Shell agrees to pay Nigerian rights victims $15.5m

ROYAL Dutch Shell has agreed to a $15.5 million (€11m) settlement to end a lawsuit alleging that the oil giant was complicit in the executions of activist Ken Saro-Wiwa and other civilians by Nigeria’s former military regime.

Shell, which continues to operate in Nigeria, said it agreed to settle the lawsuit in hopes of aiding the “process of reconciliation”.

But Europe’s largest oil company acknowledged no wrongdoing in the 1995 hanging deaths of six people, including poet Saro-Wiwa. “This gesture also acknowledges that, even though Shell had no part in the violence that took place, the plaintiffs and others have suffered,” Malcolm Brinded, Shell’s executive director of exploration and production, said in a statement.