Emere Godwin Bebe Okpabi, the paramount ruler and hereditary king of the Ogale community in the oil-rich Niger delta, is ready to explode.
After nearly a week of sittting quietly in top hat and regal chains in the obscure technology and construction court in London listening to Shell, the Anglo-Dutch oil company, argue why 45,000 impoverished Ogalean farmers should not be allowed to sue the company in Britain for historical pollution, he says he feels “betrayed and saddened … I dispute everything they have said. To listen to Shell saying they have not been not responsible for the pollution in Ogale has been dreadful.”
King Emere wants to sue Shell in London for not cleaning up pollution because he fears his community may never get justice in Nigeria. “You can never, never defeat Shell in a Nigerian court. A case can go on for very many years. You can hardly get a judgment against [an oil company] in Nigeria. Shell is Nigeria and Nigeria is Shell.”
The stakes are high, he says. If the London judge hearing the preliminary arguments finds for the king then, in around one year’s time, Shell will have to defend itself in the British courts. The result could be a massive clean-up of Ogale, possibly millions of dollars’ in damages and other polluted communities bringing their cases to Britain.
The judge, who has nearly 1,000 pages of reports, submissions and statements from the two sides to consider will rule in the early new year. But if Shell wins, says the king, then the case will have to be heard in Nigeria where they may be able to avoid justice for decades because cases can get kicked between the appeal and supreme courts for many years.
“We are desperate people looking for justice. We know we cannot get justice there. A community near us got a huge judgment against Shell but the appeals have taken 10 years so far. In one case it has taken a community 32 years so far to get justice.”
Shell’s lawyers respond that the Nigerian justice system has been reformed and speeded up and that its Nigerian subsidiary, SPDC, should be held responsible for any pollution rather than the parent company, Shell International. They claim that Ogale has also been heavily affected by theft, pipeline sabotage and illegal refining rather than failure of infrastructure.
The king and and his legal team from a UK law firm, Leigh Day, argue that a precedent was set last year when Zambian villagers were allowed to take an Indian company to court in London over water pollution by a subsidiary because the Zambian legal system was deeply flawed.
That pollution has occurred in Ogale from old Shell and Nigerian oil company pipelines is not disputed. Official records say there have been more than 40 major spills in the small Ogale kingdom over the years, of which 23 have been since 2011.
In 2011 the UN environment programme (Unep) published a scientific study of pollution in Ogoniland which said it found oil spills happening with “alarming regularity” in Ogale, including groundwater contamination that is more than 4,500 times Nigerian recommended levels. Water samples taken in 2010 from three metres below ground were found to be contaminated with benzene and other chemicals.
