Today’s battles were lost yesterday. Tomorrows battles will be lost if we don’t rise up today to fight together. I believe you’ve seen the banner asking for signatures to tell Shell to clean up its mess. This mess is so huge that it has covered almost the whole Earth. You must be hearing the news about what is going on in the Niger Delta where all the oil is being extracted from. For over 50 years, Shell has been drilling, spilling, spilling blood, taking all of the profit and leaving all of the destruction. And we believe that enough is enough. Niger started out post-colonial rule with the hope of running a federal system of government but because of oil, we believe, the militia stepped in for many decades and the feudal system because a unitary system, where all of the power is in the centre, and all of the positions are taken at the centre, and the various states and regions merely do what the centre asks them to do. And the oil companies have the centre in their pocket. And they can do what ever they want, completely as outlaws in Nigeria. Our battle today is how to stop this from going on.

You must have heard about the battle(?) that’s going on: the hostage takings, the (?) explosion in (?) You may want to know, why is this going on? How did this come about? The problems(?) you have heard about is mainly opportunistic, because if you ride on the back of the tiger, you end up in the bed of the tiger. Many of those who have weapons to fight are paid to stand by the oil corporations, to give them cover where they could not get cover from the state. But, because those who have those weapons are living in the communities that are completely degraded, people don’t have access to their resources, people have no way to plan for the future. Of course, after so many struggles for dialogue, and because dialogue will never come, this has become a very popular way of getting to dialogue. Because whenever hostages are taken, and whenever things are blown up, some kind of dialogue does take place. This may not be the best way to dialogue, but it is one way of organizing it. It is a quick response to cruel exploitation. We have been calling for this, and our comrades are calling for this. That because we know that another world is possible, and because we know that oil will not remain so important in the world in a few decades to come.

This is a time to force the corporations off of the land. We are calling for a moratorium to all new oil explorations, for the next 20 years, next 50 years; no new oil should be exploited. We believe this will give us time to conduct an audit of all of the impacts of Shell, Chevron, Exxon, of all these corporations so we can find a way to restore our environment to its original state. We cannot carry on with business as usual. It is time to stand together as one and getting them to stop new exploration is one way of beginning to break the unholy wedlock between the state and the oil corporations. And we believe that this is so vital if we are going to begin to fight the battles that will ensure us having a safe future.

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The speeches from Regaining Control of the Commons: WSF 2007 are provided for information and educational purposes. The transcription has been undertaken on a volunteer basis. Due to resource limitations we are unable to provide a complete transcription. We apologise for the breaks in the text.

Disclaimer: The view in this and the other articles do not (neccessarily) represent the position or views of Friends of the Earth Australia nor Friends of the Earth International.