Shell Nigeria: Changing the Community Engagement Model

After years of broken promises, environmental mishaps and conflict in the Niger Delta region, Shell’s host communities had little trust in the company—the largest oil & gas producing company in Nigeria. By the late 1990s–early 2000s, the company had suffered reputational damage due to its environmental record in the Delta and in wake of the 1995 execution of Ogoni activist Ken Saro-Wiwa by the Nigerian government. By the early 2000s, Shell’s historically paternalistic community engagement model, which required bilateral agreements and multiple interfaces with nearly 1,000 host communities, was becoming unsustainable. The company needed to figure out a more effective way of meeting the needs of local communities without compromising its long term position in the region. In 2005, Gloria Udoh, a community development officer at SPDC, Shell’s premier subsidiary in Nigeria, led a team that was charged with proposing a new community engagement model to Shell senior management.