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Ethical Consumer has a feature called Love this, ban that! which asks an assortment of the green and the good which saintly products they love and which evil ones they’d ban. Sadly, only Mayor Boris took the opportunity to challenge the premise that banning things is the best way to steer society down a more sustainable path and to allay the well-founded suspicion among many outside the green ghetto that environmentalists tend to be ban-happy authoritarians.

Inexplicably, Ethical Consumer didn’t contact me to take part in their survey but I’d like to nominate the bicycle as my favourite “ethical consumer product” and the cycle helmet for an immediate, total ban backed up with the full force and violence of the criminal justice system.

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Oil is the Ogonis’ curse. Ogoniland in southern Nigeria, was  once the “food basket of the state”. Now, giant pipelines cross  once viable farmland leaving it useless, and the Ogoni import  their food. Spilt oil from ruptured pipelines has blackened the  earth. In 1993, a spill was left flowing onto farmland for 40  days. Gas flares have covered Ogoni villages in black soot, and  acid rain has washed the soot down into the soil, poisoning  water supplies and crops. Ogoni land has become Shell’s land.  Ogoni oil has become Shell’s oil, but Shell’s problems are now  the Ogonis’. The company has taken what it wanted and left.

Nigeria has known little stability since it gained independence  from Britain in 1960. In 1967 the eastern region seceded as the  Republic of Biafra, leading to a fierce civil war lasting three  years and ending with the Biafrans’ defeat. As Nigeria edged  towards democracy with free elections in 1993, General Sani  Abacha seized power in a military coup. A year later,  pro-democracy campaigners demanded that the military handed over  power to Moshood Abiola, the winner of the presidential  elections. Abiola and the others were arrested and charged with  treason. Newspapers that criticized the government were closed down and their staff were arrested. Over 200 pro-democracy campaigners were killed by troops in the protests that followed. Abiola and the others are still in prison.

Shell started extracting oil in Nigeria in 1958, and has so far taken over 900 million barrels. It withdrew from Ogoni in early 1993 pending the resolution of what Shell’s 1994 Annual Report describes in passing as “community problems”. The communities that have caused Shell such problems are almost wholly illiterate farmers who were ignored by the company when it first started drilling in the area. Negotiations centred on agreements between Shell and the Nigerian government on quotas and taxation, bypassing any notion of consultation or compensation at local level. The farmers who have been affected most by the drilling, and often ruined, gave no permission and they have received little or no benefits. Meanwhile, the government has seen oil production account for 80% of its revenue.

Inevitably, Shell’s operations led to resentment among the Ogoni who feared that the scale of environmental damage and disruption to their community threatened their very existence. In 1990, the charismatic writer and campaigner Ken Saro-Wiwa formed the Movement for the Survival of the Ogoni People, or MOSOP. MOSOP is claiming $6 billion in rent and royalties from Shell, and $4 billion in compensation for the damage caused to their land.

In a country ruled by an illegal military government, MOSOP’s campaign is necessarily political and dangerously controversial. Peaceful protests against Shell have been met with violence from the Nigerian police and military. The government fear that the protests will cause disruption to oil production and thus to its income, and that successful protests will be emulated elsewhere in Nigeria leading to widespread civil unrest and possibly the collapse of the government itself.

In 1990, a peaceful protest at Umuechem near Ogoni resulted in tragedy. Nigerian police opened fire on the crowd, killing 80 people. This was not an isolated incident. A similar protest against Shell at Bonny resulted in one person being killed, 30 shot and 150 beaten. In April 1994 the military took the initiative. Seemingly groundless ethnic clashes between the Ogoni and the neighbouring Ndoki led to the arrival of the Internal Security Task Force in the region. Amnesty International believes that the ethnic clashes were orchestrated by the military who used them both as a guise for their own attacks on Ogoni villages, and as a pretext for moving a large force into the area. The Ogoni say that this operation has caused more than 1800 deaths and destroyed many of their villages.

Ken Saro-Wiwa was arrested in May 1994 and is still in prison awaiting trial. He is charged with inciting the murder of four moderate Ogoni leaders, which he denies. Amnesty considers him a prisoner of conscience and links his detention directly to his campaign against Shell. An Amnesty report says that he was “severely beaten following his arrest and had his legs chained for 10 days, causing one leg to swell”. The British pressure group Shell Out claim that he has been refused medical treatment until recently despite having had two heart attacks, and reported that several prosecution witnesses have dropped out of his trial, “one alleging that he was paid by Shell and the military to testify against Saro-Wiwa”.

Shell Out believe that the violent repression of Ogoni protests and the detention of Ken Saro-Wiwa was not just the standard response of the Nigerian paramilitary police and army, but the result of collusion between Shell and the Nigerian authorities to defend their joint interests. As evidence of this collusion, Shell Out point to a memo leaked from the Nigerian High Commission in London recording a meeting in March between the Nigerian High Commissioner, four senior Shell officials and representatives of the Nigerian army and police. The meeting discussed the publicity given by the Body Shop chain to the detention of Ken Saro-Wiwa, and Shell reported that it had been “inundated with hundreds of letters of protest and abuse regarding their operations in Nigeria” from pressure groups, individuals and even Shell shareholders. The memo records Shell and the Nigerian officials formulating a joint strategy for dealing with the bad publicity resulting from pressure group campaigns and media coverage of the Ogoni situation.

