Friday, 18 April 2025 —
Monday Gboro stands in front of an oil spill in the Kegbara-Dere community, Rivers State, Nigeria. Photo by Luka Tomac/ Friends of the Earth International/Wikimedia Commons.
Critics say the company’s ignominious departure is aimed at avoiding legal responsibility for polluting the Niger Delta
I’ll never forget seeing the vast, charcoal wasteland left from a devastating oil spill in the village of Ebubu, in the heart of Ogoniland in Nigeria’s Niger Delta. The oil from a pipeline belonging to the Anglo Dutch oil group Shell had burst three decades before my visit, destroying the community’s streams and aquatic life. The contamination had not been cleaned up in 1999 and I could not fathom how locals could survive in an environment covered in tar. The waterways were still polluted and the village was eerily hollowed out.
Pro-Palestine protesters in front of Meta headquarters on November 3, 2023. Photo by Tayfun Coskun/Anadolu via Getty Images.
Photo Credit: The Cradle
The New Dark Age 