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AfricaFocus Bulletin
Country-focused Bulletins
Aug 12, 2011 Nigeria: Past Time for Oil Cleanup, 2
"Shell faces a bill of hundreds of millions of dollars
after accepting full liability for two massive oil spills
that devastated a Nigerian community of 69,000 people and
may take at least 20 years to clean up. Experts who studied
video footage of the spills at Bodo in Ogoniland say they
could together be as large as the 1989 Exxon Valdez
disaster in Alaska, when 10m gallons of oil destroyed the
remote coastline." - Guardian
Aug 12, 2011 Nigeria: Past Time for Oil Cleanup, 1
The fact that the environment of the Niger Delta, and that
portion of it known as Ogoniland, has been devastated by
oil pollution for decades should not be news. It has been
repeatedly exposed by Nigerian and international activists
in print, court testimony, photographs, and films, and
punctuated by the 1995 martyrdom of Ken Saro-Wiwa and his
fellow Ogoni activists. But this month, for the first time,
a comprehensive scientific survey of oil pollution in
Ogoniland has concluded that the pollution is even more
pervasive than many previously assumed. Simultaneously, in
response to a class-action suit in London, Shell Oil has
accepted responsibility for two massive oil spills in
Ogoniland in 1998.
Mar 18, 2011 Nigeria: Can Elections be Fair?
"The April 2011 general elections - if credible and peaceful -
would reverse the degeneration of the franchise since Nigeria
returned to civilian rule in 1999, yield more representative and
legitimate institutions and restore faith in a democratic
trajectory. Anything similar to the 2007 sham, however, could
deepen the vulnerability of West Africa's largest country to
conflict." - International Crisis Group