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by Schüler:innengruppe Cologne
Shell is an international oil company. All over the world, it produces oil. And where it is not prevented, it pollutes the environment. Such as in the delta of the Niger, the third largest river in Africa and the largest in Nigeria. Oil slicks shimmer on the water, the sand on the shore is full of dirt and oil. “You can hardly catch anything here anymore,” radio station Deutsche Welle quotes a fisherman as saying. “We even used to have oysters here – but those days are gone.” Hardly any of the fishing boats on the shore are still in regular use.
Shell has been producing oil in the Niger Delta since the 1950s; this and other oil companies are still guilty of countless environmental crimes, e.g. in the land of the Ogoni, a population group living there (see Amnesty International reports).
In 1995, the first activities in solidarity with the Ogoni and all those fighting in Nigeria against the exploitation of oil wells, against bribery and environmental destruction also began in Cologne. A campaign was launched: “Shell refuels apartheid”. With leaflets and signs, the activists marched in front of Shell gas stations in various parts of the city and blocked them3. This did not always go smoothly. The tenants of the gas stations were upset, the customers, who had to drive on to the next gas station, were angry. But the conviction that they would have to spoil the company’s business if anything were to change was great enough to keep them going for more than two years.
Especially since in Nigeria the activists there were threatened with their lives. Already when 300,000 people demonstrated in Nigeria on January 4, 1993 – the so-called Ogoni Day – the military regime responded with brutal force and occupied the Ogoni area. Ken Saro-Wiwa, writer and spokesman for MOSOP, the “Movement for the Survival of the Ogoni People,” was hanged on November 10, 1995, along with eight of his fellow “Ogoni Nine.” Saro-Wiwa was 54 years old. That was when the actions began in Cologne. One year later, Cologne supporters organized the action week “Nigeria – no blood for oil” with an extensive cultural and political program. Cologne bands took part and the Nigerian Nobel Prize winner for literature Wole Soyinka.
For further reading:
Bernd Schröder (2019): Nigeria’s Petroleum. In: Telepolis
Wolfgang Drechsler (2021): The Curse of the Blessing. In: APuZ