Who were the Ogoni 9?

On November 10, 1995, nine men were executed by hanging by the Nigerian military dictatorship. They would come to be known collectively as the Ogoni 9. All of them had played important roles in peacefully resisting the extraction of oil and gas in the Niger Delta by fossil fuel companies, most notably Shell. The most prominent among the nine, Ken Saro-Wiwa, had particularly come to public attention. As the leader of MOSOP, the movement for the survival of the Ogoni people, and a prominent writer, he succeeded in raising awareness and building coalitions with activists and NGOs far beyond Nigeria, and within international organizations.

Shell began exploring for oil reserves in Nigeria in 1938. In 1958, it began extracting oil. By 1996, 20% of Shell’s global oil and gas reserves were located in Nigeria. The vast majority of the oil production in Nigeria took place in the South-Eastern region of the country, where the Ogoni people live as one among several ethnic minority groups in the country.

The Ogoni people bore the brunt of the environmental destruction which oil and gas extraction caused in the region. Streams and fields were polluted, affecting both agriculture and fishing. By 2000, oil accounted for 40% of Nigeria’s GDP, and most of its export revenue. At the same time, the Ogoni people did not financially profit from the extraction of oil, and were not meaningfully included in the political decision making around granting Shell and other companies access to the area.

While grievances around the extraction of fossil fuels in the Niger Delta arose early on, they started to gain traction in the 1990s. In 1993, 300,000 Ogoni people, out of a population of approximately 500,000, took to the streets to protest against Shell  and the international community was starting to pay attention at last.

The trial and execution of the Ogoni 9 two years later has been read as an attempt to not just discredit them, but their entire cause. The men were accused of having conspired to murder four Ogoni chiefs in 1994. However, witnesses who had testified against the Ogoni 9 in court later admitted to having been bribed to provide false statements. Further, a Human Rights Watch report at the time, as well as an Amnesty International report published in 2017 based on new evidence, highlighted the tribunals lack of independence and impartiality. 30 years later, in 2025, the Nigerian government officially pardoned the Ogoni 9, which family members have criticized for failing to explicitly acknowledge that the nine men had been wrongfully convicted in the first place, and as a mostly symbolic move given that the situation on the ground has not improved substantially.

Perspectives on Environmental Justice in the Niger Delta, 30 Years Onwards

Both Nbani Friday Barilule and Henry Eferegbo spoke on the continuing environmental destruction in the region, and how it is affecting local residents’ health and livelihoods. As confirmed in a 2024 UNEP report, among others, oil pollution of streams, fields and groundwater continues to significantly affect local fisheries and agriculture, and by extension the people depending on them for sustenance.

To this day, the life expectancy in the Niger Delta is drastically lower than the average in Nigeria, standing at around 40 years in 2021, as compared to the 53 year national average. This difference can be ascribed to various impacts of oil and gas extraction, including on food production, the pollution of drinking water with highly carcinogenic hydrocarbons, and air pollution caused by gas flaring. Similarly, 88% of rural inhabitants of the Niger Delta live below the poverty line, as compared to a 67% national average. As added later by Hilde Brontsema, women in the area suffer miscarriages at twice the average rate in Nigeria.

Both Barilule and Eferegbo work on raising awareness for these issues both nationally, including youth capacity building, and through international advocacy. While Barilule highlighted increased awareness about environmental issues in the area, especially among young people, as a major positive development, both speakers emphasized that their demands for cleanup, environmental restoration, and reparations by the companies responsible have not been met.

In calling for corporate accountability, Niger Delta residents have, among others, engaged courts and semi-judicial fora in Nigeria and beyond. Eferegbo has been involved in cases in Nigeria and before the Dutch OECD National Contact Point, a semi-judicial forum tasked with promoting the implementation of the OECD Guidelines for Multinational Enterprises, a set of soft-law standards aimed at guiding corporations towards environmentally and socially responsible business conduct. The immediate reasons for turning to international fora are often related to the length of domestic proceedings in Nigeria, as well as to a lack of trust in the fairness of domestic judicial processes.

