What Happened to Nigeria’s Environmentalists?

Saro-Wiwa led a movement for environmental justice in the Niger Delta, a sprawling oil-rich wetland in southern Nigeria devastated by oil spills and exploitation. When Nigeria’s military regime sentenced Saro-Wiwa to death in 1995 for the murder of four pro-government chiefs after a trial widely seen as rigged, his plight sparked international outrage.

Despite pressure from abroad—including a call that President Bill Clinton made to Nigeria’s leader, Gen. Sani Abacha, urging clemency—Saro-Wiwa was hanged. It took the hangmen five attempts to kill him. “Lord take my soul, but the struggle continues,” were his final words—and indeed, it seemed for a time that there might still be momentum behind the movement that he helped start.

Yet nearly 30 years after Saro-Wiwa’s execution, Nigeria’s environmental movement has stalled. Saro-Wiwa’s nonviolent agitation gave way to an era of radical militants, who eventually sidelined environmental causes and aligned themselves with the government and the oil industry, even as they continued to call themselves activists. Today, environmental destruction in the Niger Delta, which has absorbed the equivalent of an estimated 13 million barrels of crude oil since the 1950s, is so severe that many analysts consider it ecocide.

“Saro-Wiwa was a man of conviction—he fought for justice with deliberation,” said Rachel Batambari, a 72-year-old woman from Port Harcourt, a city in the Niger Delta. “But the militants drew our sons into their fight, and in the end, it wasn’t justice they delivered. Their wealth got bigger, and they handed us nothing but the corpses of our sons—and a messier environment.”

Between 1976 and 1991, Ogoniland was the site of 2,976 separate oil spills, which left more than 2 million barrels of oil polluting creeks, rivers, farmlands, and mangrove forests. For a population long reliant on farming and fishing, the oil spills destroyed many Ogonis’ livelihoods. Meanwhile, gas flaring—the practice of burning natural gas released during oil drilling—polluted the air, fueling health problems in nearby communities, which have remained largely impoverished, with few economic benefits from oil production reaching residents.

Clay pots are all that remain in a mangrove covered with crude oil in Goi, Nigeria, on Oct. 15, 2004.Jacob Silberberg/Getty Images

Decades of unchecked pollution drove people in the region to environmental activism. In 1990, a group of Ogoni men—including Saro-Wiwa, then 48 years old—established the Movement for the Survival of the Ogoni People (MOSOP), a nonviolent advocacy group.

MOSOP’s demands were clear: They wanted a fair share in the control of Ogoniland’s economic resources, the right to protect their land from ecological degradation, and the inclusion of Ogoni people in national oil and gas decision-making bodies. They took their campaign to international bodies, including the United Nations, where they framed their struggle as a human rights issue.

Saro-Wiwa came to lead the movement. Initially, his activism criticized the Nigerian government for its failure to regulate the operations of oil companies—mainly Shell, but also Elf and Agip—as top officials profited from oil revenues. When the state ignored them, MOSOP targeted the oil companies themselves via media campaigns and peaceful protests, calling for the cleanup of polluted sites and compensation for affected communities.

In January 1993, a historic demonstration of more than 300,000 people throughout Ogoniland forced Shell to suspend operations in the region and drew international attention to Ogonis’ plight. For a moment, it seemed that the Ogoni people would finally win long-awaited environmental justice.

By mid-1993, however, their struggle faced mounting setbacks. The government violently suppressed protests and launched military raids under the guise of restoring order in Ogoniland, even reportedly massacring entire villages. There were also internal divisions among activists and pro-government factions in the region, along with violent land disputes and rivalries among neighboring villages.

Ogoni people carry a poster in remembrance of environmental activist Ken Saro-Wiwa during a march 10 years after his execution, on Nov. 10, 2005.Pius Utomi Ekpei/AFP via Getty Images

These challenges culminated in 1994 with the killing of four pro-government Ogoni chiefs, leading to Saro-Wiwa’s arrest in connection with the deaths, which Amnesty International stated was “part of the continuing suppression by the Nigerian authorities of the Ogoni people’s campaign against the oil companies.”

Saro-Wiwa always maintained his innocence. According to eight Ogoni witnesses who spoke with me last year, as well as media reports, Saro-Wiwa was denied entry to Ogoniland at a military checkpoint on the day of the killings. But the government still accused him of inciting the murders.

“I am not worried for myself. When I undertook to confront Shell and the Nigerian establishment, I signed my death warrant, so to speak,” Saro-Wiwa wrote in a letter from prison before he died.

Saro-Wiwa’s execution sparked global outrage and led to Nigeria’s suspension from the Commonwealth of Nations for more than three years, but it did not resolve the ecological crisis. Nor did it lead to international action to hold the fossil fuel industry accountable for its destructive operations in Nigeria. In the post-Saro-Wiwa era, MOSOP’s influence waned in the region, and the movement largely petered out.

