Nigeria victims hail $15.5 million Shell payout

Agence France Presse : Victims of murder, torture and other abuses by Nigeria's former military government on Tuesday hailed a landmark out-of-court settlement with Royal Dutch Shell over its alleged complicity in the crimes. Shell agreed on Monday in New York to pay out 15.5 million dollars (10.7 million euros) to relatives of Nigerian writer and activist Ken Saro-Wiwa and others executed in 1995 in what plaintiffs said was a campaign of repression backed by the oil giant. The settlement brings to an end a long battle by the Nigerian victims and means that Shell avoids a potentially embarrassing court case while having to accept no actual wrongdoing.

Saro-Wiwa had led a non-violent campaign to protest environmental destruction and abuses against the Ogoni people in the Niger Delta before he was hanged along with other activists after his trial in a military court. "We welcome the 15.5 million dollars compensation for the illegal killings of Ken Saro-Wiwa and the other eight Ogoni leaders," Bariara Kpalap, spokesman for the Movement for the Survival of the Ogoni People (MOSOP), told AFP.

But Kpalap insisted Shell must still address the issue of environmental pollution and change the way it does business in the oil-rich Niger Delta, where farmers and fishermen are being driven off.

For details of the case and the settlement click here.

The end of an era

The death of President Omar Bongo in a Spanish hospital brings an era of African history to an end. Omar Bongo was so successful at the art of holding on to power that by the end of his life there was no one left in his country with enough authority to pronounce him dead. It took more than 24 hours for the death of the 73-year-old president of Gabon to be confirmed, during which time there were no less than three official denials. The final word eventually came from Gabon's prime minister Jean Eyeghe Ndong, who confirmed the president had died of a cardiac arrest in a Barcelona hospital. This was just hours after the same official had held a press conference at the clinic to say he had seen his president "alive and well".

"President Omar Bongo's greatest legacy is the political stability he was able to achieve and maintain throughout his time in office," said Tara O'Connor, managing director of Africa Risk Consulting. "Unlike neighbouring Congo-Brazzaville and Cote d'Ivoire where the elite's resistance to democracy ultimately provoked civil war, President Bongo met the challenge and later artfully co-opted his opponents into high government office."

Albert Bernard Bongo was born in 1935, the 12th son of a farmer who died when he was seven years old. His official website boasts that "he didn't come into the world on a hospital bed, and he didn't have a cot or a nanny". In 1973, six years after taking over from Gabon's first post-independence leader, he converted to Islam, taking the name El Hadj Omar Bongo. By the time of his death, his name was Omar Bongo Ondimba, after he added a pre-colonial traditional name, reclaimed to underline his African credentials. There was very little that the man who wore platform shoes to disguise his short stature, (reportedly, he was only 4ft 11 tall), would not do to get an edge. And this played no small part in the fact that when he died, he was one of the richest men in the world.

Although no clear figure of his net worth has been confirmed, the scale of his plundered riches had begun to emerge, thanks to a court case in Gabon's former colonial master, France. Mr Bongo was one of three African leaders accused this year of embezzlement by the French wing of corruption watchdog, Transparency International. Also under investigation are Republic of Congo leader Denis Sassou-Nguesso, a close ally and father-in-law of Mr Bongo, and Teodoro Obiang Nguema of Equatorial Guinea. The trio have been accused of looting state coffers. Their extensive portfolio of French properties, worth many multiples of their stated official earnings, have been cited as evidence of corruption.

Throughout his four-decade stint in office which began with the death of his predecessor Leon M'ba in 1967 in a French hospital, former army officer Bongo displayed an acute understanding of the importance of relations with Paris. "Gabon without France is like a car with no driver. France without Gabon is like a car with no fuel," is how the former French air force lieutenant liked to describe the bond.

When French oil giant ELF was looking for a base of operations in the 1970s, Mr Bongo made sure it was Gabon to which they turned first. The Paris trial in 2003 of former Elf chairman Loik Le Floch-Prigent revealed the extent of the corruption and shady dealings in the resultant oil boom where the company was allowed to operate as a "state within a state" in a manner that foreshadowed companies like Royal Dutch Shell in their later dealings with Nigeria. The Gabonese president shrugged off revelations of huge kickback payments to his personal accounts, dismissing them as a "French matter".

Prior to the current suit brought by Transparency International, a police investigation into French real estate owned by the president and his family uncovered 33 properties in Paris and on the French Riviera worth an estimated $190m. A decade ago, a US Senate probe into private banking operations at Citibank estimated that the president held $130m in personal accounts and concluded that there could be "no doubt that these financial assets were sourced in the public finances of Gabon".

 

In the two photos (courtesy of REUTERS), above left and below are two properties in France registered in the names of President Bongo and his son, part of a real estate portfolio said to top $190 m.

