Owens Wiwa

Monday Owens Wiwa (born 10 October 1957 in Bori, Nigeria) is a medical doctor and human rights activist. He is the brother of executed Ogoni leader Ken Saro-Wiwa, and the son of Ogoni chief Jim Wiwa. Wiwa is an internationally renowned expert on the effects of globalisation, especially as it relates to the highly controversial business practices of Royal Dutch Shell in the Niger Delta. Vice-chairman of the Toronto chapter of the Sierra Club Canada and an active member of Amnesty International, Wiwa is frequently called upon to advocate for development programs in Canada and abroad and to campaign for increased corporate responsibility. This work has taken him to Ireland, which he visits in support of the Shell to Sea campaign. Currently, he is the Country Director for the Clinton Health Access Initiative in Nigeria.

Wiwa graduated from medical school at the University of Calabar in 1985 and completed his internship at the University of Port Harcourt Teaching Hospital. In 1989, he founded his own private clinic in the Ogoni town of Bori.

The six kingdoms of the Ogoni—Gokana, Ken-Khana, Nyo-Khana, Eleme, Babbe and Tai—are situated in the southeast corner of Nigeria's Rivers State in the heart of the Niger River delta. A tribe of fishermen and farmers, the Ogoni are a small ethnic group, numbering no more than a half million. In 1958, Royal Dutch Shell discovered petroleum in Ogoniland. Over the next few years, Shell identified a total of six oil fields in the Ogoni territory which it began exploiting through a joint venture with the government. Over the next 35 years, this venture—in which the government was a majority partner and Shell the largest private partner—produced 634 million barrels of oil worth US$30 billion. Chevron, ExxonMobil, Texaco, BP, Agip and Elf Aquitaine also have operations in the delta and offshore, but their combined presence is dwarfed by Shell's.

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