Thirty years ago, the Ogoni people of the Niger Delta in Nigeria drove the multinational oil company Shell out of their territory. This nonviolent movement, led by the Movement for the Survival of the Ogoni People (MOSOP), was extraordinarily powerful. Yet, as CAL staff members saw on a visit to Ogoni in early March 2023, the struggle is far from over. The harm the oil industry wrought on this community in the 1990s runs the gamut from environmental devastation, to political oppression, to rape and murder. The dilapidated oil infrastructure in Ogoni appears to still be leaking oil into the environment, children and adults still suffer health impacts, and the fish (traditionally a major source of protein for the Ogoni population) remain scarce. But the joy and spirit of resistance is also still alive.
This blog post discusses the history of Shell in the Niger Delta, the Ogoni struggle against the oil company, and the long-term consequences of Shell’s actions in Ogoniland. It ends by focusing on the Ogoni community’s resilience and its ongoing fight for justice.
Shell v. MOSOP: The Early 1990s and the Fight for Ogoniland
The discovery of oil in 1958 in Ogoniland marked the beginning of Shell’s exploitation of the oil-rich region. Shell, through its subsidiary, Shell Petroleum Development Company of Nigeria (SPDC), devastated the surrounding land through oil drilling – with over 2 million barrels of oil spilled in 2,976 separate spills from 1976 to 1991 – as well as gas flaring, which caused acid rain. In the early 1990s, the Movement for the Survival of the Ogoni People (MOSOP) stated that Shell’s drilling and gas flaring had “led to the complete degradation of the Ogoni environment, turning [their] homeland into an ecological disaster.” Today, thirty years after oil drilling stopped, dead mangroves still line oil-drenched shores of polluted lakes.
A polluted lake near Bodo and K-Dere in Ogoni
In 1990, in response to this environmental devastation, the Ogoni environmental advocate, Ken Saro-Wiwa, established MOSOP, a non-violent movement to protest Shell’s exploitation and devastation of the Ogoni homeland. In November 1990, MOSOP publicized the “Ogoni Bill of Rights,” which asserted the ethnic minority’s right to a clean environment, self-determination, and control over resources on their land. MOSOP quickly gained followers, a result of its democratic organization. A powerful force, on January 3, 1993 MOSOP mobilized 300,000 people to march against Shell – at a time when the total population of Ogoni was estimated to be around 500,000.
The Ken Saro-Wiwa Memorial Park in Bane, Ogoni
By mid-1993, the Ogoni had pushed Shell out of Ogoni. Yet just a year later, Ken Saro-Wiwa and eight other MOSOP leaders were arrested and tried by what international observers at the time labeled a “kangaroo court.” In one of his last letters while imprisoned, Ken wrote:
Today, the Ogoni people are involved in two grim wars. The first is the 35-year-old ecological war waged by the multinational oil companies, Shell and Chevron. In this sophisticated and unconventional war the men, women and children die; flora, fauna and fish perish, the air and water are poisoned, and finally, the land dies. The second war is a political war of tyranny, oppression, and greed designed to dispossess the Ogoni people of their rights and their wealth and subject them to abject poverty, slavery, dehumanisation and extinction.
On November 10, 1995, the Nigerian government secretly hanged the Ogoni Nine: Ken Saro-Wiwa, Baribor Bera, Barinem Kiobel, Daniel Gbooko, Felix Nuate, John Kpuine, Nordu Eawo, Paul Levera, Saturday Dobee.
Ogoni Cases
In the wake of the murder of the Ogoni Nine, the community did not go quietly. In 1996, the Center for Constitutional Rights filed Kiobel v. Royal Dutch Petroleum on behalf of twelve Nigerian activists from Ogoni, including Dr. Barinem Kiobel. While a companion case, Wiwa et al. v. Royal Dutch Petroleum et al., settled for $15.5 million in 2009, Shell and its Nigerian subsidiary appealed Kiobel all the way to the Supreme Court.
In April 2013, the Supreme Court issued a devastating ruling, holding that the Alien Tort Statute, the law under which the case had been brought, was not applicable because the case did not “touch and concern” the United States with “sufficient force.” As a result of this decision, the case was thrown out. Since then, the Supreme Court has continued to decimate the ATS in subsequent cases.
Despite these setbacks, the Ogoni community has not stopped telling its story and bringing cases in other jurisdictions. The Ogoni have traveled the world in pursuit of reparation from Shell. They have engaged in legal processes in the United Kingdom, Nigeria, and the Netherlands, and before the African Commission and the OECD.
Ogoniland in 2023
For thirty years there has been no drilling in Ogoni, although oil pipelines still flow under the region and bring oil from other parts of the oil-rich Niger Delta to the port for export. These underground pipelines can still wreak havoc, as happened in 2008 when two oil spills from pipelines operated by Shell spilled over 560,000 barrels of oil, causing large-scale damage to the Bodo community. Three years after the spill, when Shell had still not cleaned up the area, the community sued Shell, settling for 55 million pounds in 2014.
A flow station near K-Dere, Ogoni
Across Ogoni, signs of the old oil spills are still visible. While the gas flaring and acid rain have stopped, dead mangroves still line the shores, thick with oil spills from decades ago. Across Ogoni, massive flow stations are visible, rusting away and yet guarded day and night by hired guards. While land can once more be farmed, many rivers and lakes remain polluted, with Shell making little to no effort to clean them up.
The end of a MOSOP meeting in Biara, Ogoni
The Ogoni community has been pushing for real remedy from Shell and its Nigerian subsidiary for years. It is past time that Shell and its Nigerian subsidiary apologize for and remediate the array of harms they have caused over the past few decades – from the destruction of the environment, including the devastation of the land and lakes; to the hanging of the Ogoni Nine in 1995; to the rape, murder, and burnings of villages in the 1990s. Shell and its Nigerian subsidiary must implement comprehensive cleanup, based on the 2011 report by the United Nations Environment Program. They, along with the Nigerian government, must improve access to medical services for the communities. And it is imperative that Shell and SPDC issue public apologies to the Ogoni communities – as well as to other communities they have harmed in the Niger Delta – and pay adequate monetary compensation for the wide range of harms they have caused over the years.
Despite these hurdles, the spirit of the Ogoni is still strong, as they continue to fight for their rights and their land. Over decades, the Ogoni have demonstrated how powerful an organized community can be, forcing Shell to stop drilling on their land; filing legal cases in the United States, the United Kingdom, and the Netherlands; and continuing to tell their story throughout the world.
Many thanks to the village of Bane, the Movement for the Survival of the Ogoni People (MOSOP), and our many Ogoni friends in Nigeria and in the United States that made this trip possible.
Allie Brudney is a Staff Attorney at Corporate Accountability Lab. Charity Ryerson is Founder and Executive Director of Corporate Accountability Lab.