The Role of Transnational Litigation

Courts abroad have therefore come to play a crucial role in the cases of the Ogoni 9 and the communities of the Niger Delta. Over the last 30 years, cases have arisen in Nigeria, the United States, before the African Commission on Human and Peoples' Rights,  and before several European Courts – in the UK, Italy, and in the Netherlands.

Litigants in transnational litigation face a unique set of both opportunities and challenges, which speakers discussed in their contributions. Obiozo Ukpabi introduced the case of Kiobel and others vs. Shell, a lawsuit brought by the widows of four of the Ogoni 9 before a Dutch court, seeking to hold Shell accountable for its alleged involvement in the events leading up to their deaths, including by allegedly bribing key witnesses in the military trial. The case was ultimately dismissed based on a lack of evidence. Nevertheless, Ukpabi argued that the case delivered a number of important personal victories for the claimants involved. For two of the widows, who had remained in Nigeria since the deaths of their husbands, the Dutch case was the first time they could make their arguments heard in court and before an international audience. Ukpabi further highlighted the importance of transnational cases in revealing otherwise invisibilized connections between European companies and human rights violations caused abroad. By bringing cases into Dutch and other European courtrooms, litigation holds the potential to decrease the perceived distance between European corporations and publics, and the harms abroad. At the same time, Ukpabi cautioned against focusing solely on such small and symbolic victories, when claimants’ broader calls for justice have not been realized.

One case in which a Dutch court did rule in favour of holding Shell accountable for its subsidiary’s conduct in Nigeria was the case of Four Nigerian Farmers and Stichting Milieudefensie vs. Shell. In its 2021 judgement, the Court of Appeals in the Hague held that Shell held a duty of care towards the Nigerian claimants for oil spills attributable to conduct of its Nigerian subsidiary. The company was ordered to pay €15 million to four affected farmers and their communities. Hilde Brontsema, who worked on the team of Milieudefensie during the proceedings, expressed optimism about the judgement and its potential implications for future litigation. Namely, it marked the first time that a European court found a parent company under a duty of care for harm caused to plaintiffs abroad by a subsidiary. In Brontsema’s view, such cases against European fossil fuel companies could be one strategy for decolonial climate litigation, highlighting the neocolonial dynamics of the industry and its practices, a point which was similarly brought up by Barilule during his contribution.

However, to date no cases before Dutch courts have followed the line of argumentation of Milieudefensie. As Brontsema emphasized, the case did not come without its challenges, and plaintiffs considering bringing similar claims might well be discouraged by its long duration and high costs. In particular the process of requesting information and documents from Shell throughout the proceedings delayed the process considerably. Between filing the case and the handing down of the final verdict in 2021, 15 years had passed. By then, not a single one of the four original plaintiffs from Nigeria was still alive.

Looking ahead: Legal Strategies for Decolonial Climate Justice

The story of the Ogoni 9 is one of law, and especially European legal systems, acting as both an oppressive force and a tool for resistance. As pointed out by Chihiro Geuzebroek, it was British colonial law that first granted companies like the then Dutch-British Shell preferential access to fossil fuel reserves in Nigeria, which was still a British colony at the time that Shell began its oil extraction in 1958. Law, or the optics and language of a trial, were then used by the military regime to delegitimize the Ogoni 9 and their campaign against oil extraction in the Niger Delta.

But it is also a story of how the families of the Ogoni 9 and the communities of the Niger Delta have repeatedly taken to court to hold Shell, and other fossil fuel companies, accountable for their severe human rights violations and environmental destruction. Such processes of legal mobilization are of course not insulated from their wider historical and socio-political contexts within which they take place. Prohibitively expensive and lengthy proceedings before European courts make plaintiffs reliable on large NGOs for support, and visa requirements might bar them from even appearing in court, as they did for two plaintiffs in the case of Kiobel and others. Despite all challenges, however, the speakers expressed hope that litigation, together with other forms of mobilization, advocacy, and art, could continue to play a role in pushing for environmental justice in the Niger Delta, and in holding companies accountable for human rights violations abroad in Nigeria and beyond.