Madam, - Last April at the Cúirt Festival in Galway, Ken Saro Wiwa's son spoke about the alleged involvement of the Shell Oil Company 10 years ago in the Nigerian government's execution of his father and eight other activists who were defending the rights of the Ogoni people. The integrity of their environment and living were under threat because of the the hunt for oil in their native region.
One of the audience at that reading spoke about the five-year campaign to compel Shell to clean gas and oil in an offshore facility instead of bringing it through the boggy soil of a lovely part of the Erris peninsula.
They called themselves, she said ironically, the Bogoni people.
Nigeria seemed a long way away until yesterday. - Yours, etc,
LELIA DOOLAN,
Kilcolgan,
Co Galway.