Randal Jelks: A Tale of Two Oil Rich and Degraded Deltas
The Gulf Coasts of Louisiana is being damaged by oil just as the Nigerian Delta has been contaminated by oil for years. In the case of Nigeria, the culprit has been Shell Oil. For years, most people in the United States did not pay attention. The only thing known about Nigeria, the most populous country on the African continent, is corruption, war, famine, and disease beginning with the Biafran war (1967-1970). But the truth is the people living both off the coast of Louisiana, the Gulf of Mexico, and Nigeria, Gulf of Guinea, have a great deal in common.
Since the late 1950s people who lived on the Gulf of Guinea in Nigeria, most notably the Ogoni people have been in a struggle with their own government and a multinational oil corporation. Oil was discovered off the coast of Nigeria in the 1950s, which should have brought the country great wealth. But today along its river deltas it is now one of the most degraded coastlines in the world. While the Ogoni people fought to preserve their coastal livelihoods they received little support. No one saw what was occurring to this Nigerian minority as relevant. However, what happened and continues to happen in Nigeria is quite relevant to all of us.
In 1990, Nigerian activist, Ken Saro-Wiwa, had begun to bring worldwide attention to the environmental degradation occurring in Nigeria. Saro-Wiwa pleaded with the West to intervene with the Nigerian government to help put the brakes on the damaging effects that unregulated oil production caused. Neither the first Bush administration nor the Clinton administration gave the protest he led much attention (even though Nigeria was then as it is now the United States fifth largest oil trading partner). Shell Oil, with the permission of the Nigerian government, kept poisoning that region of Nigeria with impunity. For US foreign policy environmental concerns were not a high priority and the Nigerian government, then led by the military dictator Sani Abacha, saw the protest being carried out by Sara Wiwa as a nuisance. In 1995, Saro-Wiwa became so great of an annoyance that Abacha, as well as his greedy minions, had him executed, which allowed Shell Oil to freely pollute estuaries and coastlines without being punished.
I know some will object, but Nigeria and Gulf Coast of Louisiana share a common lot. For years, the state of Louisiana has permitted oil companies to have the loosest of regulation–a wink and a nod instead of enforced laws. As result many African Americans, like the Ogoni people of Nigeria, who live in the Gulf region have been most affected by what is called Cancer Alley. The pollutants from chemical and oil production have poisoned both their lands and bodies for years, like the Ogoni people these Black and poor people were ignored. The Louisiana state government, like the Nigerian government, left the oil companies to their own devices–laissez faire.
When the British Petroleum oilrig exploded at the end of April no one remembered Nigeria’s Ken Saro-Wiwa or the unsung environmental activist around Louisiana pleading for regulations to protect their respective people. In Nigeria those who non-violently protested were called extremist and murdered. In Louisiana those who called for better regulation were ignored and smeared as “effete liberals” or bribed. In both cases, the mass media outlets did not inform most of us, as they should have, they were in a sense co-conspirator with the oil companies.
I share the anger with the people along the Louisiana’s Gulf coast, and I fret with them about what impact this ongoing disaster will leave behind. I have only one complaint, and a deeply felt grief, if we had paid attention to what was happening in Nigeria years ago and what had been occurring in Cancer Alley this could have all been prevented through careful regulations, but we did not and now all of us are at risk.