Extracts from an article by Stephen Delahunty published 15 January 2020
Newly released files under the UK’s declassification rules reveal that John Major’s Conservative Government rejected Mandela’s personal appeal to impose oil sanctions on Nigeria as it wanted to protect Shell and the UK’s wider commercial interests.
In 1995, Nigeria’s military regime executed nine environmental activists who had led a non-violent protest against pollution by Anglo-Dutch company Shell and other energy firms in the oil-rich Niger Delta.
The so-called ‘Ogoni 9’ were executed on 10 November 1995, following a military tribunal that was internationally condemned – particularly by South Africa’s President Nelson Mandela.
Newly released files under the UK’s declassification rules reveal that John Major’s Conservative Government rejected Mandela’s personal appeal to impose oil sanctions on Nigeria as it wanted to protect Shell and the UK’s wider commercial interests.