Two leading environmental activists spoke at the University last night to raise awareness about the effects of U.S. oil consumption on African nations.
“I’d like to remind you, as you ride in your cars, as you live in your beautiful homes … that in faraway Africa, in the country which holds the oil Americans consume, people are dying,” said activist Annie Brisibe, president of the Niger Delta Women for Justice.
U.S. oil companies, which buy 50 percent of the oil produced in Nigeria, have little regard for the lives of the Nigerian people, said Brisibe.
They release toxic chemicals which destroy crops and contaminate the water supply, and the oil pipelines they often build directly through local communities can easily explode, Brisibe said. Often, when they do, hundreds of people are killed in the resulting fires, she said.
Carwill James, who heads the Oil Campaign at the San Francisco Bay-area based group Project Underground, spoke about the influence of oil companies on public policy within the United States and abroad.
James said companies such as Chevron and Shell have a lot of power in deciding public policy because of the contributions they make to several influential right-wing political organizations. This affects their treatment of the local people in places such as the oil-rich Niger Delta area of Nigeria.
“Chevron is benefiting from government policies in this country reinforcing what it is doing in the Niger Delta region,” James said.
As part of his presentation to the small crowd gathered in Columbia 150, he also showed several slides to demonstrate the effects oil companies are having in Africa.
James said several pictures were of villages in Africa after they had been destroyed in order to build new oil refineries.
When the local people organize to resist, said James, the oil companies provide speedboats and helicopters for the government to bring soldiers in to stop any opposition by force.
Randy Newnham, coordinator for the University Survival Center, which sponsored the event, said the speeches brought up many important points.
“I thought the presentation was marvelous,” Newnham said.