The Special Assistant to President Goodluck Jonathan on Research and Documentation, Oronto Douglas, is dead.
He died early Thursday morning at the State House Clinic, from cancer-related complications.
A lawyer by profession, he was born in 1966 and had been sick for several years but associates of President Jonathan said he continued to work over the last few weeks for Jonathan’s reelection, with one source saying he was devastated when his principal lost the presidential polls.
Douglas was Nigeria’s leading environmental human rights lawyer and was deputy director of Environmental Rights Action/Friends of the Earth, Nigeria. He was a member of the legal team that represented Ken Saro-Wiwa before he was executed by the Nigerian military junta in November 1995.
He received degrees in law from the University of Science and Technology, Port Harcourt, Nigeria, and De Montford, Leicester, England.
His articles and speeches have been published in books, journals, and magazines in Nigeria, Europe and the United States. His recent book: “Where Vultures Feast, Shell, Human Rights, and Oil in the Niger Delta” has been published by Random House. He was the Commissioner for Information, Culture, Tourism and Strategy for Bayelsa state in Nigeria. He has presented papers in over 200 international conferences and has visited over 50 countries to speak on human rights and the environment.
He remains the first Niger Delta activist to have been hosted at the White House by a serving American President in .
He is survived by wife and children.
