will react.
If we put oil in our cars.... we are responsible
If we buy anything made of plastic.... we are responsible
I wonder what our homes and lifestyle would look like if we removed even half of everything that was made from oil?
The_Omnissiah
Posted on: 08/06/2011 17:14
How did you hear of this? The world shouldn't see this! People might start using their heads and demanding change! Aaaaaaaaahaahhhhhhhhh!!!!
-head explode-
/sarcasm
Man, the nerve of some people who advocate on the behalf of big oil... I don't know how they can sleep at night.
As-salaamu alaikum
-Omni
LBmuskoka
Posted on: 08/07/2011 09:02
What is truly appalling about this story is that the devastation is completely man made.
This was a sustainable community and it was destroyed by neglect. If this has had occurred anywhere else but a developing nation Shell Oil would have been held accountable immediately and forced to act responsibly. But it was Africa so the land and the people are disposable.
LB
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Only when the last tree has been cut down,
Only when the last river has been poisoned,
Only when the last fish has been caught,
Only then will you find that money cannot be eaten.
Cree Indian Prophecy
The_Omnissiah
Posted on: 08/07/2011 18:38
This, my friends, it the price of Imperialism. Thinking that "as long as it doesn't happen here, it's ok".
As-salaamu alaikum
-Omni
somegalfromcan
Posted on: 08/07/2011 18:48
Things like this have happened in Asia to - mining procedures in the Philippines, for example.
Sickening.
LBmuskoka
Posted on: 08/07/2011 20:28
Update....
On Wednesday, August 3, the British-Dutch oil giant Shell accepted responsibility for two massive oil spills in Nigeria's Niger River Delta. The spills released an amount of oil equal to 20 percent of what leaked into the Gulf of Mexico after the Deepwater Horizon/BP disaster last year, and many of the area's fishermen lost their livelihoods. Shell will pay compensation totaling at least £250 million ($410.5 million) to around 69,000 Nigerians—mostly members of the Bodo community—who were affected by the spills. The news of the payout sent Shell's stock price tumbling, but it should also serve to draw attention to the "scramble for African oil"—a gold rush Ed Kashi and Michael Watts documented in their recent book, Curse of the Black Gold.
Mother Jones - .Curse of the Black Gold
That works out to $5,949.27 (US) per Nigerian. Somehow it doesn't seem enough for the loss of one's future; particularly when Shell reported a 5 billion (pounds btw) quarterly profit on July 29 2011.
Although it does beat £3,500 together with 50 bags of rice, 50 bags of beans and a few cartons of sugar, tomatoes and groundnut oil that was originally offered to the entire community by Shell Oil.
LB
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