Jailed Nigerian militant leader Dokubo Asari exits the Federal High Court in Abuja, Nigeria, on March 13, 2007.Lea Lisa Westerhoff/AFP via Getty Images

Leading this charge were two men, Asari Dokubo and Government Ekpemupolo (known as Tompolo), who were at the helm of the Niger Delta People’s Volunteer Force and the Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta, respectively. The two militant leaders, both from the Ijaw ethnic group, have at various times worked together and also operated independently.

Dokubo’s and Tompolo’s campaigns escalated into full-blown insurgency marked by oil theft, political violence, and high-profile kidnappings. Their violent strategies diverged sharply from Saro-Wiwa’s nonviolent advocacy: Unlike MOSOP’s media campaigns and appeals to international bodies, the militant groups used ransom negotiations to publicize and fund their operations rather than seeking global support.

What began as oil vandalism soon expanded into the operation of illegal refineries, where militants and their affiliates engaged in larger oil theft and reckless gas flaring, using unsophisticated oil refining methods. They often framed these as acts of justice—a way to reclaim stolen resources for their people. But their methods wrought further ecological destruction, even as they continued to claim they were defending the environment.

A man on the outskirts of Porto Novo, Benin, carries oil smuggled from Nigeria in July 2005.Erick Christian Ahounou/AFP via Getty Images

Between 2006 and 2009, insurgency in the Niger Delta led Nigeria’s oil output to plummet from 2.6 million barrels per day to around 1.7 million. Niger Delta communities faced deeper devastation as militants intimidated and even violently suppressed voices within local communities who did not support their tactics.

The government responded with force. In 2009, the military launched a major offensive in the Niger Delta, including air and ground assaults, to dislodge militants. That year, after nearly half a decade of bloodshed and reduced national oil revenue, the Nigerian government offered militants in the region amnesty. Roughly 20,000 militants laid down their arms in exchange for pardons, monthly stipends, and a promise of regional development.

Although the deal ended much of the violence, it did little to address the deeper issues—including environmental devastation, poverty, and injustice—that continue to haunt the region today. This was an apparent win-win for the government and the militants, but once again, the ordinary people of the Niger Delta were left behind.

Burning cars are seen on a highway after an oil tanker exploded in Lagos, Nigeria, on June 28, 2018.AFP via Getty Images

This was evident at the 2023 United Nations Climate Change Conference in Dubai, where Nigeria’s huge delegation of 1,411, including celebrities and government officials, drew criticism from members of the public and opposition parties for being unqualified to address environmental challenges.

Worse still, former militant leaders have returned to the environmental advocacy scene—but this time, as beneficiaries of government contracts. Tompolo, for example, claims that his pipeline surveillance work helps curb oil theft and protect the ecosystem. In 2022, he said that his goal was to “secure our environment” and stop the “massive” damage that illegal bunkering causes “to the ecological life of our people.”

Dokubo did not disband his militias and has suggested that the government hires them in the Niger Delta and surrounding areas, where insecurity remains a serious issue as armed groups continue to operate. Tombolo, meanwhile, has rebranded his group as the Niger Delta Greenland Justice Mandate and in 2022 secured a multimillion-dollar government contract to help combat oil theft and other illicit activities in the region.

Both militants claim to be environmentalists but now work closely with the same government whose policies have fueled environmental destruction.

For its part, the Nigerian government also purports to care about the environmental crisis. The Niger Delta Action Plan, established in the early 2010s, is a regional effort to address the environmental degradation in the region caused by oil exploration and related activities. Additionally, the Environmental Impact Assessment Act requires companies to assess the potential environmental damage of their projects, including oil companies in the Niger Delta. Yet enforcement of these policies has often been weak and inconsistent.

Meanwhile, Nigeria’s economic reliance on oil extracted from the Niger Delta—where most of the country’s oil and gas industry is still located—shows no sign of easing. The oil sector accounts for around 95 percent of Nigeria’s foreign exchange earnings and roughly 80 percent of government revenue. The government also has plans to double production to 3 million barrels per day over an unspecified period.

Efforts to address damage from oil spills have been marred by delays and inefficiency. And Shell has evaded accountability for ecological devastation by contesting legal rulings, shifting blame to pipeline sabotage, and delaying cleanup efforts despite court orders and international pressure. Shell has denied wrongdoing, with its Nigerian subsidiary saying that the “operating environment in the Niger Delta remains challenging because of the huge scale of illegal activities such as oil theft,” and that “[w]hen spills do happen from our facilities we clean up and remediate, regardless of the cause.”

As the region reels from environmental crisis, Nigerian advocates are losing ground to a system that remains as impenetrable as ever. If a new generation of activists does not find new ways to demand justice and fight an industry historically resistant to change, the days of Saro-Wiwa may turn out to be Nigeria’s last era of genuine environmental activism.