Environmental Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
hundreds with perhaps 700,000 barrels escaping each year (Nwilo and
Badejo 2006). Not all discharges are reported, and Shell, long one of the
largest corporate actors in the region, has argued that as much as 70
percent of leaks and spillage have occurred through sabotage and theft,
not mismanagement (Shell Oil, n.d.).
Whether the product of mismanagement or misguided ire, after two
decades of increasingly serious oil spills, opposition to oil production in
the Niger Delta coalesced in 1990 when tribal chiefs gathered to consider
ways to demand change in living conditions in the Delta. One result of
that meeting was the Ogoni Bill of Rights signed by leaders from the
Ken-Khana, Nyo-Khana, Tai, Gokana, and Babbe communities. That Bill
of Rights, presented to the Nigerian government, emphasized the Ogoni
were a distinct people within the Delta who had not benefi ted from oil
production in their traditional territories (The Ogoni People 1990).
Several developments in the justice movement in the Delta since 1990
bear directly on our discussion about the role of nation-state and sub-
sidiary structures within the global-local confl ict in the Delta. These
include the coalescence of support for a change in political representation
of area residents, a decision by the national government to suppress such
dissent, and the unexpected salience of the controversy in the interna-
tional media. The Movement for the Survival of the Ogoni People formed
in 1992 following development of the Ogoni Bill of Rights. Movement
leaders, especially including writer Ken Saro-Wiwa, were able to capture
the attention of extraterritorial media outlets and nongovernmental
organizations regarding the region's concerns about ongoing environ-
mental degradation amid continuing penury (Bob 2005). General Sani
Abacha sought to suppress such Delta protests after assuming control of
the federal government in a coup in 1993. By 1994 regional activists
were subject to increased levels of scrutiny and violence until fi nally
a group of prominent opposition leaders were arrested, including
Ken Saro-Wiwa, Baribor Bera, Saturday Dobee, Nordu Eawo, Daniel
Gbooko, Barinem Kiobel, John Kpuine, Paul Levera, and Felix Nuate
(Addo 1999). These men, subsequently called “the Ogoni Nine,” were
publically executed in November 1995. Thereafter, the Nigerian military
further increased its presence in the Delta, and systematically sought to
suppress Ogoni protest and dissent.
Far from stanching that protest, however, the violence directed at
leaders and villages encouraged the groups that formed in the Delta to
issue more strident ethnic sovereignty claims and undertake more viru-
lent forms of opposition. The Movement for the Emancipation of the
