IRIN Focus on the Ogoni issue

It was like the replay of a familiar scene for Ledum Mitee, president of the Movement for the Survival of Ogoni People (MOSOP), when he was charged with arson recently, along with two other members of his minority rights group. The three-count charge read out to the three accused on 18 April stemmed from clashes a week earlier in Mitee’s hometown of K-dere, in the southern oil-rich region of Ogoniland. During the confrontation between rival MOSOP factions, at least five people died and several houses, including Mitee’s, were burnt. The issue was whether or not the oil giant, Shell, should return to Ogoniland after pulling out in 1993 in the face of protests by area residents. Five years ago, Mitee had been charged with murder along with author Ken Saro-Wiwa, a founder of MOSOP, and other activists of the group, after suspected MOSOP militants attacked and killed four of Saro-Wiwa’s rivals. The trial, widely viewed as flawed, ended with Mitee’s acquittal and the conviction of Saro-Wiwa and eight others. They were hanged on the orders of late Nigerian dictator Sani Abacha on 10 November 1995 in defiance of worldwide pleas for clemency. “It was like revisiting the same experience of five years ago,” Mitee, a lawyer and Saro-Wiwa’s successor as leader of MOSOP, told journalists after he was granted bail in the latest trial, which could see him sentenced to life imprisonment if found guilty. “For several reasons I found the same script,” he added. “I found almost the same circumstances. I found three of the policemen who came to interrogate me while I was in detention were also involved in the trial five years ago.” At the heart of the matter in Ogoniland once again is Royal/Dutch Shell, which began producing oil on the land of the some 500,000 Ogonis in 1958. In 1990 MOSOP issued the Ogoni Bill of Rights, accusing Shell and its partner, the government, of wreaking massive damage on the environment and depriving the Ogoni minority of billions of dollars of oil wealth. It demanded more access to, and control of, the oil resources while urging the restructuring of Nigeria’s federation to give more power to its various components. From then on, continuous protests led by MOSOP against Shell’s presence on Ogoni land repeatedly disrupted the oil company’s operations in the area and forced it to suspend them in 1993. The response of the Nigerian state - controlled mainly by Northerners since independence in 1960 - to the ferment in Ogoniland and other parts of the oil-producing south, was heavy handed, particularly under Abacha. He intensified the activity of a special internal security outfit in the area and used judicial powers to neutralise Saro-Wiwa, perceived as an intransigent campaigner for minority rights in a country dominated by the major ethnic groups. But much has changed in Nigeria in the last five years. With Abacha’s sudden death in 1998, his successor, General Abdulsalami Abubakar, initiated political reforms that ended more than 15 years of destructive military rule in Africa’s most populous country (population over 110 million). In 1999, former military ruler Olusegun Obasanjo, who voluntarily relinquished power to civilians in 1979, returned to office as elected president. Hundreds of political exiles of the Abacha years, including Mitee, have since returned and Obasanjo has unfolded a political agenda aimed at uprooting corruption and righting the past political wrongs of the Nigerian state, especially in the volatile Niger Delta. All of this seemed to suggest the time was ripe for the Shell/government partnership to begin overtures to return to the oil wells of Ogoniland, which used to pump about 28,000 barrels per day or three percent of the company’s Nigerian production until it withdrew from the area. It is these overtures that seem in the main to have divided MOSOP. In March, Shell—with the apparent agreement of factions of the Ogoni movement—began a road project in the area under its community assistance programme. The move was opposed by some other factions, and although the contractors withdrew to avert an imminent breakdown of peace, violence broke out a few days later and a number of people died. Shell has continued to deny that it plans to make an early return to Ogoniland. “Shell has made it clear on several occasions that its priorities with respect to Ogoniland are to clear up past oil spills, irrespective of the cause, and make safe its facilities to avoid accidents to persons,” the company said in a statement. “This still remains Shell’s position. These do not imply a resumption of oil production in any sense,” the statement added. While some among the Ogoni think it is time Shell was allowed to return in exchange for community development guarantees, the radical and popular opinion remains that the company should stay away until the issue of resource control and devolution of powers is resolved in Nigeria. Considering that the government has reacted less than enthusiastically to calls to restructure the polity and renegotiate nationhood, the stalemate may remain prolonged. “But the worry for both the oil companies and the government is the symbolism of the community continuing to keep Shell away, seen as a bad example which other communities in the region might emulate,” Nigerian oil region analyst Inatimi Spiff told IRIN. “If all the oil communities in the Niger Delta like the Ogoni insist that there will be no further production of oil until outstanding demands are met, Nigeria’s oil may stop flowing.” So far, Shell has not returned simply because the company insists it will not operate behind a military shield but with community acceptance. Therefore, much pressure is likely to be brought on the leaders of MOSOP and other Ogoni groups in the coming months to let Shell in. Already wide cracks have emerged, and there are now three distinct factions. “In the coming months MOSOP will have to close ranks and reach a deal intact or remain divided and even weaker,” Spiff said. “And who else is there to benefit from a weakened MOSOP than the government/oil company partnership.”