Being an excerpt from Where Vultures Feast: Shell, Human Rights and Oil in the Niger Delta; Ike Okonta and Oronto Douglas; Sierra Club Books in conjunction with Random House, New York, 2001.

From the dark days of slavery to the present, the Niger Delta has been ruled by violence and men of violence have sought to rule her by force. The area's substantial natural and human resources have always proved an irresistible attraction for slave traders, commodity merchants, colonialists and plain fortune hunters who subjugate the inhabitants through treachery and force of arms and plunder their resources. With the discovery of oil in the area in 1956 by Shell, the oppression and exploitation of the peoples of the Niger Delta entered yet another, and even more insidious phase.

The Movement for the Survival of Ogoni People (MOSOP) emerged in August 1990 to put to an end this dark chapter in the Niger Delta story. In the words of the writer and activist Ken Saro-Wiwa, 'the Ogoni took stock of their condition and found that in spite of the stupendous oil and gas wealth of their land they were extremely poor, had no social amenities, that unemployment was running at over seventy per cent, and that they were powerless, as an ethnic minority in a country of 100 million people, to do anything to alleviate their condition. Worse, their environment was completely devastated by three decades of reckless oil exploitation or ecological warfare by Shell.'

In October 1990 the chiefs and community leaders of the six Ogoni clans came together at Bori and presented the Ogoni Bill of Rights (OBR), a document they had collectively adopted two months previously, to the government and the people of Nigeria. The OBR demanded for, among other things, the right of the Ogoni people to self-determination as a distinct people in the Nigerian Federation; adequate representation as of right in all Nigerian national institutions; the right to use a fair proportion of the economic resources in Ogoniland for its development; and the right to control their environment. The OBR also emphasised that MOSOP was a non-violent organisation and believed in the use of non-violent means to pursue its goals.

The Ogoni are a 'mere' 500,000 in a Nigeria with a population of over a 100 million people, dispersed in over two hundred nations and ethnic groups. Thus the launching of MOSOP did not even register on the national canvass save for a brief mention in some of the local newspapers in Rivers State. However, things began to change when MOSOP leaders, acting on behalf of the Ogoni people, issued on 3 November 1992, a thirty day ultimatum to all the oil companies operating on their land - Shell, Chevron and the NNPC, to pay back-rents and royalties and also compensation for land devastated by oil exploration and production activities or quit. The memorandum, addressed to Shell, demanded the following:

1. $6 billion as unpaid royalties;
2. Immediate stoppage of environmental devastation of Ogoniland with particular reference to gas flaring at Yorla, Korokoro and Bomu;
3. Burying of all high pressure oil pipelines currently exposed in all Ogoni;
4. Payment of $4 billion, being reparation for damages and compensation for environmental pollution suffered by the people and their environment; and
5. e. Dialogue between representatives of the community, Shell and the Federal Government.

The three companies, like the government two years previously, ignored the demand. But they had reckoned without Ken Saro-Wiwa's organisational genius. A consummate publicist who had honed his craft writing novels, newspaper articles and best-selling soap operas for the government-owned television network, Saro-Wiwa, in collaboration with other MOSOP leaders, had quietly embarked on a mass mobilisation of Ogoni men, women and children shortly after the movement was launched. Such simple but ingenious innovations as the One Naira Ogoni Survival Fund, whereby all Ogoni people young and old were asked to contribute a token sum as an indication of commitment to the cause, and the formation of such pan-Ogoni organisations as the National Youth Council of Ogoni People (NYCOP), the Federation of Ogoni Women's Associations (FOWA), the Conference of Ogoni Traditional Rulers (COTRA), the Council of Ogoni Churches (COC), the Ogoni Teachers Union (OTU), the National Union of Ogoni Students (N UOS), Ogoni Students Union (OSU), Ogoni Central Union (OCU) and the Council of Ogoni Professionals (COP), for which MOSOP served as an umbrella, ensured that the movement had a truly democratic, grassroots base.

