Shell Oil's Settlement Is Only the Beginning

AP Photo Now that Shell Oil has settled a lawsuit over the death of a Nigerian activist, Steve Kretzman—a fellow activist and expert in the field—says the Ogoni peoples' struggle for justice has only begun. Shell settled because they were scared.

After 13 years and countless hours by lawyers, community members, and activists around the world, Royal Dutch Shell finally settled the Wiwa v. Shell case in a New York court for $15.5 million.

Shell says they settled the case as a “humanitarian gesture” to the Ogoni. Does anyone really believe that after fighting for more than a decade to keep this out of court, Shell suddenly woke up and felt great compassion for the Ogoni? Please.

Shell is still flaring gas with reckless abandon in Nigeria.

Writing in The Daily Beast, Joe McGinniss asks, “How much is a dead Nigerian worth to Shell”? It’s a perfectly legitimate question to ask, especially when you consider that Royal Dutch Shell is a corporation that made more than $30 billion in profits last year alone.

It's also more than a bit unfair. Not to Shell—who cares about them? But to the families of Ken Saro-Wiwa and the other executed Ogoni men, McGinniss’ article is completely insensitive to the reality of trying to find closure on a painful episode in their lives.

As Ken Wiwa Jr. wrote eloquently in the Guardian, “The case [was] freighted with all kinds of agendas that it [could not] possibly satisfy.” Has the settlement brought relief to Ken Wiwa, Jr. and the families of the other men who were executed?The answer from them is an unequivocal yes. That alone should be cause for celebration, and they alone get to be the judges of what is adequate for that.

Is $15.5 million enough to compensate for the hanging of nine men, the death of thousands more, and for the destruction of an ecosystem? No, of course not. One wonders what amount of money would ever be enough for that.

But was $15.5 million on par with what a jury would have awarded in this case? Yes, lawyers tell me, for sure.

The reality is Shell settled because they were scared, and they knew the evidence against them was overwhelming. They publicly say they had nothing to do with the execution of Ken Saro-Wiwa and the other Ogoni, and yet there were documents and video that they fought hard to keep out of the public eye.

Evidence that was to be introduced in the case included an internal Shell memo where the head of Shell Nigeria offered to intervene on Saro-Wiwa’s behalf, if only Saro-Wiwa and others would stop claiming that Shell had made payments to the military.