otherwise Shell can never gain the trust of the local people that it so badly needs. The analogy is Germany in 1945: unless it could face up to its past, it had no future in the international community and could expect no sympathy. But the wallpaper keeps rolling out: one of the latest designs suggests that the Korokoro incident did not even happen!
The May 8th press statement and the plan for action it describes is wallpaper because it does not face up to the real problems of how oil extraction affects local people. In relation to Ogoni it continues to exemplify Shell's pig-headed inability to understand the locality. There are six reasons for this.
- The statement says that the plan for action depends on a situation where company staff can return to the area in safety. This in nonsense because there is no evidence of violence being visited upon Shell staff; it is the local people who have suffered the violence. This continual assertion by Shell that their staff are unsafe just unnecessarily dramatises the situation, putting Shell in the right and local people in the wrong.
- To talk of sabotage does not further the spirit of reconciliation either. Sabotage is Shell-speak for all damage that causes oil to spill. Again, Shell is unable to see itself as a problem: in Shell's corporate mind it is everyone else who is being irresponsible.
- The first priority is not, as the plan anticipates, to clean up oil spills but to deal with the cause of the spills which is the outdated oil production infrastructure: mainly the old pipe lines that criss-cross the surface of Ogoni farmland leaking all over the place. Brian Anderson, Managing Director of Shell in Nigeria, admitted this at a press conference held in the Shell Centre on November the 17th, 1995. Shell must set out standards of operation for the Niger Delta that accord to its standards in North America and Europe.
- The next priority is to deal with what a Shell executive has called the Black Hole of Corruption in Shell which, together with the inward looking philosophy of the company, is the root cause of its problems.
- The community development projects and scholarships which are mentioned in the press release are nice things to have, but they will not solve the deep-rooted problems of Shell in Ogoni. We should all remember here in Europe that Ogoni development has been going on since before the Europeans entered and began to mess up the Niger Delta: it is a result of their own efforts. Ogoni does not need Shell but Shell owes a debt to Ogoni and it must be paid on Ogoni terms. And,
- Finally and what the press statement does not mention is the fact that Shell must convince the local people that it intends to keep its word: it has NOT done so in the past.
