Chima Williams

Chima William is an environmental activist, an environmental lawyer who fights environmental injustice and held a multinational company like Shell to pay for damages they have caused and inflicted on some communities in the Niger-Delta. He is also the founder of the first Student environmental justice group in Nigeria. He was named the Earth's foremost defenders. Quotes It came as a shock. Because the circumstance under which I received that announcement or the call from the U.S. was such that made it a very memorable one. I had been in the hospital, I was on oxygen for eight days and I came back from the hospital. Two days after I came back from the hospital, I received a call. And I was expecting that that call, because it was a U.S. number, was coming from my friend. Only for me to pick up the call and I heard ‘congratulations.’ And I said congratulations for what? And it was announced. So you could imagine what would have been happening within me and my family. Because, incidentally, I had my family, we were together. My children came back from school, you know they’re in boarding houses, they came back from school. My wife. All of us were together. I think we were about to pray when that call came in, so it was nostalgic because it was something that was not expected. in an interview The history behind taking up that case arose from the fact that we had taken action on gas flaring against the multinational level, particularly Shell, and we won at the Nigerian federal high court, which ordered Shell to end the practice of gas flaring for flouting the constitutional right to life and dignity of the human person in Iwhrekan community. And Shell continued to flare gas. in an interview As a lawyer, I make bold to say it everywhere in the world that the Nigerian judicial system is one of the best and one of the most proactive in recent times. We could have said a lot of things about it in previous times but when the judges are updating themselves on new legal trends globally, this is how we have seen these proactive judgments that are coming out. And we must encourage them. Of course, we know that there definitely will be some bad eggs. Within every society, it’s not everybody that is totally clean, so let’s not use the activities of the few negative ones to smear on all. in an interview People could no longer use their farmlands. People could no longer harvest fishes from their fish ponds. People could no longer harvest from their economic trees, which provided a source of livelihood for them. It was a huge and massive loss, and it affected majority of the community of people because there are indirect impacts and effects on people who unsuspectingly will drink, for example, from the polluted water, will use it to cook their food, will use it to bathe. Before the advent of oil in commercial quantity,” he recalled, “the Niger Delta used to be known as the most peaceful, the most hospitable, and the most luscious part of the country. Port Harcourt, seen as Nigeria’s oil capital, was christened ‘the garden city,’ he reminisced. “Landscapes in the Niger Delta were a beauty to behold. The people were fishing folks and farmers, supplying the needs of households and families in the Niger Delta and across Nigeria. In an interview with Al Jazeera External links Category: Living people