The Niger Delta is one of the world’s largest wetlands and also one of its most valuable oil-producing regions. For decades, oil spills, gas flaring, waste dumping and failed clean-ups have devastated communities who depend on its land, rivers and creeks for food, water and livelihoods. Amnesty International’s research has shown that Shell’s record there is not only an environmental scandal. It is a human rights crisis.
Why does the Niger Delta matter?
The Niger Delta is a vast network of creeks, rivers, mangrove forests and wetlands in southern Nigeria. Millions of people rely on farming and fishing there.
But it is also one of the world’s most important oil-producing regions. Shell began exporting its oil in 1958 and went on to operate around 50 oil fields and a vast pipeline network. Other fossil fuel majors, like Chevron, Eni, ExxonMobil, and Total also went into business there, in partnership with the Nigerian government. Its export economy has consisted majorly of oil and gas ever since, making up more than 90% of the country’s
total exports
for years.
For
communities living near oil infrastructure
, the cost has been devastating.
What has Amnesty International documented in the Niger Delta?
The Nigerian writer and activist, Ken Saro-Wiwa first drew the world’s attention to the human cost of oil extraction in the Niger Delta in the 1990s
.
But Nigeria’s then military government launched a brutal crackdown on the peaceful protest movement that he led in his home region of Ogoniland. A court then sentenced Saro-Wiwa and eight other men to death after a blatantly unfair trial. Amnesty International joined many others in campaigning for their release, but the men, known collectively as the “Ogoni Nine”,
were executed on 10 November 1995
.
In 2009, Amnesty International published a new investigation.
Nigeria: Petroleum, Pollution and Poverty in the Niger Delta
, which documented how oil pollution has harmed people’s rights to water, he
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