The Tale of a Denatured Neighborhood

Daniel Ohahuru is a journalist, an environmental activist, and a native of Rumu-Orashi, a village in southern Nigeria, the Niger Delta to be specific. All his life, he has watched oil companies, such as Shell PB and Mobile Oil, plunder, pillage, and destroy the environment around his village. When he could not take it anymore, he resigned his teaching job and joined a group of Nigerian environmental activists like Ken Saro-Wiwa and others and began fighting the oil companies and the government of Nigeria, on whose behalf, to his knowledge, the companies were operating. Because of his activism, he was arrested and jailed many times, but he never gave up. He came to loggerheads, again, with the government and the oil companies when he joined forces with a group of childless elderly and newlywed women of the village. These women had been made barren as a result of inhaling the air, drinking the water, and eating the food grown in the land. Even though the doctors in the local clinic had told the women privately that their barrenness was as a result of the toxic chemicals in the air they were inhaling, the water they were drinking, and the food they were eating, the doctors could not come out and say it publicly because the government and the oil companies had bought them over and, besides, they were afraid for their lives. When everything stalled and things were not working out locally, Daniel decided to go international and share the story of the plight of his village. He attended a conference of environmental activists in Washington, DC. While attending the conference, he had the opportunity to give a speech; the speech was so captivating, nerve-racking, and heartfelt that his words caught the attention of many of the journalists in attendance. One of those journalists was a Washington Post reporter, who took him seriously enough to publish his story. For this stint of bravery, which the Nigerian government did not find amusing, Daniel and his village paid dearly and got nothing in return.