18 



hazardly buried in makeshift pits only to bubble again to the sur- 

 face during rainy season. 



Madam Chairman, you asked that I address the issue of property 

 rights in my testimony. Well, in 1978, the military declared all 

 land in Nigeria the property of the Federal Government. This had 

 the effect of freeing the oil companies from having to negotiate with 

 the locals, whose property included vast oil reserves. Gas flaring in 

 Ogoni villages had destroyed wildlife, plant life, poisoned the air 

 and water, left residents half-deaf and prone to respiratory dis- 

 eases. According to the U.N. Conference on Environment Develop- 

 ment, the nearly four decades of oil extraction in the Niger Delta 

 from the coastal rain forest and main growth habitat has left it the 

 most endangered river delta in the world. 



In May, many of the claims of environmentalists against Shell 

 were vindicated. Bopp van Dessel, Shell's former head of environ- 

 mental studies, revealed in a British television interview that the 

 company broke its own rules and international standards and 

 failed to respond to his warnings. "Wherever I went, I could see 

 that Shell was not operating their facilities properly," van Dessel 

 said. "They were not meeting their own standards. They were not 

 meeting international standards. Any Shell site that I saw was pol- 

 luted. Any terminal that I saw was polluted." 



It was in response to this devastation, this exploitation, that in 

 1990 Ken Saro-Wiwa and other Ogoni leaders formed the move- 

 ment for the survival of the Ogoni people. On January 4, Saro- 

 Wiwa drew international attention to their cause by leading a 

 peaceful demonstration, a protest march of 300,000 people through- 

 out Ogoniland. Again, that is 300,000 in a community of 500,000. 

 The resistance has been met with a repression. 



In May 1994, the Nigerian Internal Security Task Force attacked 

 and virtually destroyed over 30 Ogoni villages, killing more than 

 100 people and arresting hundreds more. In the years since 

 MOSOP was founded, more than a thousand Ogoni have been 

 killed during clashes with the Nigerian Military Police. 



The Ogoni are a peaceful people. To the best of our knowledge, 

 there have been no protest-related deaths of anyone with Shell or 

 the Nigerian military. 



More than 90 percent of Nigeria's farm revenue comes from oil 

 exports, as I said. Nearly 50 percent of this oil is exported to the 

 United States. Americans are the largest consumers of Nigerian oil, 

 yet Nigerian oil represents only 3V2 percent of America's total oil 

 consumption. It is both economically possible and morally impera- 

 tive that we stop our consumption of the oil that fuels the current 

 regime. 



Shell makes approximately $200 million a year in profits in Ni- 

 geria and has begun work on a $4-billion natural gas joint venture 

 with the military. An international embargo of Nigerian oil would 

 hurt the country's generals who pocket most of the $10-billion oil 

 revenue. A boycott would hold Shell accountable for its environ- 

 mental abuses and tolerance of injustice. 



Nine days after the Ogoni were executed, the Sierra Club Board 

 of Directors voted to support an embargo of Nigerian oil and a 

 consumer boycott of Shell products until such time as the company 

 has cleaned up the pollution it has caused in Nigeria, agreed to 



