Where Vultures Feast: Shell, Human Rights, and Oil in the Niger Delta.

• Author: Runyan, Curtis
• Position: New and Noteworthy

Where Vultures Feast: Shell, Human Rights, and Oil in the Niger Delta, by Ike Okonta and Oronto Douglas (San Francisco: Sierra Club Books, 2001). Journalist Ike Okonta and human rights lawyer Oronto Douglas--two of Niegeria's leading environmental activists--have teamed up to write a pointed expose of the ongoing devastation of their homeland caused by Shell and other oil companies. The legacy of oil in Nigeria--as in other poor but resource-rich developing countries--is a dark one. Corruption and greed have claimed most of the national profits of more than $150 billion from oil revenues, causing Nigeria's people, economy, and environment to suffer.

The book shows how Shell and other oil companies picked up business where the European colonial governments left off in the 1960s, working with corrupt government leaders (former president Sani Abacha siphoned off...