Nigeria's President and chairman of Economic Community Of West African States (ECOWAS) Goodluck Jonathan addresses a news conference at the end of an emergency meeting of ECOWAS in Abuja December 7, 2010. The West African regional bloc ECOWAS recognised Alassane Ouattara as Ivory Coast's president-elect on Tuesday after disputed elections and urged Laurent Gbagbo to accept defeat and step down. REUTERS/Afolabi Sotunde
Leaked cable claims Royal Dutch Shell has infiltrated every Nigerian government ministry (AP):
A U.S. Embassy cable released by the WikiLeaks website alleges that Royal Dutch Shell PLC’s top manager in Nigeria claimed the oil company had sources inside of “all relevant ministries” involving its business.
The cable dated Oct. 20, 2009, quotes Shell’s Ann Pickard. Pickard allegedly said that the Nigerian government “had forgotten that Shell had seconded people to all the relevant ministries and that Shell consequently had access to everything that was being done in those ministries.”
Shell discovered the first oil play in the Niger Delta in 1956 and started pumping crude out of the swamps two years later. It has since been the dominant oil company in the former British protectorate — and has been demonized both by environmentalists and by community activists.
WikiLeaks: Shell ‘knows everything’ about the Nigerian government (telegraph.co.uk):
Ann Pickard, then Shell’s vice-president for sub-Saharan Africa, revealed the extent of Shell’s influence at a meeting with Robin Renee, the US ambassador, in October 2009, according to the cables printed by the Guardian.
Nigerian rights groups seized on the cables as evidence of Shell’s dominance over Nigeria’s oil wealth.
The ambassador reported in a cable to Washington: “She said the GON [government of Nigeria] had forgotten that Shell had seconded people to all the relevant ministries and that Shell consequently had access to everything that was being done in those ministries.”
The oil firm provided US diplomats with intelligence about certain politicians thought to be supporting militants and asked the US to tell them whether the militants had anti-aircraft missiles.
Ms Pickard claimed to be privy to sensitive information in the cables, including bids for oil concessions from China to the Nigerian minister of state for petroleum resources.