We will conclude this series by highlighting the role of multinationals and their quest to reap maximum profits in cohorts with fawning corrupt regimes. Their plunder of Africa’s natural resources has led to the degradation of the environment and has brought enormous suffering to local residents.
The Niger Delta: The ravages of insatiable greed.
The Niger Delta region comprises of nine states, 185 local government areas and a population of about 20 million. The region is rich in natural resources, including oil and gas, cash crops including oil palm, rubber, cocoa, coconut, a diversity of aquatic resources and fertile land which supports year round agriculture.
The Niger Delta accounts for more than 90% of earnings from oil and gas and about 60% of federally distributed revenue. But despite its rich resources, it has one of the most crushing poverty levels in the world. It is also Nigeria’s least developed region. Seventy per cent of the people in the area are on the poverty line and the poverty level in the region is well above African standards. Health indicators lag behind the national average. Infrastructure including Medicare is also poor and the cost of food is high despite its fertile land.
Shell’s Environmental Devastation in Nigeria
Royal Dutch Shell, (Shell) began oil production in the Niger Delta region of Nigeria in 1958. It has a long history of working closely with the Nigerian government to quell popular opposition to its presence in the region. Shell’s operations in the Delta have led to the deep impoverishment of the local people and surrounding communities in the Delta that rely on the environment for their livelihood, often farming and fishing for market or subsistence living.
Gas flaring
Natural gas is a byproduct of oil drilling. In much of the world, this gas is either used for energy or re-injected into the well. In Nigeria, Shell and other oil companies burn it in a process known as gas flaring. The gas burned in flares is not the clean natural gas used for heating or cooking; the gas is contaminated with toxic compounds and the flares send huge toxic plumes into the air. The chemicals, which end up in local waterways and fields through soot and precipitation, include carcinogens such as benzene, a deadly chemical that can cause convulsions, chromosomal damage and birth defects. Many of the flares are located adjacent to Niger Delta settlements.
Shell and other oil companies ignored all orders by the Nigerian government to end gas flaring, choosing to pay a fine rather than clean up their operations. As of December 2008, there were over 100 flare sites still operating in Nigeria.
Oil spills
An estimated 1.5 million tons of oil has spilled in the Niger Delta ecosystem over the past 50 years. Many of the spills have taken place in sensitive habitats for birds, fish and other wildlife, leading to further loss of biodiversity and, in turn, further impoverishment of local communities. The spills pollute local water sources that people depend on for drinking, cooking, bathing, laundering and fishing. They also release dangerous fumes into the air, sometimes rendering villages uninhabitable and causing serious illness for those who are unable to relocate. Many of the oil spills can are attributable to poorly maintained infrastructure such as aging pipelines. Cleanup of oil spills is often very superficial, sometimes involving little more than turning the land so that the oil remains just beneath the surface of the soil.
Honorable mention: activist Ken Saro-Wiwa on behalf of his Ogoni people
Mr. Saro-Wiwa, who founded the Movement for the Survival of the Ogoni Peoples (MOSOP) in 1990, was one of Shell’s most forceful critics because of the damage done to the delta environment. He brought worldwide attention to the human rights violations committed against the Ogoni through international campaigning and his poignant writing. He was nominated for a Nobel Prize and awarded the Right Livelihood Award and the Goldman Prize for his environmental and human rights activism.
In 1994, Ken Saro-Wiwa and other Ogoni leaders were prevented by the military from attending a gathering; at that very gathering, four Ogoni chiefs were killed. The military governor promptly announced that Ken Saro-Wiwa caused the deaths, and he and other leaders were arrested despite the lack of any connection between MOSOP and the deaths. A three-man tribunal was created by the Nigerian government to try the Ogoni leaders —known as the “Ogoni Nine”. The tribunal denied the Ogoni Nine access to counsel, a fair trial, and the opportunity to appeal the decision. The Ogoni Nine were convicted and were executed by hanging on November 10, 1995.
The case against Shell
Shell had a close relationship with the Nigerian military regime during the early 1990s. Shell was alleged to have provided the Nigerian army with vehicles, patrol boats and ammunition. The oil company requested an increase in security and provided monetary and logistical support to the Nigerian police. Shell frequently called upon the Nigerian police for “security operations” that often amounted to raids and terror campaigns against the Ogoni.
Beginning in 1996, the Center for Constitutional Rights (CCR), Earth Rights International (ERI), and other human rights attorneys brought a series of cases to hold Shell accountable for human rights violations against the Ogoni, including summary execution, crimes against humanity, torture, inhuman treatment and arbitrary arrest and detention. The United States District Court for the Southern District of New York set a trial date of May 27th, 2009.
In June 2009, days before the start of a trial in New York, Royal Dutch Shell agreed to a $15.5m (£9.7m) out-of-court settlement.
South Africa: unrelenting squalor beneath a façade of splendor
This year marks the 20th anniversary of Nelson Mandela’s historic release from prison after being incarcerated for most of his adult life by successive racist white governments and their abominable apartheid regime. But 20 years after Mandela’s release and 16 years after the handover of government from the white Afrikaner rulers to the African National Congress, the people of that naturally wealthy country still find themselves shackled. Not by apartheid masters, but by grinding poverty and a plague of social miseries. Official figures show that over half of the mainly black population lives in poverty, with an unemployment rate of 25 per cent. There’s more poverty, disease, unemployment, violence and crime than ever before.
The handover of power was not so much a surrender by a discredited regime, it was rather more of a choreographed changing of the guard in which the white rulers dutifully stood aside to let the ANC leaders take their place. But the understanding was that nothing of substantive change – in terms of economic policy and wealth distribution in that country – would take place. Key players in these choreographed, political musical chairs were US and British mining companies, with the blessing of their respective governments.
While Africa’s richest country is mainly known for its gold and diamonds, it is also the main repository in the world for “strategic minerals”. Strategic minerals are those metal ores that are essential to the manufacture of armaments, weaponry, ships, submarines, aircraft, tanks and missiles. These factors moved the US and British to engage with the ANC. The US and Britain have become the top two foreign investors in South Africa.
Thanks to the ANC’s broken promises of liberation, millions wander and languish in poverty, disease and hopelessness. South Africa’s black majority is free – free to be poor, free to be unemployed, free to be mugged, robbed, raped or murdered, free to die of AIDS.
Conclusion
It is abundantly clear that the economic fate of Africa is solely the responsibility of Africans. Western powers and their agents, the multi nationals, will plunder our natural resources with wanton abandonment and pilfer any remains if the opportunity avails itself. Unfortunately their stooges, who are traitors of the people, are foisted among us as leaders, replete with the greed of their masters. They would gladly and effortlessly sell their kinsmen for shiny carriages, sumptuous abodes and inordinate amounts of heady intoxicants.
We ardently entreat the people of Kenya, who are all our brothers and sisters, regardless of tribe or political affiliation, to make a clean sweep of this elite band of conniving fraudsters. After this general election, their malevolent inclinations to economically suppress us while ravaging public resources will be confined to history, tales of awe animatedly retold to while away the time at the local social outlet. The diatribe in this section is the rambling of irascible, impatient for progress patriots, seeking the mandate of the Kenyan people at the General Elections of 2017 or 2012 if we organize soon enough. The issues we have tackled have always been accompanied by possible solutions. In the following year we will be registering a party and implementing our ideas on the ground. All are invited to partake in this economic and social revolution.
No comments:
Post a Comment