19 JULY
OIL BLOW-OUT POISONS NIGERIAN FARMLAND
[ 19 July 1970 ]
A massive blow-out of an oil well, owned by the Anglo-Dutch multinational Shell in Ogoniland in South Eastern Nigeria, devastated farmland for many miles around, poisoning the water supply. One eyewitness describing an “ocean of crude oil… moving swiftly like a flood, successfully swallowing up anything that comes in its way.” Those farmers who were able to return to their fields had to wade knee-deep through crude while surrounding populations had to breath the toxic smoke which smothered much of Ogoniland. Little was done to clean up the land or compensate the local people. It was still contaminating the land twenty years later. [1]
FOOTNOTES
- Quoted in Paul Kenyon, (2018), “Dictatorland: The Men Who Stole Africa,” Head of Zeus Ltd, London, 226-227 and Cyril I Obi “Environmental Movements in Sub-Saharan Africa: A Political Ecology of Power and Conflict,” p8 accessed at https://www.files.ethz.ch/isn/91580/15.pdf