Shell in the Niger Delta: It gets uglier with each revelation
Shell oil activities in Ogoniland in the Niger delta have polluted rivers. Photograph: Akintunde Akinleye/REUTERS
Several damning articles have been been published in The Guardian (U.K.) over the past few days.
Sunday’s headline, Shell oil paid Nigerian military to put down protests, court documents show, gets right to the point.
John Vidal, Environment Editor, writes: “Shell has never denied that its oil operations have polluted large areas of the Niger Delta – land and air. But it had resisted charges of complicity in human rights abuses.
“Court documents now reveal that in the 1990s Shell routinely worked with Nigeria‘s military and mobile police to suppress resistance to its oil activities, often from activists in Ogoniland, in the delta region.
Shit
Sewage dumping site, Sekondi-Takoradi, Ghana. Photo by Christiane Badgley
Shit.
That’s what this is and that’s all I could say when I saw it.
The “this” in question is the sewage of the Sekondi-Takoradi metropolitan area. Government trucks drive the stuff over here and dump it on to the beach just down the road from a fishing village.
Apparently kids in the village are getting all sorts of eye and ear infections and the fishmongers have to lie about where the fish comes from or no one will buy it. People say it smells like…shit. Continue reading . . .