Through a shrewd disbursement of this vast wealth, collected from oil, the farmer's son maintained friendships with French politicians of every ideological hue that sustained him almost until the end. "He was a great figure of Africa," a "man who had influence", said French Defence Minister Herve Morin when told of his death. The special relationship had become strained, though, under the presidency of Nicolas Sarkozy whose government is considering dismantling its 1,000-strong army base in Libreville. The current frostiness was demonstrated by the ailing autocrat's decision to seek treatment last month in Barcelona, rather than a French hospital. Amid rumours that he had cancer, Gabon officials insisted he was having a "routine check-up". Even after his death, the country's prime minister insisted that Mr Bongo had died of a "cardiac arrest", making no mention of cancer.

In Libreville the capital city of Gabon, one of the favourite jokes was that the quickest way to become a millionaire was to set up an opposition party. The experience of Pierre Mamboundou, leader of the Union for the People of Gabon – who until recently was considered the president's main challenger is proof that it was more than a joke. Mr Mamboundou, the veteran of two bruising and ultimately unsuccessful presidential contests with Mr Bongo, enjoyed a reputation as an uncompromising free speaker prepared to go to jail for the strength of his convictions. Since 2006 he has gone politically quiet and has since revealed that Bongo offered to give him $21.5m for the development of his constituency.

If his case illustrates the carrot used by the farmer's son, then Joseph Rendjambe reveals the stick. The opposition leader died in mysterious circumstances in 1990, the very year the president finally bowed to pressure to scrap the one-party state and bring in multi-party democracy. Only there was no one to lead the opposition. Rendjambe's death sparked riots that rocked Gabon for weeks and presented a rare threat to the regime.

The reality of the Bongo years meant that while Gabon missed the worst of the instability that has affected much of sub-Saharan Africa, it also missed the opportunities to transform itself as a country with the same per capita wealth as Portugal could have done. A small elite were the closest that Gabon came to fostering a middle class and many in the rural areas remained untouched by the oil money. While the country has almost 900 miles of oil pipeline, it has less than 600 miles of paved roads.

The passing of one of Africa's more memorable "Big Men" caused confusion and fear in Libreville, where many shops and businesses have been closed since reports first emerged in the French media on Sunday night. For the vast majority of the nation's 1.4 million people, the diminutive farmer's son was the only president they had known, having been in charge for 41 years. "We closed the restaurant since the announcement," said one waiter. "People are scared."

(Culled from an article in The Independent newspaper)

Oh my God!

Djimon goes into several shops in SoHo while his fiancee waits in the car. New York City, USA - 26.05.09

The way I see it

I think the mind of the present day African is affected and influenced by so many diverging factors that many of us are unable to work out exactly what our place is in the world. Those of my parents' generation grew up in Africa at a time when most of Africa (and certainly Nigeria where my parents were) was subjugated to Europe, such that the aspiration of the African at that time, was to strive to become as European as possible, since this was what was presented to them as the ideal. My father in all the years that I knew him, loved his tea, a passion he acquired through his association with the British expats with whom he had worked very closely in the many years that he served in the then colonial government of Nigeria. His passion for tea was only matched by my mother's love of fine bone china. Both of them had been sent by the colonial government to Britain during the 1950's, where they lived for some years. Looking back now, I can clearly see that the interior of the home in which I grew up in the 1970s was an imitation of the typical English suburban home of the 1960s, complete with lace curtains. And of course my mother's treasured porcelain, teapots were her favorite, of all shapes and sizes, none of which I remember ever being used.

But as hard as my parents tried to Europeanize, they always were African. Unlike me and my siblings who grew up speaking English as a first language, (which itself I suspect was deliberate on my parents' part),

my parents spoke the indigenous language to each other. And it wasn't just the language. They exposed us to our true history and culture too. They took us during the school holidays to the ancestral village, where they had managed to build a house during the years when my father still worked for the colonial government. That house too was equipped with gear that Mum and Dad had repatriated from the UK; furniture, refrigerator, gas cooker and the ever present ornate china of which Mum was so fond. And while in the village, they would make sure that we interacted with the people there, joined our respective age-groups and participated in the age-group activities. The outcome of this was that we became exposed to a completely different worldview from that to which we were accustomed, living mostly in Lagos the big city.

Back in Lagos, my education was Western. At school I learned science, art, Western music and how to play Western musical instruments. For leisure my brother and I would read books by Enid Blyton and such other European children's stories. Walt Disney productions, comic books and TV cartoons were a staple.

Together with this westernisation however, came the indigenous folklore at the ancestral village, those folk-tales about the spirit world and the animal kingdom, the wisdom and cunning of the tortoise,  and the sacred nature of 'adagba', the revered python. These were the same folk-tales that even our great grandparents had heard as children. But then, added to all of this was also that very strict religious instruction of the Christian faith, as so happened by chance, since this could just as easily have been the Islamic faith. This was a hodgepodge of information to assimilate as a child and it is undeniable that there has been a lasting impact on my mind with regards to finding a true identity.

