John: Delta no place for a holiday

Nov 19 2009 by John Avison, Huddersfield Daily Examiner

TRAVEL narrows the mind, some wit once remarked.

I don’t think they were being clever at all. I think travel broadens the mind, which was the original sentiment.

Travel narrowing the mind is not half as witty as the motto that runs round the top of the town centre Albert pub’s bar partition.

It’s from Oscar Wilde, and it says: Work is the curse of the drinking classes.

Now THAT’s witty.

I just love travel and to this end, I up sticks and make off to distant corners at the drop of a hat.

When you get to a certain age, you start to realise just how little of the world you’ve seen and how little time you have to see the rest of it.

But would you want to go to somewhere like, say, Nigeria? Specifically, the Niger Delta?

If you did, where would you start to find out about your chosen port of call?

Take a look at the Shell Companies in Nigeria website, which offers a warm welcome in the following terms:

“Shell Nigeria places great importance on making a difference in the environment in which people live and work, fostering and maintaining relationships with communities, taking care to be a good neighbour and contributing to sustainable development initiatives.”

This is not what Amnesty International says.

“A catastrophe is unfolding in the Niger Delta,” they say. “A catastrophe that is causing human suffering on an enormous scale; that is depriving thousands of people of food and livelihoods; that is making children and pregnant women sick; that is devastating whole communities and poisoning the land they have lived on for generations.”

Well that’s not making a difference in the environment in which people live and work, fostering and maintaining relationships with communities, taking care to be a good neighbour and contributing to sustainable development initiatives, is it?

So who do we believe when we’re making our travel arrangements?

According to Amnesty International, Shell has colluded with a corrupt and violent Nigerian government and stood by while it murdered and dispossessed its citizens.