| Photo by Jane Scherr |
Oronto Douglas Interview: Conversations with History; Institute of International Studies, UC Berkeley
| Photo by Jane Scherr |
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You talked about going away and coming back. And the key here is that, in the sixties, the oil companies, especially Shell Oil, came to this area. Let's talk a little about that. Because on the one hand, you have this rural, agrarian, pristine setting, but on the other hand, there were a lot of resources under the ground that different corporations wanted. Tell us about that, the oil capacity there, and what the consequences were.
Yes. I started getting a feeling that things were not the same when my uncle, who I was living with in Abeokuta, and who regularly traveled home, came back to report to us ...
And how far away was that?
I think it's about 600 kilometers.
You would be how old at this time?
I was in high school then. My uncle came back and was telling us about what was going on at home, that things were no longer the way I used to know, and that when I go back, it is possible that I will not recognize the community, because I left while I was young, shortly after primary school. And he warned me about this. But what I saw when I came back was more dramatic than I could imagine.
This would have been what year?
We are talking here about 1986-87. When I came back, Shell was everywhere. They had taken over the land. They had established kingdoms in all the areas that they operate in. Chevron, as well. Mobil. Exxon. Texaco. Conoco. All the big oil companies, you name them, they have taken possession of our land. And for Shell, Shell came to the Delta in 1937, and after a few explorations had to leave. They returned after the Second World War, and they struck oil in a community not too far from mine, called Oluebury, in 1956. That was the beginning. They did the thunderous explosion of the boils of planet Earth. The exploration activities of Shell led to the realization that underneath was the black gold. And that community of Oluebury, not too far away from my village, became a rallying point for the extraction of fossil fuel in my community, in the region where I come from.
The impact of that first strike was dramatic. There was a huge spill, which according to the old men and women who witnessed that spill, leveled every plant, every animal, took over the whole survival intricacies and mechanisms of nature, and rendered life impossible for months. And it took time. They never had clean-up mechanisms at that time. This was in the fifties, about 1956. And the oil companies continued the attack on nature. Constant spillage and pollution and explosions between 1956 through the nineties. And they still continue now. A few days ago, there was a major explosion in Ogoni, where a lot of oil from Shell, this time again, was spewed into the surrounding environment.
The impact is largely on the local people. We are a largely agrarian community. We do not have the industries like the American or the European world depend on. We depend on land; we are from the ground. We plant our crops, we've been going to the river to fish and so we depend on nature largely. And when oil is now used as a mechanism to deny us our survival strategies, it is absolutely unjust. And that is what is going on in Niger Delta today.
Let's explain this for an American audience. Here, in this country, we're aware of gas stations everywhere. The very companies that you name, they are gas stations everywhere. Here, we're using the fuel to run our cars, or run our way of life. There's some pollution associated with that. But you're at the other end, at the area where the fuel is being extracted from the land, and what you're suggesting is that it was done in a very uncaring, unthoughtful way. What I want to know is, why did that happen that way? Was the government of Nigeria not protecting the interests of the people there?
I think that we can attribute that to three things. The first is that the oil companies came there with a colonial attitude. We were under British colonialism, and Shell came during that time. At that time, we had no voice. That attitude has not changed. Shell and the other oil companies still feel very strongly that they have a right to our land, and they collaborate with the government. The second reason is that the government of Nigeria that took over from the colonial government has also not changed their attitude. They felt that they are now the inheritors of colonial power, and they are ruling, governing Nigeria like imperial powers. So this has led us to come to the conclusion that we now have internal colonialists, who collaborate with the oil industry to frustrate our aspiration for freedom, for justice, and for environmental protection.
The third attitude is an attitude of consumers around the world. People are not asking questions about where this oil is coming from. Because the oil that is coming to the United States -- and 40 percent of Nigeria's oil is taken to the United States -- that oil is actually tainted, it is bloodied, because in the extraction of the oil, people are killed; human beings are killed; villages are burned down; people, environmentalists are hanged; human rights activists are jailed or arrested or harassed. In the extraction of oil, what we hold so dear, our culture, our tradition, is desecrated, is destroyed. It is subjected to the most vile of actions. We feel that if people, the consumers who are buying this oil, don't ask questions, then they are also encouraging the attack on the local communities.
Next page: The Story of Ken Saro-Wiwa
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