transnational oil companies. Since oil slicks and blowouts occur regularly, plants, aquatic life forms and other life forms have been affected, thus destroying the source of sustenance and livelihood of the local people, who are mainly subsistence farmers and fishermen. 196. In order to deny the communities their claim to the ownership of the land, expropriative and draconian laws were passed nationalising all land and mineral resources located in the oil-rich communities. But, as the communities protest these laws and the incessant environmental pollution, the reaction of government has often been to deploy armed troops to quell communal resistance. 197. With the emergence in the early 1990s of the celebrated writer Ken SaroWiwa and the Movement for the Survival of the Ogoni People (MOSOP), the struggle against state terrorism and ecological despoliation was taken to new and unprecedented heights. Led by Saro-Wiwa, the Ogoni community of the southeastern tip of the Delta conducted the most sustained and effective campaign against the environmental malpractices of Shell and against the political victimisation of oil-bearing minority communities in the history of the Niger Delta. Through carefully organised and relentless mass action marked by frequent episodes of violence and deaths, the Ogoni were able to force Shell out of all oil locations in Ogoniland in 1993. 198. The execution of Ken Saro-Wiwa and his eight Ogoni compatriots by the Nigerian military junta in November 1995 led to the expulsion of Nigeria from the Commonwealth of Nations and has served to generate global interest in the plight of oppressed minority communities in Nigeria. Indeed, the Ogoni struggle is today regarded in antiglobalisation and environmental activist circles worldwide as an archetype of resistance to global capitalist greed and oppression. 199. Stakeholders generally agreed that the core grievances of the Niger Delta – local control of oil and gas resources, greater representation at the federal level, infrastructure development, economic empowerment and environmental degradation – are legitimate demands that have not yet been successfully addressed. 200. Nevertheless, stakeholders equally deplore the increasing criminalisation of the conflict that has spread beyond the core Niger Delta region. Hostage-taking by militant groups to draw attention to the Niger Delta crisis has now turned into a lucrative, criminally driven enterprise. In a desperate bid to force oil companies and the state to meet their social and corporate obligations to oil-producing communities, militants increasingly seize workers in Nigeria’s oil industry (particularly the expatriate staff) as hostages whose release may depend on the payment of huge ransoms. As a result of this agitation, the intertwining creeks and waterways of the Niger Delta have become veritable war zones where state-sponsored counterinsurgency groups join forces with official state troops to fight activists and militants for the control of oil facilities and platforms There are also splits within the Niger Delta’s major militant groups, thereby reducing prospects for forging a united front in negotiations with government. 85