Ben Amunwa
Shell funds militant clashes in Nigeria: exclusive interviews with Platform
BBC Business Daily conducted an in-depth interview with researcher Ben Amunwa about Platform’s new report, titled Counting the Cost, on Shell’s human rights abuses in the Niger Delta. Shell were invited to the interview but refused to attend. The BBC World Service broadcast the interview to hundred millions of listeners worldwide this morning. You can [...]
New research reveals Shell paid militants who destroyed Nigerian towns
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: Monday 3 October 2011 New research reveals Shell paid militants who destroyed Nigerian towns Shell fuelled human rights abuses in Nigeria by paying huge contracts to armed militants, according to a new report published by Platform and a coalition of NGOs and featured today in The Guardian. [1] Counting the Cost implicates Shell in cases of [...]
President Jonathan: ‘Our system has collapsed’
In a speech to mark Nigeria’s 51st anniversary of independence from British colonial rule, President Goodluck Jonathan talked openly about how the systemic breakdown of government institutions in the ‘giant of Africa’. The Daily Trust reports: Jonathan said the country has been running on a deficit budget because the institutions that are supposed to protect public resources and [...]
Legal analysis: Shell Nigeria lawsuits
Michael D. Goldhaber is an expert on human rights law and corporate accountability in the US. In his recent article in AM Law Daily, he offers up his views on the settlement between claimants from the village of Bodo and Shell over massive oil spills caused by the company in 2008-2009. Royal Dutch Shell has [...]
When corporate strategies backfire: Shell in Nigeria
When Shell aren’t spilling oil in Nigeria, they’re finding new ways to otherwise lose it. According to reports, one third of Shell’s daily oil extraction in Nigeria – some 300,000 barrels per day – is currently shut in at the Adibawa oil field in Bayelsa State. Shell declared a “force majeure” on 23 August, suspending [...]
Niger Delta activist to stand trial in Holland
Sunny Ofehe, known as Comrade Sunny to his friends and colleagues, is to stand trial today in a Rotterdam court on charges of conspiracy to commit an act of terrorism. Ofehe was arrested on 22 February 2011, originally on “suspicion of people smuggling and forgery” and has been in detention since then. The Dutch authorities [...]
The world’s biggest data leak
On Friday 2 September, Wikileaks finally published the full batch of over 250,000 secret US diplomatic cables. The unredacted archive of cables is now available online. The decision to dump the data in the open has landed Wikileaks in further controversy and drawn condemnation from its former media partners around the world, due to the possible risk of [...]
Nigeria could lose billions under new oil law
Today, the Nigerian Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative (NEITI) warned that under the current draft of the Petroleum Industry Bill (PIB), Nigeria stands to lose billions of dollars in oil revenue over the coming years. “NEITI does not see the rationale for passing a bill that is designed to reduce government revenue from petroleum operations by [...]
Aljazeera: UN slams Shell over Nigeria pollution
Aljazeera produced this excellent video about Shell’s oil spills in Ogoni. In it, Ledum Mittee of MOSOP (the Movement for the Survival of the Ogoni People) calls on the Nigerian government to revoke Shell’s licence.
UNEP report on oil spills in Ogoni: a summary from SDN
If you don’t have the time to read UNEP’s 262 page report on the impact of oil spill’s in Ogoni, don’t panic. Stakeholder Democracy Network (SDN), a group that works on the ground in the Niger Delta supporting community rights, has produced this helpful summary. As we noted previously, UNEP’s findings are particularly damning for Shell. As the main [...]
