The Globalization Debate

Shell Nigeria, which is part of Royal DutchShell Group, is the largest producers of oil in Nigeria. Oil is Nigerians major revenue resource where shell provides over 50. The size of some of the multinational organizations such as Shell is enormous with sales well in excess of the gross domestic product of the host countries such as Nigeria (Cole 2003). Most of the effects of these companies are beneficial and they include, capital investment  in major economic activities leading to among other things improvement of the nations balance of payments, job creation, introduction of new or scarce skills hence contributing to host country pool of skilledhighly qualified personnel, and installation of the state of the art technologies observes Cole. He however states that there are nevertheless potential drawbacks, for example in the event that the multinational company decides to relocate to another country at a short notice then such a decision will act as powerful sanction to the host country, at times the local politicians do compromise on employment conditions or environmental degradation in order to retain the benefits of the multinational company. Besides, due to their sizes, they are likely to pose a threat to new indigenous rivals.

While Nigeria has benefited from Shell operations at the Niger Delta, it has however drawn the attention of environmentalist, human rights activities and fair trade advocates around the world (Shah 2004). Shah, quoting the International Herald Tribune, states that shell companies have worsened fighting in Niger Delta through payments for land use, environmental damage, corruption of company employees and the reliance on Nigerian security forces. The report concludes that with over 50 years presence in Nigeria, it is reasonable to say that the shell has been part of the integral part of the Niger Delta conflict.

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