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NNEKA triumphs at MOBO awards

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Can you feel

My heart is beating?

Nneka sings beside the Living Memorial to Ken Saro-Wiwa at the South Bank Centre, Nov 10th 2007Many times she sang those words, wrapping up the pain and endurance of Niger Deltans, for years she shook the wall of indifference around her, and finally, we were moved.

On 1st October, NNEKA was awarded this years’ MOBO (Music of Black Origin) prize for best African Artist. NNEKA is an artist of rare achievement, whose outspoken views about the exploitation of the oil-rich Niger Delta burns deep into her lyrics. Her music has lifted the Niger Delta struggle into powerful songs,  charging the airwaves of the BBC and the UK Top 40 with her politics.

Her story begins far away from the media spotlight in the oil-city of Warri, in the Niger Delta. A few years after she arrived on the European music scene she is now clocking up +1.5 million hits on her new music video, ‘Heartbeat’. NNEKA’s success has heightened her awareness of the development denied to her people in the Delta, in spite of the oil wealth extracted from the region.

A long-time supporter of the Niger Delta cause, and a headline artist at remember saro-wiwa events, NNEKA takes every opportunity to remind the West of the heavy cost of Nigerian oil, heaping criticism on the destructive impact of companies like Shell, Chevron and the Nigerian government.

As the BBC reports:

The singer says her influences include Nigeria’s iconic Afro-beat performer Fela Kuti as well more contemporary acts like a US rapper Mos Def.

She also cites Nigeria writer and human rights activist Ken Saro-Wiwa as an inspiration. Mr Saro-Wiwa was executed by the Sani Abacha government in 1995 for his efforts to campaign against corruption in the oil-rich Niger Delta.

“Stand up against; corruption, against injustice, against bribery and hypocrisy…….RAISE UR VOICES,” she says on her MySpace page.

Australia’s worst oil spill in same week as government approves mega-Gorgon gas project

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Thai oil company PTT and the Australian government are struggling to deal with an enormous oil spill of the north coast in the Timor Sea. The leak, which started on August 21st, has created a spill stretching over 70 miles by 25 miles. Yet during the same week, Canberra granted environmental approval to Chevron & Shell’s $42 billion LNG project – one of the world’s largest.

Reports seem to show that the Australian government repeatedly downplayed the scale & threat of the Timor spill, with the Australian Green Party claiming the oil is far closer to the coast than previously reported. The West Atlas oil rig, operated by Thai state oil company PTT, is thought to be leaking about 470,000 litres of oil a day since an accident caused the rig’s evacuation on August 21. Plugging the leak will take at least another week (when a back-up rig should arrive from Singapore to drill another hole), but could take another five.

The Kimberley coast is described by Tourism Australia as “one of the world’s last true wilderness areas” while the spill could be on the scale of Exxon Valdez in Alaska.

But this didn’t cause Australian Environment Minister Peter Garrett to think twice before providing Chevron, Shell and Exxon with environmental approval to develop their goliath Gorgon LNG project off Australia’s North-West coast. He did say that the “key focus” had been on “whether Gorgon’s expansion could manage the potential effect on the flatback turtle”. (Oil companies like to focus in on how they will protect certain rare species – BP emphasised how it would take care of the turtles in Sangachal and Ceyhan as part of its BTC project as well).

The project will super-cool 15 million tonnes of gas every year from the Gorgon gas fields, liquefying it so that it can be transported to Chinese, Japanese and US markets. In total the fields hold 40 trillion cubic feet of gas.

Shell owns 25% of the project, so will receive 3.75 million tonnes of gas each year. The company already agreed to sell more than half of this - 2 million tonnes a year to Chinese state company Petrochina every year for 20 years. Kathleen Eisbrenner, Executive Vice President of Shell Global LNG, signed the 20-year contract in November 2008 in Beijing.


Kathleen Eisbrenner, Executive VP of Shell Global LNG

Flawed logic of Nigeria’s response to insurgency

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HRW A displaced child in front of her home, which was destroyed in regional conflictIs there any logic to the Nigerian Federal Government’s latest offer of amnesty to armed insurgents in the oil-rich Delta region? The offer follows one of the largest military offensives in the region, in which hundreds of innocent civilians have been killed and many thousands displaced. The government’s idea of winning the hearts and minds of the region is to bombard villages from the land, sea and air and then to prevent the displaced and homeless villagers from accessing to humanitarian aid. If anything, this strategy has hardened resolve amongst some elements of the insurgency.
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