Shell has agreed to pay compensation of $15.5 million (£9.7 million) to settle a legal action in which the oil giant was accused of being involved in the execution of writer Ken Saro-Wiwa, along with eight other leaders of the indigenous Ogoni Southern-Nigerian tribe.
The complaint alleged that officials from Shell Petroleum Development Company(SPDC) of Nigeria, Shell's Nigerian subsidiary, asked government troops to shoot villagers protesting against the construction of an oil pipeline, that later sprung a leak.
The agreed out-of-court settlement sets the watermark as one of the biggest payouts by a multinational corporation charged with human rights violations, to date.
Despite accepting the compensation package Shell, and SDPC, have not admitted any guilt in the proceedings; in fact they pleaded innocent to all of the civil charges brought against them and maintained that the settlement does not represent any admission of culpability. Instead Shell, which still operates in the African nation, which prefers to classify the money as a “humanitarian gesture”.
The legal case has been brought to a close following three weeks of intense negotiations between the plaintiffs – who predominantly consisted of the bereaved relatives of the executed ‘Ogoni nine’, and of course Royal Dutch Shell.
Activist and lawyer, Ledum Mitee, said that “the settlement signals a significant change from an oil company in Nigeria.”
Lawyers close to the case have hailed the agreement as a rare and significant success in the field of international human rights, and as a yardstick for holding oil giants responsible for their actions past and present.
Nearly a third of the settlement – $5 million (£3.2 million) – is set to be used in setting up a trust named 'Kiisi' (the Ogoni Gokana word for ‘progress’), to support educational and community initiatives in the conflict-ridden Niger Delta.
Activists have maintained that they will continue to put pressure upon Shell despite the payout, which brought to an end a 13-year dispute that was due to got to trial in a U.S. court in New York.
Ogon Patterson, a human rights activist in the Niger Delta and founder of the Ijaw council for Human Rights, said that the pay-out by Shell signified that the oil producer was guilty of complicity in the abuses by the government. "This is blood money," stated Patterson. Shell's actions will undoubtedly leave many others drawing the same conclusion of a tacit acceptance of guilt, due to the high profile nature of the case.