Survivors of the Feb. 4, 2005 Niger Delta massacre by Nigerian military special forces and police, paid by oil giant Chevron Corp. and its subsidiary, Chevron Nigeria Ltd., filed a civil action Monday, Feb. 6, 2006, against the oil conglomerate (headquartered in San Ramon, Calif.), in the United States District Court in San Francisco.
�What Americans have to understand is that these massacres of Nigerian men, women and children by Nigerian soldiers and police who are paid and supported by Chevron are not aberrations but standard operating procedure in the Niger Delta,� says Long Beach plaintiff attorney Stephen M. Garcia of the Garcia Law Firm. �According to Amnesty International, the Niger Delta has seen more than 10 years of such violence and injustice against the people who live there. And it continues. Just 15 days after the Feb. 4, 2005 massacre, Nigeria �s Joint Task Force raided the village of Odioma , killing 17 people.�
In Olu Oyibo; Prince Tseti Oyibo Kperegbeyi; Ugbameta Jeremiah; Bright Aguma; Tony Okose; Sunny Osagho; Roy Apepe; Alex Amatsero; Richard Erejwei; Moses Lori (all Nigerian citizens), vs. Chevron Corporation; Chevron Investments, Inc.; Chevron U.S.A., plaintiffs are alleging that the defendants violated the federal Alien Tort Claims Act, Torture Victim Protection Act of 1991, and California state law.
In spite of the great oil and natural gas wealth of the Niger Delta, it is one of the poorest places in West Africa . Oil spills and acid rain from gas flaring have destroyed the villagers� means of subsistence, traditionally farming and fishing. Oil workers enjoy comfortable homes, a modern hospital and satellite television. Civilians live in rusty tin-roofed shacks in Ugborodo, a village in sight of the oil terminal Chevron calls Escravos (�slave� in Portuguese). Ugborodo is dependent on water transport, but its jetty is decrepit and unsafe. The village has electric power two hours a day from a generator bought by the villagers� themselves, and Chevron Nigeria provides water for three hours at a time, twice a day.
On Feb. 4, 2005, at Chevron Nigeria�s Escravos oil terminal on the western coast of the Niger Delta, more than 200 villagers of Ugborodo were protesting the multinational�s failure to provide jobs and development projects as agreed upon in a Memorandum of Understanding signed by Ugborodo community representatives and Chevron Nigeria in 2002 after demonstrations by hundreds of women at the terminal and in Warri, the commercial capital of the Delta State.
At dawn, using Chevron helicopters and boats with pilots, soldiers and police of the Nigerian Task Force, paid, housed and supported by Chevron, attacked the crowd with rifle butts, tear gas, and live ammunition, killing four people and injuring at least 30 other demonstrators. Neither Chevron Nigeria nor the security forces provided medical care to those who were hurt, and it was several hours before those who were injured reached a hospital, a lengthy boat journey away.
�This isn�t the America we believe in,� says Garcia. �And we will never believe that this is the America that our fellow Americans want or will stand for, no matter how much we need or want the Niger Delta�s oil and gas.