West Africa Weekly founder and multiple award-winning Investigative journalist, David Hundeyin has publicly rejected a $500 offer by an international NGO, Dialogue Earth, to write an environmental piece attacking Nigeria’s only operational oil refinery, the Dangote Refinery and Petrochemicals Company.
The brief obtained showed that Dialogue Earth, a London-based NGO backed by several funding organisations that have been credibly linked to American intelligence operations including Ford Foundation and ClimateWorks, suggested titles such as “Dangote Refinery: A Test for Nigeria’s Climate Ambitions” and “A Burning Issue: Dangote’s $20 Billion Oil Bet Highlights Nigeria’s High-Stakes Climate Paradox” with story objectives exploring environmental impacts, operational practices, geopolitical implications, among others.-
“It will never be me,” Hundeyin wrote clearly in an X post on Saturday, describing it as another move by external interests working in tandem with internal interests to ensure that Nigeria and Africa as a whole remain exactly as poor as it is.
Last week, I received an N800,000 offer from an international NGO called Dialogue Earth (formerly known as China Dialogue Trust) to write an article essentially saying that Dangote Refinery is terrible for the environment because something something “Environmental Concerns,” something something “Climate Change,” something something “Energy Transition Policy,” something something “COP 28.”
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“The (unstated but clearly implied) thrust of the brief was for a prominent local voice to put their name on an article that is an argument or a premise for the Nigerian government to kill the refinery based on its “energy transition commitments” and “environmental policy.”, Hundeyin wrote.
He highlighted the perceived hypocrisy of the NGO’s stance, pointing out that the longstanding practice of exporting raw materials and importing refined fuel, which exacerbates poverty in West Africa, had never been challenged by Dialogue Earth or its American backers. Also, the harmful blending of West African fuel cargoes with toxic waste and high sulphur content by European refiners, which has caused significant health issues in the region, has not been criticised by the NGO.
But Nigeria having a refinery that will wean West Africa off import dependency on those European refiners (and allow West Africa control the sulphur content of its own fuels) is where Dialogue Earth and its funders draw the line.”
Hundeyin dispelled notions of “conspiracy theory” surrounding the involvement of American and European interests in African affairs, asserting that these entities often exert influence to perpetuate poverty and restrict development in Africa, thus maintaining their own economic advantages.
He said:These people believe that Africans should not exist or have nice things in this world. Apparently, the sole purpose of our existence is to enhance their experience of the planet and all that it has to offer.
“The message needs to be passed that as poor as we are, you cannot convince us to campaign for the elongation of our own poverty by commissioning $500 hack jobs in the hope that we will be greedy enough to only see the money and ignore the bigger picture of what we can clearly see you trying to do. I will reiterate something I have said multiple times – I am not a believer in the religious faith called Climate Change/Saving The Environment.
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“I care exactly as much about the environment as do the rich white men who destroyed it, to begin with. I firmly believe that if what it takes for Africa to industrialise is for it to burn so much fossil fuel that snow stops falling in Wisconsin and it starts raining concentrated sulphuric acid in Doncaster, it is not too big a price for Europe and North America to pay – it is certainly not bigger than the price Africa had to pay for Europe and North America to develop. It is and will continue to be 100% OUR prerogative to determine what to do with our hydrocarbons.
“It is not the rich white men hiding behind these “Climate Advocacy NGOs” who will tell us what to do with our energy reserves, and by what means we are allowed to escape the poverty that they engineered for us.
If you are reading this and you are one of the rich white men whose economic interests are threatened by Nigeria refining its own oil, you should come out and fight Aliko Dangote by yourself. Or at least go find a much stupider African to do your dirty job – there’s plenty of those,” he stated.
– west Africa Weekly