Oil, the Niger Delta and Ken Saro-Wiwa
Oil makes Nigeria's government rich but leaves the Delta polluted and poor; the execution of Ken Saro-Wiwa in 1995 becomes a global symbol.
- A History of Nigeria — Toyin Falola and Matthew M. Heaton, Cambridge University Press (2008)
- A Month and a Day: A Detention Diary — Ken Saro-Wiwa, Penguin (1995)
- Nigeria: The Ogoni Crisis: A Case-Study of Military Repression in Southeastern Nigeria — Human Rights Watch (1995)
- Environmental Assessment of Ogoniland — United Nations Environment Programme (2011)
- Nigeria: What Everyone Needs to Know — John Campbell and Matthew T. Page, Oxford University Press (2018)
Shell-BP struck commercial oil at Oloibiri in the Niger Delta in 1956. After the civil war, high oil prices in the 1970s flooded Nigeria with money; oil came to provide the great bulk of exports and much of government revenue. Agriculture, once the backbone of exports, withered, and the scramble for oil money fuelled corruption and coups.
- A History of Nigeria — Toyin Falola and Matthew M. Heaton, Cambridge University Press (2008)
- Nigeria: What Everyone Needs to Know — John Campbell and Matthew T. Page, Oxford University Press (2018)
In Ogoniland, the writer and activist Ken Saro-Wiwa led the Movement for the Survival of the Ogoni People (MOSOP), founded in 1990, demanding environmental justice and a share of revenue. After a military tribunal widely condemned as unfair, he and eight others, the “Ogoni Nine”, were hanged by the Abacha regime on 10 November 1995. Nigeria was suspended from the Commonwealth.
- Nigeria: The Ogoni Crisis: A Case-Study of Military Repression in Southeastern Nigeria — Human Rights Watch (1995)
- A Month and a Day: A Detention Diary — Ken Saro-Wiwa, Penguin (1995)
A 2011 UN Environment Programme study found contamination in Ogoniland so severe that clean-up could take decades.
- Environmental Assessment of Ogoniland — United Nations Environment Programme (2011)
The oil is pumped from their land and water while they live with spills, fires and poverty. Movements from MOSOP to later militant groups demanded "resource control" and a fair share of revenues.
- A Month and a Day: A Detention Diary — Ken Saro-Wiwa, Penguin (1995)
- Environmental Assessment of Ogoniland — United Nations Environment Programme (2011)
Oil belongs to the whole nation and must fund all its states. Companies such as Shell blame much of the pollution on theft and sabotage of pipelines, and point to clean-up programmes and a 2009 amnesty for militants.
- Nigeria: What Everyone Needs to Know — John Campbell and Matthew T. Page, Oxford University Press (2018)
- Environmental Assessment of Ogoniland — United Nations Environment Programme (2011)
Why it matters today
Oil still pays for much of the Nigerian state, and fights over who controls it shape politics. For people in the Delta it is a story of polluted creeks, gas flares and broken promises; for many other Nigerians it is a story of wealth wasted by corruption, the "resource curse".