The water in Ogale, a rural community in Nigeria, is so toxic and polluted with oil that it comes out brown and stinks of sulphur. Children and families get sick just trying to bathe or stay hydrated. In Bille, a fishing community of around 45 islands surrounded entirely by water, there are no fish left. Oily water seeps into people’s homes, and, without a source of income, money is scarce. The signs that once warned people of the dangers of chronic pollution are covered in rust.

These Niger Delta communities have been facing pollution caused by Shell for decades, devastating their health and livelihoods. In 2011, the United Nations Environment Programme reported that the threat to public health warranted “emergency action.” At the time, the cleanup process would have taken 30 years, if initiated immediately.

It never happened. Shell refused to cooperate, and the situation has only gotten worse, with 55 oil spills in the last 12 years. Amnesty International called the Niger Delta region “one of the most polluted places on earth.”

On January 27, over 11,300 residents from Ogale — which has a population of approximately 40,000 — and 17 local organizations, including churches and schools, filed individual claims at the High Court in London against Shell. With the existing claims from the Bille community, this brings the total number against the oil company to over 13,650.

The Ogale and Bille locals attribute environmental destruction, death, and diseases to the repeated spills. Infants in the Niger Delta, for instance, are twice as likely to die in their first month of life if their mothers live near an oil spill, according to a study published in 2017.

Local leaders are distraught and angry. “As we speak, oil is spilling in my community every day, people are dying,” King Emere Godwin Bebe Okpabi, leader of the Ogale community, told The Intercept.

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