Movement for the Survival of the Ogoni People

The Movement for the Survival of the Ogoni People (MOSOP), is a social movement organization representing the indigenous Ogoni people of Rivers State, Nigeria. The Ogoni contend that Shell Petroleum Development Company (SPDC), along with other petroleum multinationals and the Nigerian government, have destroyed their environment, polluted their rivers, and provided no benefits in return for enormous oil revenues extracted from their lands.

MOSOP is an umbrella organization representing about 700,000 Ogoni in a non-violent campaign for environmental justice in the Niger Delta. Peaceful demonstrations led by MOSOP and other indigenous groups in the region have been brutally suppressed by the Nigerian Mobile Police. The Ogoni's challenge to state power was finally put down through the judicial murder of Ogoni leaders, including spokesman and founder Ken Saro-Wiwa, in November 1995.

The Ogoni protests under the leadership of MOSOP was an early and non-violent phase of the conflict in the Niger Delta.

In 1994, MOSOP, along with founder Ken Saro-Wiwa, received the Right Livelihood Award for their exemplary courage in striving non-violently for the civil, economic and environmental rights of their people.

Background

The problems facing the Ogoni people have their origins in the British colonial era: Shell is the largest stakeholder, owning 47% of the national industry. A 1995 Human Rights Watch interview with attorney Uche Onyeagocha documented that minority groups whose land is the source of over 90% of Nigeria's oil opposed the prevailing formula for allocating oil revenues, under which the federal, state, and local governments had almost complete discretion over the distribution of oil proceeds. A Nigerian anti-corruption agency estimated that around 70% of oil revenues were wasted or lost to corruption. Nuhu Ribadu's Task Force on Oil Revenue found that approximately $29 billion in oil and gas revenues were lost over a period of ten years from cut price deals struck between multinational oil companies and government officials. The report alleges international oil traders sometimes buy crude without any formal contracts, and the state oil firm had short-changed the Nigerian treasury by selling crude oil and gas to itself below market rates.

Environmental issues in the Niger Delta

Beginning in the late 1950s, multinational oil companies began taking over land belonging to Indigenous farming and fishing communities in the Niger Delta, resulting in environmental devastation. MOSOP spokesman Ken Saro-Wiwa called it an 'ecological war':

The Ogoni country has been completely destroyed.... Oil blowouts, spillages, oil slicks, and general pollution accompany the search for oil.... Oil companies have flared gas in Nigeria for the past thirty three years causing acid rain.... What used to be the bread basket of the delta has now become totally infertile. All one sees and feels around is death. Environmental degradation has been a lethal weapon in the war against the indigenous Ogoni people.</blockquote>

Both Shell and Chevron have operated oil wells in Ogoniland. Water contamination of local water supply resulted in fish kills and ruinous effects on farmland.

Gas flaring

Nigeria flares more natural gas associated with oil extraction than any other country, with estimates about 70% is wasted by flaring. This is the equivalent to 40% of Africa's gas consumption in 2001. Statistical data associated with gas flaring are notoriously unreliable, but Nigeria may waste US$2 billion per year by flaring associated gas. Flaring is done, because it is costly to separate commercially viable associated gas from the oil. Companies operating in Nigeria also harvest natural gas for commercial purposes but prefer to extract it from deposits where it is found in isolation as non-associated gas. Thus associated gas is burned off to decrease costs.

Gas flares are potentially harmful to nearby communities, as they release poisonous chemicals including nitrogen dioxides, sulphur dioxide, volatile organic compounds, as well as carcinogens. These chemicals can aggravate asthma, cause breathing difficulties and pain, as well as chronic bronchitis.

Gas flares are often close to communities and regularly lack fencing or protection for villagers who risk working near their heat. Many communities claim that nearby flares cause acid rain which corrodes their homes and other structures, many of which have zinc-based roofing. Some people resort to using asbestos-based material, which is stronger in repelling acid rain deterioration. Unfortunately, asbestos exposure increases the risk of forming lung cancer, pleural and peritoneal mesothelioma, and asbestosis.

Effects on Ogoni people

In describing the effects of these environmental damages upon his people, the President of MOSOP, Dr. Garrick Barile Leton stated in 1991 that,<blockquote>

Lands, streams and creeks are totally and continually polluted; the atmosphere is for ever charged with hydrocarbons, carbon monoxide and carbon dioxide; many villages experience the infernal quaking of the wrath of gas flares which have been burning 24 hours a day for 33 years; acid rain, oil spillages and blowouts are common. The result of such unchecked environmental pollution and degradation are that (i) The Ogoni can no longer farm successfully. Once the food basket of the eastern Niger Delta, the Ogoni now buy food (when they can afford it); (ii) Fish, once a common source of protein, is now rare. Owing to the constant and continual pollution of our streams and creeks, fish can only be caught in deeper and offshore waters for which the Ogoni are not equipped. (iii) All wildlife is dead. (iv) The ecology is changing fast. The mangrove tree, the aerial roots of which normally provide a natural and welcome habitat for many a sea food – crabs, periwinkles, mudskippers, cockles, mussels, shrimps and all – is now being gradually replaced by unknown and otherwise useless plants. (v) The health hazards generated by an atmosphere charged with hydrocarbon vapour, carbon monoxide and carbon dioxide are innumerable. to the local Military Governor as a formal complaint against Shell, then operating a joint venture with BP. It brought notice that the company was "seriously threatening the well-being, and even the very lives" of the Ogoni.

