Plunderers Should Pay Market Value or Stop Plundering
Shell Ordered to Compensate Its Nigerian Victims
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Always find nonviolent solutions to problems. For instance, a fair solution to the problem of poverty in the midst of enormous natural resource wealth in Nigeria, is the Niger Delta Fund Initiative. When large corporations refuse to cooperate with nonviolent negotiations, they rob their victims of nonviolent options. This story is being circulated by a group called South News and we believe that portions of it originated from the BBC. |
A Nigerian court said on Friday, February 24, 2006, that Royal Dutch Shell should pay $US1.5 billion in damages for pollution in oil-producing Bayelsa state, the latest step in a long-running case.
Judge Okechukwu Okeke upheld a resolution by the Nigerian National Assembly that Shell should pay the money to ethnic Ijaw communities in Bayelsa, in the impoverished Niger Delta which produces all of Nigeria's 2.4 million barrels per day of oil.
Nigeria is one of the world's biggest oil exporters but despite its oil wealth, many Nigerians live in abject poverty.
The Ijaw have been fighting since 2000 for compensation for environmental degradation in their oil-rich region. They took the case to court after Shell refused to make the payment ordered by Nigeria's parliament.
Frustrated by Shell's rejection of the law, Ijaw militants have staged a spate of attacks against outlaw Shell facilities recently and are holding seven foreign oil workers hostage.
Following the violence, Shell -- the biggest plunderer of Nigeria's natural resource wealth -- has halved its takings from the country.
Shell says it should not have to pay for polluting, and will appeal against the ruling. Lawyers for the Shell Petroleum Development Company argued in the federal court in Port Harcourt that the joint committee of the National Assembly that made the original payment order in 2000 did not have the power to compel the oil company to make the payment.
But Judge Okechukwu Okeke ruled that since both sides had agreed to go before the National Assembly, the order was fully binding on both sides.
Ijaw community leader Ngo Nac-Eteli said that if Shell wanted to buy time by taking the case to the appeal court, the company would not be allowed to operate on Ijaw land until the case was settled.
He did not elaborate on how the community would stop Shell's operations.
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Also see: All About the Niger Delta Fund Initiative
Davies on Oil DIvidends for Nigeria
Africa's Natural Resource Wealth Should Benefit Africans |
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