Nigerian journalist David Hundeyin has exposed Dialogue Earth, an international NGO for offering him N800,000 to blackmail Dangote Refinery as dangerous to the environment.
In a series of tweets on Saturday,Hundeyin explained that he decided to make it public to send a message to the foreign interlopers seeking to follow the same path and those within the country determined to counteract the interests of Nigerians and by extension, West Africans.
According to him: “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.”
“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.”
This conclusion wasn’t immediately apparent when they reached out to me, but I suspected where it was heading, and I quickly accepted the offer so that I could see the brief and obtain hard evidence. I’ve attached screenshots from the brief below.”
Hundeyin further explained that the organisation is led by an Oxford professor with funding from several American intelligence bodies, including NGO which has been blacklisted in India for funding organisations against the national interest.
“Basically, this London-based NGO is headed by Sam Geall, an Oxford professor and is funded by several American intelligence fronts such as Ford Foundation and ClimateWorks (which is blacklisted in India for funding organisations working against India’s national interest). For whatever reason, it is now quietly mobilising a resistance campaign against what it describes as “Nigeria’s first refinery.”
Apparently, the status quo of Africa’s largest oil producer having no functioning oil refinery to beneficiate its own oil was not a problem for Dialogue Earth and the American CIA fronts who fund it.
“The human poverty caused by exporting this raw material and importing refined fuel was not bad for the environment. Also, the fact of European refiners regularly blending West African fuel cargoes with toxic waste and sulphur content 200 times the European legal limit (leading to asthma, bronchitis and eye infections in West Africa) was also not bad for the environment. 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. That one is bad for the environment, and David Hundeyin should write an article calling for the refinery to be shut down or limited,” he added.
According to him, some Western interests believe Africans should not exist or have nice things, adding that, “apparently, the sole purpose of our existence is to enhance their experience of the planet and all that it has to offer.”
He added that disclosing his encounter with the London-based organisation was to pass a message that Africans cannot be convinced to campaign for the elongation of their 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.”