Though much of the evidence of Shell’s collusion in military operations is anecdotal or disputed, it is misleading for Shell to argue that it is not a major player in domestic political and economic affairs in a country where its business accounts for such a large proportion of public revenue. Shell has shown its willingness and ability to intervene in local politics despite its stated policy to the contrary and has even reported the fact in a public briefing it has produced, The Ogoni Issue. “Though our policy is to avoid any involvement in politics,” it states, “we believe we have a right and responsibility to make its views known on matters affecting the company, its employees and the communities with which we work.” Whether funding for the violent military suppression of the Ogoni comes directly from Shell or from the taxes and royalties that are largely generated by Shell’s business, clearly Shell and the government are highly interdependent.

For this reason, and while Shell publicly voices its “concern about the actions of both sides in the dispute”, by which it refers to MOSOP and the government, not itself, it cannot wholly distance itself from the actions of a government that came to power through the violence of a military coup and according to Amnesty maintains its rule by the violent suppression of opposition. Shell is aware of these activities and claims to deplore them, yet says that its “most effective contribution to Nigeria is through the taxes and royalties we pay”.

The situation in Britain and in other oil-consuming countries is very different from that in Nigeria. When Shell proposed a pipeline from Cheshire to Scotland, it prepared 17 detailed surveys known as Environmental Impact Assessments (EIAs) and diverted the route of the pipe where it considered the impact to be excessive. Once the pipe was buried, the land was restored to its former state and Shell trumpeted its achievement in a television advertisement. The customers were reassured: Shell cared. However, when Shell laid a pipeline in Nigeria in April 1993, its contractors were escorted by troops. Confronted by a peaceful demonstration of 10 000 Ogoni, the troops opened fire killing one man and injuring many more. There were no EIAs or consultations, just brute force and indifference. Thus, Shell can maintain an environmentally concerned image here simply because it profits so greatly from its cheaper, less responsible operations like those in Ogoni.

Though the Ogoni face problems other than Shell’s activities, oil production has been the major agent of change in the country and where this business has not been carried on responsibly it has escalated existing problems and caused its own. The Ogoni have seen their traditional way of life swept away, and despite the huge amount of revenue generated from their oil and Shell’s community assistance programmes they have not achieved anything like a reasonable standard of living or development. In 1990, a BP engineer remarked of Oloibiri in Nigeria, “I have explored for oil in Venezuela, I have explored for oil in Kuwait, I have never seen an oil-rich town as completely impoverished as Oloibiri”. Clearly, little of the oil money has trickled down to the ordinary Nigerians.

While the Ogonis’ own campaign for justice has effectively been subdued by force for the present, their cause has been taken up by campaigners in Britain. Shell’s activities in Africa have led to vociferous protests here on its own doorstep. Shell Out campaigners who picketed Shell’s Annual General Meeting in London on 17th May found that they were not alone. Several other pressure groups had also decided to take a protest to Shell that day, including the Transport & General Workers Union who complained that Shell ignored workers’ rights, and wildlife groups protesting against Shell’s British operations.

The London protests coincided with an occupation by Greenpeace of the Brent Spar, a disused Shell oil rig in the North Sea. Greenpeace claim that the rig, which is due to be sunk, contains toxic waste that will harm marine life, and should be broken up on land and the waste properly treated. All growing evidence, perhaps, that Shell’s activities worldwide are causing increasing concern. Campaigners against Shell’s Nigerian operation have also demonstrated outside Shell’s London offices, and taken their message to the final link in the corporate chain: Shell’s ordinary petrol-buying customers.

Greenpeace calls Shell’s business in Ogoni “a microcosm of what we are doing to the entire earth, just less visibly”. Certainly, there is little to stop multinational companies acting as they choose in poor, unstable regions where they can profit from the need for export earnings of those countries and their lack of regulations. Where such companies are not conducting a principled business, local populations are often in a poor position to complain or take effective action, and when they do it often leads to situations like that in Ogoni. Yet the very strength of the multinationals is also their weakness: though they can produce with ease in the third world they have to sell their products in the first. It is here that they are most vulnerable to pressure. Campaigns and product boycotts are increasingly being taken up in the consuming countries of Europe and North America as more people start making connections between the devastation of communities and the environment in the third world and the products in their own homes.

The growing awareness of the situation in Ogoni may have come too late for Ken Saro-Wiwa. In a recent letter smuggled out of the military hospital where he is being held, he wrote: “It seems I have been taken to the military hospital to die… For two nights I have not slept a wink, I am being intimidated, harassed and dehumanised, even though I am supposed to be receiving medical attention… I am like Ogoni – battered, bruised, brutalised, bloodied and almost buried.” Despite pressure from consumers and shareholders for Shell to intervene with the Nigerian government on Saro-Wiwa’s behalf, it has declined to do so. Though Shell says that it would “wish Mr Saro-Wiwa to be correctly treated and have access to proper legal and healthcare facilities”, it will take more than sentiment to save Ken Saro-Wiwa, and the rest of Ogoni too.