Journ­al­ism is in crisis. What is it for? To save you all the the­or­et­ical hand-wringing here’s a small, prac­tical example for you from Nigeria, where Shell have been oper­at­ing for over half a cen­tury.

What bene­fits have accrued to loc­als from Shell’s oper­a­tions? Here’s what Shell Nigeria say about their con­tri­bu­tion to health­care in the Niger Delta:

Shell Nigeria’s long his­tory of pro­mot­ing healthy liv­ing in the com­munit­ies of its areas of oper­a­tion, dates back to the 1970’s. The pro­gramme, which star­ted in the early days with the dona­tion of equip­ment, drugs and equipped blocks for spe­cial ser­vices has developed to a level where host com­munit­ies not only par­ti­cip­ate in the determ­in­a­tion of their health needs, but also increas­ingly in the man­age­ment of health projects.

The pro­gramme has so far provided 14 Cot­tage Hos­pit­als, 13 Health Centres, Land and Swamp Mobile Clin­ics, many Health Posts, as well as sup­ply of equip­ment and drugs through a revolving scheme. The object­ive is that host com­munit­ies par­ti­cip­ate in man­aging the health facil­it­ies through Man­age­ment Com­mit­tees to make the health care deliv­ery sys­tem even more sustainable.

In 2003, SPDC-built-and-supported hospitals/health centres, together, treated over 135,000 patients. Some 746,643 chil­dren were immun­ized in the two rounds of 2004 National Immun­iz­a­tion Pro­gramme. To ensure the widest pos­sible reach, SPDC provided logist­ics sup­port (boats and vehicles) for the exer­cise in order to sur­mount the chal­lenges posed by the dif­fi­cult Niger Delta terrain.

Impress­ive stuff. And here’s Soni Daniel (dis­claimer: I know Soni) writ­ing in the Nigerian Inde­pend­ent:

[A]s we made our way towards the houses, a group of youths car­ry­ing buck­ets passed us on their way to fetch water from the same mud­died river they defec­ate into…

The sick mem­bers of the com­munity always go through the gruelling exper­i­ence of a three-hour jour­ney by boat to Kolo Creek where the nearest government-run health facil­ity is located.

“Most of our people die even before they can access med­ical facil­it­ies, because of the long dis­tance to the hos­pital,” laments Samuel Tar­inyo, a retired teacher and nat­ive court mem­ber in Oloibiri, who was in Stand­ard One when Shell came to the area in 1953.

Of course, Shell just pay their taxes to the gov­ern­ment. And if Shell weren’t there, there are plenty of other oil companies…