Footage has emerged of a Shell director saying that he was “fundamentally proud” of the company’s actions in Nigeria, only a week before Amnesty International accused the company of being closely involved with human rights abuses in the country.
The remarks were made by Andrew Brown, a member of the Royal Dutch Shell executive committee, at the Shell annual lecture, an event affiliated with the University, at Emmanuel College on the 20th November.
When asked by host Stephen Sackur, a former BBC foreign correspondent, whether he was proud of what Shell had “done over the years in Nigeria”, Brown replied that “I am, I’m fundamentally proud of what happened in Nigeria”.
The comments are likely to raise eyebrows given the controversial nature of Shell’s involvement in Nigeria. On November 28th, Amnesty International called on the British, Dutch, and Nigerian governments to investigate, with a view to prosecution, the role of Shell in human rights abuses in the 1990s.