I am African, but do I really think like an African should? I could ask the same question of many other Africans. The clergy of the Anglican Church in Africa are keen to inform us that homosexuality is un-African. But they seem blind to the fact that the Anglican Church itself originates from somewhere other than Africa. Most of the arguments against homosexuality that are heard in Africa today are supported with references to the Bible. But tell me, what is African about the Bible? What have we done with our African identity? Traditional dress for men in the part of Nigeria where my ancestors came from is comprised of a top hat from Europe of the Victorian era, or a bowler hat for the more trendy types. The top half of the man's body is adorned with a Victorian Englishman's nightshirt, traditionally decorated on the front with jewelry or coral beads. The bottom half is covered with a cloth that I can only describe as Madras cloth , which my mind tells me was introduced to my people from the Indian sub-continent and Indonesia by the early European traders. So that today, when a man is fully dressed in his "traditional dress", almost every item of his clothing is from somewhere outside Africa. Including his shoes!

What has happened to us? Where is our true identity?

Africa, are we preparing for a rapidly changing climate?

It is not in dispute that the world's climate is changing. Hand in hand with this change is environmental degradation on an industrialised scale, the rate and extent of which has never before been known.

As a young child growing up in Lagos, Nigeria in the 1970s, the country was in the throes of putting up an impressive show titled the Festival of Arts and Culture, or FESTAC as it came to be known. Part of the grandiosity of the event was the construction of a brand new town on the outskirts of Lagos, supposedly to provide accommodation for the thousands of participants at this festival. Along with this FESTAC town was to be constructed a 4-Lane motor way between Lagos and Badagry close to the country's border with the Republic of Benin. The road would continue into Benin, to Cotonou, that country's largest city. We lived in Surulere, which itself was then still a newly developed area of Lagos, having been built up for the first time in the 1960s. The Badagry Expressway led from somewhere behind where we lived, on towards the FESTAC town and then further on still for tens of kilometres to Badagry. FESTAC town and the Badagry Expressway were projects that would cause the breaking into of virgin land.

We were children, and this newly constructed highway which was yet to opened because several bridges along its length had not been completed, presented itself to us as a huge adventure playground. And of course, my brother and I took full advantage of this, going for long walks along the newly laid tarmac. What is vivid in my memory is the dense rain forest on both sides of the road, thick foliage, even wild monkeys in the trees. And this was just a few minutes walk from the bustling cosmopolitan city that was Lagos of the 1970s. We would walk down that empty road for what seemed like miles, but which in reality was no more than half a kilometre, and come to the first bridge on that motorway, a bridge across a river which flowed from the Yoruba Highlands to the north of Lagos into the Lagos Lagoon. My memories of that river and its bank, are of a pristine environment almost exactly as nature had intended it to be, crystal clear water with countless shoals of fish visible in the water, swimming against the force of the current. Although I now know better, at that time it seemed like fun when the few fishermen we did see at this place would sprinkle a few drops of IZAL disinfectant into the water, and the fish reacting to the effect of the IZAL in the water, would leap out in their hundreds unto the riverbank. This was such a cool way to catch fish, my brother and I thought, and we would help the fishermen pick up the fish and put them in baskets that they had placed on the riverbank for this purpose.

My family moved away from Surulere a few years later and it was not until many years afterwards that I went on a deliberate mission to find out what had become of that magical place of childhood memory. It took hours of wandering back and forth along the now very busy Badagry Expressway, before I finally realised that what I was looking at was in fact that river of 20 years ago. First of all, it was no longer a river. Secondly, there was no sign of forest anywhere within sight. What was once dense green vegetation was now what seemed like hundreds of rusting corrugated iron shacks of the kind to be found in any auto mechanic's workshop in Nigeria. That river had been turned into a refuse disposal area, where the mechanics dumped waste engine oil, old tyres, broken engine parts. The water, if you could all it that, was black. In fact it contained more oil than water. Having seen what this place once was, seeing it as it is now just 20 years later came as a complete shock, and the experience has forced me in a more acute way to confront the reality of the damage that we humans are doing to our environment.

In Africa in particular, the basic needs for survival are paramount in peoples' minds. Thoughts about the environment and conservation are far removed from the issues that people have to deal with on a day to day basis. But ironically, apart from the direct environmental change of the kind I have described above and further down in this post for which we Africans are responsible, most of the environmental changes that we will have to confront in the near future are not of our own making. According to the United Nations Environment Agency, while Africa accounts for only 4% of the world's CO2 emissions, it is said that it’s inhabitants will suffer the most from the effects of climate change. The huge environmental impacts of climate change and local non-sustainable practices are matters that African governments must from now start to pay more serious attention to.

