The thorny issue of oil spillage and the debates around it are as old as when Nigeria began crude oil exploration in the Niger Delta region. But it was the 1970 oil spill in Ogoniland, which led to a £26m fine against Shell in Nigeria that eventually put the country in the eye of the storm globally. Many judgments have since been delivered against oil companies, the Nigerian government and/or their representatives and supervising agencies for the degradation of oil-bearing communities and losses of lives and property.
However, the phenomenon has failed to abate, as the Federal Government, between 1970 and 2000, reported about 7000 spills. Given the country’s weak regulatory oversight, as well as poor data gathering capacity, statistics of data spill is, according to many experts, inaccurate and mainly underreported. Amnesty International had reported that since 2014, Eni alone had about 820 spills in the Niger Delta accounting for about 4.1 million litres. Also, since 2011, Shell reported 1, 010 spills, with 110, 535 barrels or 17.5 million litres lost.
Oil spill has a catastrophic impact on the environment and the people’s health. It threatens livelihood, leaving generational impacts. When oil is spilt, plants and animals are killed. It affects salinity/pH levels, pollutes air, water and more. Marine birds and mammals, as well as fish and shellfish usually die.
The oil-producing region, reportedly, has a population of about 31 million people and about 40 ethnic groups including the Bini, Itsekiri, Efik, Esan, Ibibio, Annang, Oron, Ijaw and others. According to environmentalists, the region is the part of the country that consists of highly diverse ecosystems, which support numerous species of terrestrial and aquatic flora and fauna. While oil spillage threatens these species, the development is a direct danger to over 70 per cent of the communities, which rely on fishing and farmlands for their livelihood.
From 2011 to 2017 alone, only Shell and Eni spilt about 21.7 million litres of crude oil. In context, this is the equivalent of nine Olympic swimming pools. Olympic pools are 50 metres long, 25 meters wide, and 2 meters deep. In terms of volume, when full, these pools hold 2.5 million liters of water, or about 660, 000 gallons.
The National Oil Spill Detection and Response Agency (NOSDRA) recorded that as recent as between January 2019 and April 2021, a total of 12 states recorded 881 cases of oil spillage, with 77 per cent of the spills occurring in only three oil-producing states of Bayelsa, Delta and Rivers. Other states that are regularly affected by spillages are Akwa Ibom, Imo, Abia, Edo, Ondo and Lagos.
Although oil production and exploration take place across the world, the Niger Delta region is known globally for environmental disasters and degradation. While some of the big oil companies also explore oil in their countries and abide by extant regulations, they craftily circumvent Nigeria’s weak regulation, which places rent-seeking above the plight of citizens.
About a fortnight ago, a Federal High Court sitting in Abuja, ordered Mobil Producing Nigeria and its joint venture partner, Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC) to, within 14 days, pay N81.9b to a number of communities in Ibeno Local Government Area of Akwa Ibom State, affected by oil spills between 2000 and 2010.
Justice Taiwo Taiwo awarded the damages against Mobil and NNPC in a suit filed by representatives of the communities, led by Obong Effiong Archianga. In his judgment, Justice Taiwo agreed with the plaintiffs’ lawyer, Chief Lucius Nwosu (SAN), that Mobil and NNPC were negligent in the way they handled oil spills that caused environmental degradation in the communities.
Taiwo came down hard on the NNPC for being interested in revenue generation from oil exploration activities at the expense of the lives of the people in the affected communities.
The judge also noted that although Mobil and NNPC carried out a cleanup exercise, they failed to address the compensation that would have mitigated the economic losses suffered by the people said to be mainly fishermen and farmers.
Earlier this year, a British Supreme Court ruling also ended a 13-year-old battle between Shell and some oil communities, when the court ruled that Royal Dutch Shell must be held accountable for massive oil spills in the Niger Delta in 2008 and 2009. The court ordered the oil major to pay farmers and communities compensations for the spill.
While similar litigations are scattered across Nigerian and international courts raising concerns about the questionable operations of IOCs, there are indications that oil communities are now taking their destinies into their hands, with the government seemingly blinded by investment inflow at the expense of helpless citizens.
Though investment inflow is necessary anywhere in the world, doing business in a sustainable manner ought not to be sacrificed. Investments from oil companies have sustained revenue inflow and provided benefits such as job opportunities and improvements to infrastructure but such benefits become worthless when they are earned at the expense of lives.