This week, a US court will hear a case that I and nine other plaintiffs filed against Royal Dutch Shell for its part in human rights violations committed against some Ogoni families and individuals in Nigeria in 1995. For some, the case is already being cast as a bookmark in the struggle for corporate accountability, but to me and the other nine plaintiffs it is all that and more.
Fourteen years ago, Ken Saro-Wiwa predicted that Shell would one day have to account for its actions in Nigeria.
“I repeat,” he wrote in what would have been his final statement to the military tribunal that was to order his execution, “that I and my colleagues are not the only ones on trial. Shell is here on trial ... the company has, indeed, ducked this particular trial, but its day will surely come ... there is no doubt in my mind that the ecological war that the company has waged in the delta will be called to question sooner than later and the crimes of that war be duly punished. The crime of the company’s dirty wars against the Ogoni people will also be punished.”
My father was prevented from making his final statement to the court and he and eight of his colleagues were tried and executed for their alleged role in the harrowing murders of four Ogoni chiefs, including his brother-in-law. The murders divided my family and set Ogoni against Ogoni, providing a convenient excuse for the military regime to arrest my father, detain and torture scores of innocent men and send in a military taskforce whose leader publicly vowed to “sanitize” Ogoni so that Shell could drill oil in my community.
Ken Saro-Wiwa’s real “crime” was his audacity to sensitize local and global public opinion to the ecological and human rights abuses perpetrated by Shell and a ruthless military dictatorship against the Ogoni people. The success of his campaign had mobilized our community to say “No to Shell” and to demand compensation for years of oil spills that had polluted our farms, streams and water sources.
My father called the world’s attention to the gas flares that had been pumping toxic fumes into the Earth’s atmosphere for up to 24 hours a day since oil was discovered on our lands in 1958. He accused Shell of double standards, of racism and asked why a company that was rightly proud of its efforts to preserve the environment in the West would deny the Ogoni the same.
In response to his campaign, Shell armed, financed and otherwise colluded with the Nigerian military regime to repress the non-violent movement, leading to the torture and shootings of Ogoni people as well as massive raids and the destruction of Ogoni villages.
In an infamous memo, Colonel Paul Okuntimo, the head of the military taskforce sent to pacify Ogoni, boasted that Shell provided the logistics for his soldiers. In one incident, Shell was building an oil pipeline and requested support from the Nigerian military. The pipeline destroyed Karalolo Kogbara’s farm and, as she was crying over her lost crops, the soldiers shot her. In another incident, Uebari N-nah was shot and killed by soldiers near a Shell flow station; the soldiers were requested by and later compensated by Shell.
A year after the executions, some of the relatives of what has become known as the “Ogoni Nine” filed a federal lawsuit against Shell in District Court in New York. We felt we would not get a fair hearing in a Nigeria groaning under the very same military dictatorship that had colluded with Shell to violate the human rights of our relatives and our community.
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