![]() The World Bank estimates that oil benefits accrue to only 1% of the general population. Shell is the largest stakeholder, owning 47% of the national industry. ![]() Nigeria's national government is completely dependent on oil exports, with oil accounting for 80% of government revenue. Other ethnic groups in the Niger Delta are also ethnic minorities. The Ogoni lack political power and constitutional protections to control their land or wealth taken from it. Nigeria gained independence from Britain in 1960, and has since been mostly ruled by unelected officials from these ethnic majorities. Nigerian politics are dominated by the Yoruba, Igbo, and Hausa-Fulani ethnic majorities. The Ogoni people are an ethnic micro-minority with only 500,000 people in a country of a hundred million. The problems facing the Ogoni people find their origins in the British colonial era: the political borders of Nigeria are an extremely artificial creation of British colonialism, with the result that nearly 300 ethnic groups are arbitrarily consolidated into a single nation-state. In 1994, MOSOP, along with founder Ken Saro-Wiwa, received the Right Livelihood Award for their exemplary courage in striving non-violently for the civil, economic and environmental rights of their people. The Ogoni uprising under the leadership of MOSOP was an early and non-violent phase of the conflict in the Niger Delta. MOSOP was founded in 1990 by Ken Saro-Wiwa and Ogoni chiefs when they presented the Ogoni Bill of Rights to the Federal government of Nigeria and to the United Nations Working Group on Indigenous Peoples in Geneva. Oil was discovered in the Niger delta in 1957. The Ogoni's challenge to state power was finally put down through the judicial murder of Ogoni leaders, including spokesman and founder Ken Saro-Wiwa, in November 1995. Thousands of Ogoni were killed, raped, beaten, detained, or exiled. Peaceful demonstrations led by MOSOP and other indigenous groups in the region have been brutally suppressed by the Nigerian Mobile Police. ![]() MOSOP is an umbrella organization representing about 700,000 Ogoni in a non-violent campaign for environmental justice in the Niger Delta. The Ogoni contend that Shell Petroleum Development Company (SPDC), along with other petroleum multinationals and the Nigerian government, have destroyed their environment, polluted their rivers, and provided no benefits in return for enormous oil revenues extracted from their lands. The Movement for the Survival of the Ogoni People ( MOSOP), is a social movement organization representing the indigenous Ogoni people of Rivers State, Nigeria.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |