Decades of neglect, years of waiting: it’s time to clean up Ogoniland’s oil pollution
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Jun 4, 2018
Two years ago, the Nigerian Government officially launched a clean-up programme of Shell’s oil pollution in Ogoniland. But today communities are still waiting for emergency measures on drinking water and health protection and the clean-up to begin. Here’s what Godwin Uyi Ojo, Executive Director, Environmental Rights Action/Friends of the Earth Nigeria had to say about it:...
Communal Memory – the power of community to resist Shell in Nigeria
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Feb 22, 2018
I’m holding in my hands a report published by Amnesty International in November last year – ‘A Criminal Enterprise? Shell’s involvement in human rights violations in Nigeria in the 1990s’. It analyses in forensic detail exactly how much Shell staff knew about, and were involved in supporting, the actions by the Nigerian military taken against...
Today, remembering the Ogoni Bill of Rights
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Nov 10, 2017
10th November 2017 marks the 22nd anniversary since the executions of nine Ogoni men from the Niger Delta who had been protesting against the exploitation of oil in their homelands. These Nigerian activists – outspoken author and playwright Ken Saro-Wiwa, Saturday Dobee, Nordu Eawo, Daniel Gbooko, Paul Levera, Felix Nuate, Baribor Bera, Barinem Kiobel, and John...
Breaking: The Struggle to Free the Bus: The Twists, the Turns and the Conspiracies
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Feb 24, 2016
BREAKING Guest Blog by Ken Henshaw, Social Action, Nigeria The extraordinary behind-the-scenes story of the Bus memorial seizure and the struggle to release it, on the day of the 3rd Hearing to release the memorial to Ken Saro-Wiwa and the Ogoni 8. Show your support – follow and tweet @GreatOgoni, @Kenn_Henshaw, @S_DouglasCamp. Support the Movement...
Oil Be Back: could drilling begin again in Ogoniland 22 years after the people kicked Shell out?
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Feb 26, 2015
Recently there has been a flurry of Nigerian media headlines stating that oil drilling in Ogoniland could soon re-start. I have tried to dig deeper to assess what is currently known and what questions remain. Has Shell sold assets in Ogoniland? So far, there have been no news stories outside of Nigeria about Shell’s plans...
We forced Shell to commit to cleaning up the Niger Delta. Now let’s make it a reality.
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Nov 28, 2014
When we launched our Action Saro-Wiwa campaign back in May we had no idea how many of you would get involved and we could never have imagined that a breakthrough could happen so soon. After all, communities have suffered the deadly effects of widespread pollution in the Niger Delta for over 50 years. But your...
Communities in the Niger Delta demand justice
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Aug 5, 2014
Blog by Sarah Shoraka from Platform and Patrick Kane from War on Want. Yesterday, communities took to the streets to protest in the Niger Delta. They were protesting three years of inaction by Shell in response to UN study which found that the company had failed to clean up decades of oil pollution in Ogoniland...
Shell in the High Court today
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Jun 20, 2014
Lazarus Tamana Coordinator of MOSOP Europe writes from court today. Today is the preliminary judgement in the case brought by the people of Bodo in Ogoni by legal firm Leigh Day & Co against Shell. The judgement will form the legal issues that will be part of the trial expected to take place at the High Court in London in...
‘The Bus’ memorial for Ken Saro-Wiwa is on the move…
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Mar 6, 2014
Today, the Bus moved from Bernie Grant Arts Centre in Tottenham where it has been for three years, round the corner to Hale Village where it will be throughout 2014. The Living Memorial to Ken Saro-Wiwa, aka The Bus, is a spectacular steel sculpture by artist Sokari Douglas Camp. Platform commissioned it in 2005, the...
Rewriting the future: Achebe, literature, and activism
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Mar 25, 2013
Nigerian write Chinua Achebe died last Thursday at the age of 83. He is a key figure in world literature and a writer who along with others utterly changed the way cultures pre- and post-imperialism – and pre-missionary – imagined representing themselves. In so doing, he bolstered the challenge to western and white supremacist...
Shell on trial – landmark ruling on oil spills due this Wednesday
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Jan 28, 2013
This Wednesday a Dutch court will rule on whether Shell should clean up oil damage that destroyed a group of Nigerian farmers’ land in a landmark case that could lead the way for a spate of similar actions in the future. The farmers, whose land has been destroyed by oil from Shell pipelines, have travelled...
Oil companies gave cash and contracts to militants and warlords in Nigeria
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Aug 26, 2012
Shell and Chevron have funded armed militant groups in the volatile Niger Delta region of Nigeria since at least 2003, according to oil-industry sources and US embassy cables. Both oil companies have also paid ‘protection’ money to other hostile groups for decades. Platform’s new briefing, as reported in the Daily Mail, is called Fuelling the Violence: Oil...
