Blood, Sweat, Tears and Oil The mistreatment of the...

Blood, Sweat, Tears and Oil: The mistreatment of the Ogoni People by Royal Dutch Shell and the Nigerian Government Introduction Nigeria, located in West Africa, is a densely populated nation of over 100 million people. Since the nation’s independence from Britain in 1960, the country has been in the hands of various leaders ranging from religious to staunchly militant. Nigeria is the sixth largest producer of crude oil in the world and it has one of the largest deposits of natural gas (Wiwa, 2001). Oil accounts for ninety five percent of Nigeria’s foreign exchange earning and one-fourth of the country’s Gross Domestic Product comes from oil. A large percentage of this oil is located in the Niger Delta. The Niger Delta,†¦show more content†¦The movement to speak out against the injustices endured by the Ogoni people are also chronicled along with the resolutions to date that have been reached in the Niger Delta in order to ensure that the cycle of wrongs suffered by indigenous peoples does not occur again. Shell and the Nigerian government Oil was first discovered in the eastern region of the Niger Delta in 1956. With the country still under British rule, Shell teamed up with the British Petroleum Company to open up the Nigerian oil fields and became the Royal Dutch Shell. For nearly a decade the joint venture produced 367,000 barrels of oil per day. After Nigeria gained its independence from the British, Shell ensured that the Nigerian government would have a share in the company. With oil production going on in the eastern region of the country, it was only a matter of time until politics began to revolve around the resource. Oronto Douglas, Nigeria’s leading environmental human rights lawyer, said it best when he noted in the book Where Vultures Feast that â€Å"Oil is the stuff of contemporary Nigerian politics and the Niger Delta is the field on which the vicious battle to this money spinner is waged.† From July 1967 to January 1970 a civil war broke out between the eastern region (whose people united for the war effort and referred to the region as Biafra) and the rest of the country. The Biafra Civil War began because of barrels of oils and would