Nigeria

South Africa extradited a Nigerian man suspected of abducting the crew of a Dutch cargo ship and holding them hostage for over a month. Itoruboemi Benson Lobia was immediately arrested when he arrived at Schipol Airport at round 10:00 a.m. on Thursday, NOS reports.

A criminal case is being prepared against Dutch oil and gas giant Shell. The company is suspected of paying bribes for the exploitation rights of an oil field off the coast of Nigeria, Shell said on its website and the Dutch Public Prosecutor confirmed to NOS.

The Prosecutor told NOS that the investigation is almost complete and they are working on the criminal prosecution of Shell.

This case involves the acquisition of the rights to oil field OPL-245. Shell, together with Italian energy group Eni, paid 1.3 billion euros for these rights in 2011.

The three large Dutch banks - ABN Amro, ING and Rabobank - are structurally involved in abuses in the palm oil sector. These abuses include land grabbing, human rights violations and cutting down rainforests, according to two reports environmental organization Milieudefensie published on Monday, ANP reports.

According to Milieudefensie, between 2010 and 2018 the three banks invested at least 4.9 billion euros into 14 palm oil companies guilty of 118 abuses in nine countries. 

The Nigerian Air Force is prepared to help Shell protect its pipelines in the African country using newly acquired drones, should Shell ask for that help, Air Force commander Sadique Abubakar said, ANP reports.

The Dutch oil giant regularly faces criticism in Nigeria due to pollution. On the mainline, Shell pipelines are often drained and sabotaged, resulting in heavy pollution, according to the oil company. Critics blame the large environmental damage on outdated pipelines and negligence on Shell's part. 

Many of the promotion girls Heineken uses in African countries to stimulate the sale of the Dutch beer, are faced with sexual harassment during their work, according to Olivier van Beemen, who investigated the situation these young women face and wrote a book about it.

In an article in NRC, Van Beemen writes that many Heineken promotion girls have to deal with sexual harassment or assault, have to go to bed with managers, and prostitute themselves to clients. Heineken has known about this problem for 15 years, but does little about it, he said.

Shell is being accused of complicity in the execution-style deaths of nine Nigerian activists in 1995. The widows of four of these activists filed a lawsuit in the Netherlands against the Dutch oil giant on Wednesday, the Volkskrant reports.

Departing Foreign Affairs Minister Bert Koenders called on the European Union to pay better attention to which arms supplies they support. According to him, plenty of money is raised to combat famine in Yemen, but Britain and France for example still provide weapons to Saudi Arabia, which is playing an important role in the civil war raging in Yemen, he said to BNR.

"I think that is a very bad thing", Koenders said to BNR. "We have a European arms export policy. Then you should also look at human rights issues and international humanitarian law, at the stability in a region."

The Nigerian government is taking oil giant Shell Nigeria Exploration & Production to court and demanding just over 6 billion euros in compensation for damage caused by a major oil spill in 2011

ActionAid Nederland is accusing oil-giant shell of unethically accepting a 1.7 billion dollar tax rebate in Nigeria, while 110 million people in the country have less than a dollar to spend a day. The organization wants the Dutch government to confront Shell about these tax exemptions in developing countries

Shell will clean up the oil spill in a heavily polluted area in the Niger Delta. This area is located in Bodo, Nigeria, which has about 40 thousand inhabitants. The company will also carry the costs of the cleanup.

Royal Dutch Shell Plc (RDSA) has agreed to pay compensation for two of its oil spills that occurred in Nigeria in 2008. In total, Shell will pay 55 million British pounds, an amount agreed to in the largest out-of-court settlement for Nigerian oil spills to date, which followed a three-year legal battle between Shell and 15,600 Nigerians living in Bodo.