Ken Saro-Wiwa had always believed in the power of learning and the pen as instruments to help bring about progress and social change. Right from the onset he urged his fellow Ogoni to study, conscientise their fellows and educate them about what MOSOP was really about - a movement for social and ecological justi

ce, informed by the finest traditions of African participatory democracy and powered by the philosophy of non-violence. Said Saro-Wiwa, 'MOSOP was intent on breaking new ground in the struggle for democracy and political, economic, social and environmental rights in Africa. We believe that mass-based, disciplined organisations can successfully re-vitalise moribund societies and that relying upon their ancient values, mores and cultures, such societies can successfully re-establish themselves as self-reliant communities and at the same time successfully and peacefully challenge tyrannical governments.' Ken Saro-Wiwa's ultimate goal was a re-structured Nigeria, functioning as a proper Federation of equal ethnic groups and nations irrespective of size, with each group being free to control its resources and environment and also exercise its political right to rule itself according to its genius.

The immediate task in hand, though, was the strengthening of MOSOP and even more importantly, the urgent need to take its case to the Nigerian people and the international community and find allies among them. Saro-Wiwa found sympathetic ears particularly among Nigerian journalists working in the independent press where he was in any case, considered a member of the house. His talent for publicity was given free rein, and in a matter of months MOSOP and the travails of the Ogoni people became a subject of debate all over the country, especially in the early months of 1992. In his capacity as spokesman of MOSOP, Saro-Wiwa travelled to The Hague in July 1992 where he registered the movement with the Unrepresented Nations and Peoples Organisations (UNPO), whose charter enjoins non-violence on all its members. He also brought the suffering of his people to the attention of the United Nations Working Group on Indigenous Populations in Geneva, and made useful contacts with international environmental groups and business organisations such as the London-based The Body Shop International whose founder and chief executive, Anita Roddick, had long been involved in such campaigns as MOSOP was pushing in Nigeria.

On 4 January 1993, 300,000 Ogoni men, women and children took to the streets and staged a peaceful protest against Shell's ecological war and the government's continued denial of the Ogoni's right to self-determination and a fair share of their natural resources. The demonstration was timed to coincide with the start of the United Nations Year of Indigenous Peoples. This protest, so brilliantly organised that not a single incident of violence marred the event, marked a turning point in MOSOP's campaign and told the military government and the Nigerian people in clear unmistakable terms that a formidable new organisation had entered the national political stage. On that day also, now marked as the Ogoni national day, the Ogoni people crossed the psychological barrier of fear and signalled to the military junta and its civilian allies that had been holding them down for over three decades that they were now prepared to take their destiny into their hands and liberate themselves from tyranny and oppression through non-violent means.

General Ibrahim Babangida and the other members of the military junta were finally forced to take notice of MOSOP. A few days after the hugely successful January 4 demonstrations, the Inspector-General of Police invited MOSOP leaders to a parley in Abuja.8 Nothing came of the discussion, however. It was apparent the junta did not take MOSOP seriously at this time, thinking that a few harsh words would frighten the leadership into giving up this 'dangerous' enterprise. Consequently, Saro-Wiwa and the other MOSOP leaders were summoned to the headquarters of the dreaded State Security Service (SSS) in Abuja, where the riot act was read to them before they were sent away.

Unlike the military junta, however, Shell was monitoring MOSOP's activities closely and its senior officials were sufficiently alarmed to initiate a strategy meeting between executives of Shell Nigeria and Shell International in Rotterdam and London in February 1993. Leaked minutes of the meeting indicated that Shell had by now recognised that 'the main thrust of the (Ogoni) activists now seems to be directed at achieving recognition of the problems of the oil-producing areas by using the media and pressure groups.' The meeting also decided that officials of Shell Nigeria and Shell International should keep each other more closely informed to ensure that movements of key players, what they say and to whom, was more effectively monitored to avoid unpleasant surprises adversely affecting the reputation of the Shell group as a whole.

The first real confrontation between MOSOP and Shell came on April 30. Willbros, a U.S. pipeline contractor commissioned by Shell, was digging up newly-planted farmland and laying pipelines in the Ogoni village of Biara. The local farmers came out and challenged the Willbros workers, pointing out that they had neither been paid any compensation for their land nor had a proper environmental impact assessment been conducted for the project as stipulated by Nigerian law. A contingent of the Nigerian Army accompanied the Willbros workers. These soldiers subsequently shot at, and dispersed the protesters. A young man, Nnah Uabari, aged nineteen, was killed on the spot. Eleven others received gunshot wounds.