Giant_and_Dwarf-FIN

Continent of Gigantic Problemsand villages owning the land with pipelines and facilities. Motivation of these groups—themost famous among them being the MEND (Movement for Emancipation of Niger Delta)—is a volatile cocktail of grievances and greed mixed in barely understood ratio.MEND leaders rightly point to the poverty and backwardness of the region, whichproduces almost all Nigeria’s national budget and is paying for oil drilling through terribleenvironmental devastation and by the damage to the health of local people, but it isgetting back very little in return. Local children play and swim in the murky, stinky watercovered by floating oil spills, they drink the polluted water, eat fish caught from the samewater (where there is any surviving fish) and also water their gardens with it. More than50 years of oil production with close to no environmental legislation, moreover in a countrywhere you can get authorization for any type of pollution with a proper bribe has madethe Niger Delta the most polluted river in the world. In August 2011 a long-awaited studyprepared for the UN assessing the degree of contamination of only a small part of theNiger Delta known as Ogoniland became publically available. The report states that thewater used by the local people for drinking has up to excessive concentrations of somecarcinogens by up to 900 times. It also states that putting just this small area to acceptableconditions would require one billion U.S. dollars and take 25 to 30 years—as well asmany other shocking facts... 55This report is significant not only in its content, but also because it gives a certain moralsatisfaction to the Ogoni tribal leaders, who were persecuted, tortured and many executedfor their struggle against the pollution of their territory by Shell. The tragic part of this“David against Goliath” struggle was the Movement for the Survival of Ogoni People. Nineleaders of the Movement were falsely accused by the military junta and after a series offalse statements provided by bribed witnesses were sentenced to death in an orchestratedprocess. They were hanged on the 10 th November 1995. The last one executed witnessedthe death of his eight brave fellows was the well known Nigerian writer Ken Saro-Wiwa,an activist and a great symbol of the fight for the environment and human rights, not onlyin Africa. His resume 56 claims that several false witnesses testifying against him and hiscolleagues were bribed by the oil giant Shell—the same Shell at whose gas stations manyEuropeans fuel their cars. 57Complaints by MEND and other similar groups are certainly not irrelevant. A differentthing, of course, is the method MEND has chosen to remedy the problem. And then there isthe question about the extent to which the eligible motives hide less noble motive of greed.55 Nigeria Ogoniland oil clean up “could take 30 years”, BBC, 2011-08-04, accessed 2012-01-12.http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-africa-1439865956 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ken_Saro-Wiwa57 In June 2009 Shell had to pay a court settlement of U.S. $15.5 million for their participation in abuseof Ogoni human rights in the 80-ies and 90-ies of the 20th century. See “Seeds of NGO activism: Shellsurrenders when Saro-Wiwa” on http://www.globalgovernancewatch.org/ngo_watch/seeds-of-ngoactivism-shell-capitulates-in-sarowiwa-case.71