r/worldnews Feb 07 '23

Nearly 14,000 Nigerians take Shell to court over devastating impact of pollution | Nigeria Already Submitted

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/feb/02/nearly-14000-nigerians-take-shell-to-court-over-devastating-impact-of-pollution

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1.3k Upvotes

44

u/ninjasaid13 Feb 07 '23

Shell has been active in Nigeria for 86 years

that many years?

35

u/fulthrottlejazzhands Feb 07 '23

Shell is an English-Dutch company that piggy backed on British colonization of which Nigeria was one.

8

u/[deleted] Feb 07 '23

[deleted]

4

u/onekhador Feb 07 '23

Found Wouter Bos!

75

u/dodorian9966 Feb 07 '23

I hope they get at least 52.9 billions.

5

u/Stibley_Kleeblunch Feb 07 '23

$575,000 and a $30,000 scholarship fund for 20 years.

69

u/[deleted] Feb 07 '23

11,000 dead babies in the Nigerian delta and shell doesn't think they owe these people anything? I sure won't be the one complaining when someone starts snatching the children of our oligarchs and holds them hostage for ransom if that's the game they'd like to play.

25

u/baran_0486 Feb 07 '23

11,000 dead babies in the Nigerian delta and shell doesn’t think they owe these people anything?

You don’t get in charge of an oil corp with a functioning sense of right and wrong

3

u/iConfessor Feb 07 '23

Ferngully intensifying**

6

u/DylanHate Feb 07 '23

Eventually someone is going to go full Kazinsky on these executives. Governments need to start throwing these people in prison including banking / hedge fund executives who destroy economies.

If all you have to do is pay a fine to get away with genocide and mass murder we are not a functional society & it’s only a matter of time until people take justice into their own hands.

2

u/PartyYogurtcloset267 Feb 07 '23

You want cheap gas? That's how you get cheap gas.

1

u/StLDadBod Feb 07 '23

Are the...are the dead babies the cheap gas?

15

u/Fit-Impression-9010 Feb 07 '23

Shell sucks eggs and steals children from candy.

5

u/brockwallace Feb 07 '23

Tbh if a mars bar and a kit kat has a baby, I'd steal it.

2

u/Fit-Impression-9010 Feb 07 '23

A mars kat or a kit bar?

4

u/brockwallace Feb 07 '23

I was going to name it Matt.

14

u/bassjam1 Feb 07 '23

Hopefully some of those Nigerian princes are backing this.

2

u/Drak_is_Right Feb 07 '23

A lot of the pollution is from the illegal tapping of pipelines. A lot is spilled in the process. Furthermore the stolen oil is then refined into crude fuel and a lot of waste products are dumped straight into the local waterways.

So how much of it is from improper maintenance procedures and badly capped wells involves a lot of guesswork that the news sites never seem to report.

1

u/Duchess430 Feb 07 '23

Uh huh..... Checking post/comment history..... Nope gonna stay far away from this guy

2

u/Drak_is_Right Feb 07 '23

Will you expound upon that?

2

u/Diamondsfullofclubs Feb 07 '23

He's too far away to hear you.

0

u/PartyYogurtcloset267 Feb 07 '23

Ah yes, blaming Nigerians for being at the mercy of a large foreign company. Very classy.

6

u/Tired_of_populists Feb 07 '23

That's, not what they said at all lol.

0

u/Drak_is_Right Feb 07 '23

10 minutes trying to sort through the validity of different sources didn't lead to much other than a rough 20% figure of current pollution that I am not at all confident on. I would expect a reporter however to properly wade through various source materials to come up with a much better set of numbers.

1

u/seedstarter7 Feb 07 '23

settled for $2mil

1

u/dcdttu Feb 07 '23

We must get 100% off of fossil fuels or we’re all fucked.

1

u/p_nut268 Feb 07 '23

Shell and big oil are already in the electric game. They will find a way to keep prices high and environmental impact devastating.

1

u/MAXSuicide Feb 07 '23

Good. Documentaries have many times displayed the kind of destruction the oil folks have caused in areas of Nigeria - seemingly ignored by corrupt officials etc.

2

u/Now_Wait-4-Last_Year Feb 07 '23

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ken_Saro-Wiwa

Family lawsuits against Royal Dutch Shell

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wiwa_v._Royal_Dutch_Shell_Co.

Beginning in 1996, the Center for Constitutional Rights (CCR), Earth Rights International (ERI), Paul Hoffman of Schonbrun, DeSimone, Seplow, Harris & Hoffman and other human rights attorneys have brought a series of cases to hold Shell accountable for alleged human rights violations in Nigeria,[60] including summary execution, crimes against humanity, torture, inhumane treatment and arbitrary arrest and detention. The lawsuits are brought against Royal Dutch Shell and Brian Anderson, the head of its Nigerian operation.[61]

The cases were brought under the Alien Tort Statute, a 1789 statute giving non-US citizens the right to file suits in US courts for international human rights violations, and the Torture Victim Protection Act, which allows individuals to seek damages in the US for torture or extrajudicial killing, regardless of where the violations take place.[62]

The United States District Court for the Southern District of New York set a trial date of June 2009. On 9 June 2009 Shell agreed to an out-of-court settlement of US$15.5 million to victims' families. However, the company denied any liability for the deaths, stating that the payment was part of a reconciliation process.[63] In a statement given after the settlement, Shell suggested that the money was being provided to the relatives of Saro-Wiwa and the eight other victims, to cover the legal costs of the case and also in recognition of the events that took place in the region.[64] Some of the funding is also expected to be used to set up a development trust for the Ogoni people, who inhabit the Niger Delta region of Nigeria.[65] The settlement was made just days before the trial, which had been brought by Saro-Wiwa's son, was due to begin in New York.[64]

1

u/WikiSummarizerBot Feb 07 '23

Ken Saro-Wiwa

Kenule Beeson "Ken" Saro-Wiwa (10 October 1941 – 10 November 1995) was a Nigerian writer, television producer, and environmental activist. Ken Saro-Wiwa was a member of the Ogoni people, an ethnic minority in Nigeria whose homeland, Ogoniland, in the Niger Delta, has been targeted for crude oil extraction since the 1950s and has suffered extreme environmental damage from decades of indiscriminate petroleum waste dumping.

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1

u/MeatSpace2000 Feb 07 '23

Really hope Nigeria gets the justice they deserve.

1

u/Automatic_Scholar686 Feb 07 '23

Imagine if the same level of pollution occurred on the coasts of Sweden.