This book is by a trio of chest beating and self styled ‘environmental activists’ who wish to show the enormity of the destruction that oil wealth has wrought on certain parts of Nigeria, namely, the Niger Delta area. Let us start with some home truths about these authors: firstly, they are nonplussed fans of Ken Saro Wiwa, the Ogoni leader, writer, and activist hanged in November 1995, for murder.
   
They portray Wiwa as a dove who was consumed by the fire of tyranny and corporate - read Shell Oil - vengeance. The authors trust that Wiwa was an environmental saint. This toes the line of many of the numerous writers who are revealing the degradation of the lands where oil is produced in Nigeria, such as Ogoniland.

The book opens at Port Harcourt Prison where Wiwa and his colleagues were hanged that morning of 10 November 1995 (page 1); the authors spend a good deal of time recreating the last moments of Wiwa and his colleagues before they were hanged. Thus, from the start, the impression is that this is a one-sided account; Shell, BP and Chevron are portrayed as the villains who reap profits and do not give back anything in return. There is not much effort to look at the efforts that the oil companies operating in the Delta make to alleviate the impact of the industry.

An interesting part of the book is the historical overview  of the oil discovery in Nigeria in 1956, at the village of Oloibiri, in the Niger Delta by the British after spending 15 billion pounds, and after 14 years of searching (page 65). Indeed, the find came only four years before Nigerian independence, so the British did not have much time to exploit it for their own interest. Soon they were to hand independence to the Nigerians. But they did not let the oil go into the hands of the new black rulers; British companies like BP and Shell BP were given the prospecting licenses and they brought their own staff, whites, as ‘blacks cannot operate computers’ as remarked by one offish British official at the time.

The authors spend a lot of time trying to expose the power of the public relations work of Shell: how Shell hires journalists, flies them in choppers above the Delta to show them the nice things Shell is doing in those areas. Or the books, pamphlets, which shell commissions mercenary writers to pen to launder its image in the world, following the execution of Wiwa, especially. Of course, Shell is not to be blamed for working hard to project a good image of itself in contrast to the environmental spoiler image it has in many quarters. Even the Ogoni and other rights activists in the Niger Delta feast on propaganda and media attention.

The book has excellent maps and illustrations of the Nigeria oil industry and that of other states in the Gulf of Guinea area such as Sao Tome. This is a revealing book on the story of oil in Nigeria.

Available at Timbooktoo.