In Nigeria and several other African countries, unplanned urban sprawl, rapid population growth and consequent agricultural expansion has meant that much of the forest has been lost. Deforestation is a word I've heard being mentioned in Nigeria for decades, but I have no confidence that the seriousness of the problem that it represents has been appreciated at the right levels of government. The remaining woodlands are being degraded by over exploitation for fuel wood and non-wood forest products. To compound the area's problems the land is being farmed nearly continuously, with a shortened or no fallow period for the land to recover fertility. And as the population continues to grow the problem is going to continue to get worse. As Marthinus Van Schalkwyk, South Africa’s minister of environmental affairs and tourism states…“Africa is one of the regions least responsible for climate change, and is also least able to afford the costs of adaptation.”

Climate change knows no territorial borders and recognises no man-made boundaries or lines drawn in the ground. The changes to the world's climate will affect the entire population of the Earth. The poor people of the world are the most vulnerable to natural disasters, the most reliant on harvests coming at the right time, and the least able to adapt or move away from dangerous places. That is why climate change hits poor people hardest. Changing weather patterns are increasingly bringing devastating floods, drought, failed harvests, malnutrition, increased disease and death. Climate-change induced mass migration of entire populations from devastated areas, has the potential of becoming one of the more serious issues that the world will be forced to tackle in the 21st Century. In the meanwhile, African leaders are mindlessly still busy enriching themselves, regardless that their tenure on this earth is temporary and paying little regard to the state of the world that they will be bequeathing to their children's children.

So what are you going to do about it?

I was thinking about an online discussion in which I was involved, to be found here. Retrospecting on that discussion, I am inclined to concur with that commenter who suggested that gay people in Africa need to be more visible on the whole. My humble opinion is that there is a need for gay African men and women to actively demonstrate the reality of who we are to the heterosexual majority, whilst at the same time being careful not to come across as being hostile towards them. We cannot and should not be hostile and antagonistic, after all, these are our brothers and sisters we're talking about here. Methinks that there is an unhelpful and unhealthy us-against-them mentality that has been engendered in the gay/straight conversation among Africans. Many right thinking heterosexuals are reluctant to argue in favour of homosexuality, because they fear being painted (or is it tainted?) with the homosexual brush. At the same time, many of the gay advocates are combative in their approach, and in the process further alienate those whose understanding and acceptance they so desperately seek.

But whether we like it or not, gay or straight, homophobic or die hard gay activist, we are all parts of one whole; the human race, the African community. If a segment of that community is unhappy, as is the case with the majority of the gay segment of the African community, this is a matter for the whole of the African community. We homosexual Africans are Africans too, and the issues that we face in society with stigmatisation and so forth are ultimately issues which the African society as a whole must confront. HIV prevention information that is targeted specifically at Men who have Sex with Men (MSM) for instance, benefits not only these men in particular, but the whole of society, since it is the case that many of these MSMs also have heterosexual partners with whom they routinely engage in sexual intercourse, most of which is unprotected. Homosexual people are a part of mainstream society. We are not divorced from it.

Contrary to the belief held by some, there has not been an increase in the homosexual population in Africa. The information age has created opportunities for information to be disseminated more widely, more rapidly, and the outcome that we have seen is of awareness and enlightenment on a scale never before witnessed in human history. The world has shrunk and what information a person is privy to is determined less and less by where that person is located physically. Homosexual Africans are aware that their counterparts in other parts of the world have been recognised to be ordinary human beings who express an entirely normal variation of human sexuality. Sexual relations between adults of whatever gender cannot be abnormal, since as human beings our sexuality is an integral part of who we are. Consensual sexual relations between adults of whatever gender is not immoral either, in my submission.

It is immoral to rape, but it cannot be immoral if I as a man should fall in love with another man whose desire it is to love me back. How can it be said to be immoral when two adult people find happiness together? Who is harmed? Where is the victim? Is it moral when a homosexual man hides or denies his sexuality, marries a woman whom he cannot love, and lies to her daily while cheating on her with other men? Is this the course that these very 'moral' good African people would rather that I follow?

Well, I'm sorry to disappoint, because you're going to have to get used to me, and others like myself, who are willing no longer to bow to some archaic colonial European doctrine that decrees compulsory heterosexuality. I am not heterosexual, and although I love my sisters very much indeed, I am a man who is physically, psychologically, emotionally, and sexually attracted to masculinity. I am gay, and I am 100% African. That closet door was shut behind me long ago, and I intend never to go back there. 

More and more of us gay Africans need to come out and speak up. When we do this, we can create for ourselves a voice that people will listen to and not feel threatened by, while at the same time shedding that burden of the fear-of-exposure that dominates our lives, which only provides fertile ground for blackmailers, and fodder for tabloids such as the Red Pepper in Uganda. You cannot out me, because I have outed myself already. And there is nothing you can do about it!