WikiLeaks Shell 'revelations' are old news in Nigeria

WikiLeaks revelations about the extent of Shell's "infiltration" within the Nigerian government were this week ever so strongly rebuffed by Nigeria's NNPC spokesperson, Levi Ajuonoma. Clearly a case of "Levi doth protest too much", the vehemence of the official denial merely points to the likely veracity of the claims – ie that Shell has its people in key ministries within the Nigerian government. Yet are the revelations in themselves so shocking?

While clearly the explicit nature of the unguarded comments of the former Shell vice-president, Ann Pickard (who is renowned, ironically, for her less-than-diplomatic tendency for over disclosure and which in the end may have cost her her job), have understandably caused embarrassed consternation in official circles and claims of "told you so" among campaigners, the revelations in themselves do not actually reveal anything scandalously new, or anything that most generally well-informed Nigerians do not already know.

A history of osmosis between multinational executives and the Nigerian state is legendary with personnel constantly moving between government and multinational posts. Ernest Shonekan, one-time Shell director who headed Nigeria's short-lived interim government, 1993-94, is perhaps the most striking of countless examples. Yet Shell is not alone.

Most multinationals try to secure their interests, either via official "secondments" or less formal arrangements – from indirectly sponsoring the political ambitions of former employees (the former governor of Lagos State, 1997-2007, Bola Tinubu, was a former executive and later treasurer of Mobil Oil), to outright bribery of public officials. While recent moves by the Nigerian government to prosecute US oil services giant, Halliburton, over a $182m cash-for-contracts scandal suggests a resolve to reign in multinationals, the presence of multilateral agencies with offices in key ministries shows that sovereignty subservience is a more widespread phenomenon.

So why do these revelations about Shell, so pilloried for complicity in the crisis in Nigeria's environmentally devastated oil-producing Niger Delta, grate so much? Because Shell's presence in Nigeria is older than the Nigerian state itself. Granted prospecting licenses in 1913 before Nigeria was even ruled as a single entity, Shell today with the largest market share, is embedded within the Nigerian state in ways that dwarf its late-starter rivals.

While Shell continues to claim neutrality in things political, it assumes a public profile in everyday life. Massive Shell billboards alongside Nigerian motorways, not advertising its own products but advising Nigerians on road safety and admonishing reckless drivers, could be just the harmless gestures of a good corporate citizen. Yet Shell's occupation of the Nigerian public space reflects its imprint on Nigeria political life, in ways that continue to impede the state's ability to get its own oil industry house in order. Incessant wrangling over the now watered-down petroleum industry bill, which was to have radically overhauled the sector, bears this out. After much internal "lobbying", the bill, if passed at all, now looks set to grant more favourable terms to Shell and its rivals than originally imagined.

Kathryn Nwajiaku-Dahou, an ESRC Post doctoral research fellow in the department of politics at the university of Oxford, and a member of Nuffield College.