Nigeria’s historical background in regard to both national politics and the oil industry help put Shell Oil Company’s operations in Nigeria into context. Nigeria, an English speaking country in West Africa, is the most populated country in Africa with 180 million people; and has one of the largest and fastest growing economies in the world with five percent growth in GDP every year. Further, Nigeria is one of the world’s largest producers of oil in the world and is part of the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (hereafter “OPEC”). RDS, a British and Dutch multinational gas and petroleum company headquartered in Holland, has many subsidiaries such as the Shell Oil Company (American Subsidiary) and Shell Petroleum Development Company (Nigerian Subsidiary hereafter referred to as “SPDC”). SPDC has been the biggest fossil fuel company in the Nigeria and it accounts for over twenty percent of Nigeria's total oil production. Shell was first established in Nigeria in 1937 and was given a license of exploration in 1938. Four years before Nigeria’s Independence from Great Britain in 1960, Shell Nigeria discovered economically feasible oil in 1956. In 1957, Shell established the first oil field in the Delta region of Nigeria, located in the land owned by the Ogoni tribe. By 1958, Shell had begun exporting oil from Nigeria for the first time commercially. I. Question of Ethical Breach? Since the 1970’s, Shell has consistently been accused of major environmental and human rights violations for its oil activities in Nigeria. The “Ejama-Ebubu community oil spill” of the 1970’s affected 255 hectares of land; nevertheless, it wasn’t until 2010 that the federal court of Nigeria charged Shell 100 million dollars for damages from the incident. Also during the 1970’s through the 1980’s, there were several cases of government troops forcing locals off their land to make way for Shell to construct pipelines. Finally in the 1990’s, a major conflict developed when the Ogoni people became fed up with the negative environmental and economic effects of Shell’s oil operations on their communities. Ironically, even though the oil rich lands of the Ogoni tribes contributed to the majority of wealth for the entire Nigerian state, the Ogoni people were still amongst the poorest in the entire country. One of the most shocking events to take place during this conflict was the Nigerian military’s execution in 1995 of Ken Saro-Wiwa, the president of the popular political faction known as the Movement for the Survival of the Ogoni People protest group. It was alleged that Shell had conspired with the then ruthless president of Nigeria, Sani Abacha, to kill Ken because his protest movement became very popular and was a serious threat to Shells operations in the region. Initially Shell claimed that it had nothing to do with the executions, but later it admitted to giving money to the Nigerian military without knowledge that their contribution would be used for the purpose of executing the protesters. Later in 2003, Shell admitted that some of its practices were detrimental to the local communities in the Niger Delta ‘‘we sometimes feed conflict by the way we award contracts, gain access to land, and deal with community representatives.” Finally by 2009 a fifteen million dollar settlement was awarded to the families of the late Ken Saro-Wiwa and other executed protestors, yet Shell still denied any wrongdoing. Shell has operated profitably in Nigeria since its entry into the country’s oil industry, often taking advantage of the extremely relaxed Nigerian regulations for oil production at the cost of the Nigerian people and their local environment. In 2011, a United Nations report condemned the Nigerian government and Shell for its contribution to pollution for the past fifty years in the Niger Delta region. The Niger Delta was declared the largest ever oil cleanup region, requiring an estimated cost of one billion United States dollars for over the next thirty years. Also, disputes regarding oil spills in the Niger-Delta region have been a long-standing source of contention between Shell, the local people and

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[ 1 ]. “Nigeria oil firms ‘deflect blame for spills,’ says Amnesty” BBC News, November 7, 2013, Retrieved November
10, 2013 from http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-africa-24839324.