After many years of litigation, Justice finally came the way of the Ogoni people of Rivers state recently at the federal high court in Abuja where a multi-national oil company, Shell Petroleum Company, agreed to pay a sum of N45.9B to the people for the loses suffered during oil spills that ravaged their communities in the 1970s.
Environmental NGOs, including the Movement for the Survival of the Ogoni People (Mosop), have accused Shell of more than 20 years of environmental degradation and negligence in Ogoni country, a region of the Niger Delta with mangroves devastated by oil pollution.
Shell’s Nigerian subsidiary, the Shell Petroleum Development Company of Nigeria Limited (SPDC), in a statement, said “The order to pay 45.9 billion Naira (£94.9 million) to the plaintiffs is intended to fully and finally satisfy the judgment”.
It would be recalled that Shell was first convicted in 2010, but the company had repeatedly challenged the ruling, but didn’t succeed. The company finally reached a settlement in the Abuja High Court with the community recently.
The lawyer representing the Ejama-Ebubu communities in Rivers State, Lucius Nwosu, confirmed the recent decision of Shell to newsmen.
Nwosu said “They had come to the end of their shenanigans and they have resolved to accept the offer”.
“This decision follows the determination of this community to get justice,” he added.
However, while the Anglo-Dutch company Shell has agreed to pay compensation to the community, it has maintained that the oil spills were caused by third parties during Nigeria’s 1967-1970 civil war, during which many pipelines and infrastructure were damaged.
The Movement for the Survival of the Ogoni People (MOSOP) welcomed the recent ruling in a statement.
“We hope that this judgment will provide the foundations to address the long and lasting injustice suffered by the Ogoni people.”
It should be noted that in 2015, Shell agreed to pay $70 million (€63 million) in compensation to some 15,500 residents in Ogoniland and agreed to begin cleaning up an oil spill in 2008, even though the company has always claimed that artisanal sabotage of pipelines by locals was the primary cause of pollution.
