Tag Archives | Niger

Niger Delta Villagers Vs. Oil Giant Shell’s Destruction of Their Land

By on September 2, 2011 in News 5

OginisOnce again, unregulated Big Business makes everything better. John Vidal writes in the Guardian:

Goi is now a dead village. The two fish ponds, bakery and chicken farm that used to be the pride and joy of its chief deacon, Barrisa Tete Dooh, lie abandoned, covered in a thick black layer. The village’s fishing creek is contaminated; the school has been looted; the mangrove forests are coated in bitumen and everyone has left, refugees from a place blighted by the exploitation of the region’s most valuable asset: crude oil.

A long-awaited and comprehensive UN study exposed the full horror of the pollution that the production of oil has brought to Ogoniland over the last 50 years.

The UN report showed that oil companies and the Nigerian government had not just failed to meet their own standards, but that the process of investigation, reporting and clean-up was deeply flawed in favour of the firms and against the victims.

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Niger’s Silent Crisis

By on June 22, 2010 in News 1
Source: Vardion (CC)

Source: Vardion (CC)

From the BBC:

Britain’s aid agencies are launching an appeal to help the people of Niger where half the country’s population is going hungry following droughts which have led to crop failures and food shortages.

A listless little boy with stick thin arms and legs is weighed at an emergency treatment clinic for under fives near Maradi in Southern Niger.

Abiou, who is just 13 months old, weighs less than four-and-a-half kilos. His half-closed eyes stare out from sunken sockets set in a head that now looks too big for him.

Doctor Mourou Arouna Djimba says he is now being overwhelmed by youngsters like Abiou. “There’s a massive need here,” he told me.

“We’ve so little room that sometimes we need to put two or even three children in one bed. We’ve got 30 in this intensive ward, and this morning another five more severely malnourished children arrived.”

Save the Children says 400,000 children are at risk of dying from starvation

In the face of the crisis, the charities Save the Children (STC) and Oxfam are each launching multi-million pound appeals for drought-ravaged Niger.

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