Pineapples are not much of a weapon against corporate mismanagement and government corruption but that is all Lola Giboone had left to fight with.
Last year, the mother of two watched helplessly as oil dripping from a leaking pipeline killed row after row of the fruits she had planted around her crops in a vain attempt to protect them.
”I want compensation for my damaged crops. I need to be sustained to take care of my children,” she said through a translator, watching the drowned and bloated bodies of centipedes floating in a greasy puddle. Nobody from Shell Nigeria, who owns the pipeline, had been to talk to her, she added.
Ten years after the world watched in horror as Ken Saro-Wiwa and eight other Ogoni activists were executed by the Nigerian government on trumped-up charges the Ogoni people living in the oil-rich Niger Delta are little closer to justice.
Nigeria may be Africa’s biggest producer of crude but in Ogoniland oil from rusting pipelines contaminates farmland and police guarding oil installations continue to attack residents. Violence in Rivers State is so bad that placemats in some bars read, ”Eat a lot — fat people are harder to kidnap”.
But among the half a million Ogoni people, the spirit of Saro-Wiwa lives on. Houses display his picture and the organisation he founded, the Movement for the Survival of the Ogoni People (Mosop), continues to campaign. Multinational Shell has not been active in the rich wells of Ogoniland for over a decade. Many Ogoni accuse the company of complicity in Saro-Wiwa’s death.
”There has been some changes,” said Ledum Mittee, Mosop’s current head.
”Oil companies talk about how they have come up with new policies. But we never complained about their policies, we complained about their practices.”
Ten years ago this week, Mittee was sharing a cell with Saro-Wiwa; he was released but his friend was killed. The memory drives him to continue, despite death threats, an assassination attempt two years ago and the burning of his house. The last time he was detained was at the beginning of October. ”It was a clear attempt to discourage us from remembering Ken [Saro-Wiwa],” he said.
Representatives from oil companies have recently begun privately contacting groups in communities to ask them what development projects they would like, he added. ”It’s a classic case of divide and rule.”
The oil companies, however, argue that they are free to negotiate with whomever they feel really represents the people. The lack of clear leadership and land boundaries has contributed to the devastation, as communities fighting oil companies for compensation or development projects turn on each other for a bigger share of the money.
The devastation is not limited to Ogoniland but stretches across the Delta.
In one incident documented by an Amnesty International report released on Thursday, 17 people were reported dead after police raided the town of Odioma in gunboats. ”The security forces continue to kill people and raze communities with impunity,” concludes the report, which estimates that 1 500 have been killed in the last two years.