Shell's response was that the petition was an attempt to place development and other responsibilities on the company and that the "contentions ... bear little relation to what is actually taking place".

In 1987, when the Iko once again held a peaceful demonstration against Shell, the Mobile Police Force (MPF) destroyed 40 houses, and 350 people were made homeless. Goodluck Diigbo, President of the National Youth Council of Ogoni People, (NYCOP) established seven of the ten affiliates that made up MOSOP. Chief E. N. Kobani became vice president of MOSOP.

MOSOP's first effort was the 1990 Ogoni Bill of Rights addressed to the federal government, the people of Nigeria, and as an appeal to the international community.

Shell withdrawal

In January 1993, the national government responded by banning public gatherings and declaring that disturbances of oil production were acts of treason. In spite of the ban, MOSOP went ahead with a massive public mobilization on January 4, 1993. The event, called the first Ogoni Day, attracted about 300,000 people in massive festivities. Saro-wiwa and other MOSOP leaders were arrested.

Witnesses said that Rivers State Internal Security engaged in terror operations against the general Ogoni population while claiming to search for people responsible for the killings of the four Ogoni leaders. Amnesty International characterized the policy as deliberate terrorism. By mid-June, 30 villages had been completely destroyed, 600 people had been detained, and at least 40 had been killed. An eventual total of around 100,000 internal refugees and an estimated 2,000 civilian deaths was recorded.

Arrest and summary execution of Ogoni nine

Ken Saro-Wiwa, N. G. Dube, and Kobari Nwilewas were arrested in Port Harcourt on June 21, 1993. The three were charged on 13 July 1993 with six counts relating to unlawful assembly, seditious intention and seditious publication. Bail was not set and all three remanded in custody until September 20.

On November 10, 1995, nine activists from the movement, Barinem Kiobel, John Kpunien, Baribor Bera, Saturday Dobee, Felix Nwate, Nordu Eawo, Paul Levura, and Daniel Gbokoo along Ken Saro-Wiwa, were hanged 10 days after being convicted by the Nigerian government on charges of "incitement to murder" of the four Ogoni leaders. In the final address to the military-appointed tribunal, Saro-Wiwa describes the actions of Shell Corporation as war crimes against the Ogoni People:

I repeat that we all stand before history. I and my colleagues are not the only ones on trial. Shell is here on trial and it is as well that it is represented by counsel said to be holding a watching brief. The Company has, indeed, ducked this particular trial, but its day will surely come and the lessons learnt here may prove useful to it for 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.

Excerpt from:

</blockquote>An anonymous interview revealed a first hand telling of that day and the events that took place;<blockquote>Everywhere was quiet and then on the morning of May 21st ... as we woke up in the morning most of the Ogoni communities were filled with soldiers and mobile policemen armed with sophisticated weapons. We don’t (sic) know why they just came, it was only when four prominent Ogoni sons were killed later in the afternoon of that day that we in Ogoni ever knew that there was a grand design to cause disturbances in Ogoni in order to create an excuse for the government to send in more troops</blockquote>

International response

Saro-Wiwa's death provoked international outrage and the immediate suspension of Nigeria from the Commonwealth of Nations as well as the withdrawal of many foreign diplomats from Nigeria. According to the Nigerian Medical Association's President, these were the fastest executions in the West African nation's history. Nigerian human rights activists and opposition groups had long urged the Commonwealth and the United States to impose economic sanctions on the Nigerian government. This they argued was the opportune time to "turn the screws on" Nigeria's military government by boycotting its oil. The United States, which buys half of Nigeria's oil, declined through a press statement.

1994–present

On January 4, 1994, Ogoni national day, the Rivers State Internal Security Task Force (RVISTF), arrested dozens of activists and raided several villages.

Saro-Wiwa vs. Shell

Demands for Saro-Wiwa's exoneration

On November 10, 2014, MOSOP President Legborsi Saro Pyagbara, at the 19th anniversary commemoration of the "Ogoni Martyrs" held in Port Harcourt, Rivers State, called on the federal government to clear the late activist, Ken Saro-Wiwa, and the other nine Ogoni people executed by General Sani Abacha's government for murder. Pyagbara recalled that the UN, which monitored the trial of Saro-Wiwa and the Ogoni Nine, observed that the returned verdict did not follow any known local or international standard.

Compelling new evidence suggests the Nigerian military killed four Ogoni elders whose murders led to the execution of the playwright and activist Ken Saro-Wiwa in 1995. The evidence also reveals that the notorious military commander Lieutenant-Colonel Paul Okuntimo, whose troops were implicated in other crimes, was in the pay of Shell at the time of the killings and was driven around in a Shell vehicle.

References

External links

Memorial Events for Tenth Anniversary of November 10 Executions
The Ogoni Crisis: A Case-Study of Military Repression in Southeastern Nigeria
The Ogoni Bill of Rights