Nnimmo Bassey

When the Ogoni people demanded a halt to the unwholesome acts of the Shell Production and Development Company (SPDC or Shell) and the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC), the government called them names and unleashed security agents to maim, rape and murder and hound many into exile.

People who have suffered the impact of unjust practices and those who have been victims of abuse from corporate impunity will heave a sigh of relief the day directors of such companies are brought to court from behind their corporate shields.

Equatorial Guinea sits in the heart of Africa and is the fourth highest producer of crude oil in sub-Saharan Africa after Nigeria, Angola, and Sudan. It has reaped huge revenues from crude oil sales since 1995 when commercial export began, although discovery of the product was made in the 1960s.

As Sudanese vote this week on staying as one nation or becoming two, my mind goes back to when civil war broke out in Nigeria in 1967.

The Willink Commission Report of 1958, which examined the fears of minorities and proposed ways to allay them in the fledgling nation, painted a graphic picture of the gross neglect of the Niger Delta. This was the same year that commercial exploitation of oil took root in Nigeria.

In an era where Africa is often portrayed as a ‘basket case’ there are bright spots that doggedly show that this is no season for despair.

When I headed to the Gulf of Mexico, I had a lot of expectations. Above all, the trip to Louisiana, Mississippi and Alabama was a quest to see the remains of oil spill that held the attention of the world right from when it erupted on 20 April.

It was a bumpy ride on the Commission for Sustainable Development (CSD) highway last week, as delegates appeared to be driving forward with their eyes fixed on their rear-view mirrors.

As the Niger Delta boils and as Nigeria looks towards a bleak future with diminished oil revenues, the oil corporations operating in Nigeria continue to garner obscene profits.

One of the key failures of the Kyoto protocol is that it did not unambiguously pin the blame for the problem on hydrocarbons. As long as this was the case, the frameworks for handling the problem were fundamentally flawed.