Last week, President Bola Tinubu hosted a trouble-shooting meeting with a delegation from Ogoniland, an ethnic nationality in the four Local Government Areas of Rivers State: Eleme, Gokana, Khana, and Tai. The locality is the second place in Niger Delta where oil was discovered in commercial quantities after Oloibiri, a small community, now in Bayelsa State. About 60% of Nigeria’s crude oil supply comes from Ogoniland.
Shell, one of the five major international oil companies (IOCs) that operate in Nigeria, started oil exploration in Ogoniland in 1958, and produces 39 percent of the country’s crude oil. In 1970 however, the first documented oil spillage happened at Shell’s Bomu oil well in Gokana LGA. From then, oil spillage emerged as a vexed issue. Official estimates from Nigerian government indicated that over 7,000 oil spills were witnessed between 1970 and 2000. Bloomberg reports that “oil has continued to ooze from dormant wellheads and active pipelines, leaving the 386-square mile kingdom’s wetlands shimmering with a greasy rainbow sheen, its once-lush mangroves coated in crude, well-water smelling of benzene and farmlands charred and barren.”
In Professor Okey Ibeanu’s analysis of nexus between affluence and affliction in the Niger Delta, he notes that “Pollution arising from oil spillage destroys marine life and crops, makes water unsuitable for fishing and renders many hectares of farmland unusable. Brine from oil fields contaminates water formations and streams, making them unfit as sources of drinking water…flaring gas in the vicinity of human dwellings and high-pressure oil pipelines that form a mesh across farmlands are conducive for acid rains, deforestation, and destruction of wildlife…dumping of toxic, nonbiodegradable by-products of oil refining is dangerous to both flora and fauna, including man.”
Ken Saro-Wiwa, a writer, environmental rights activist, and a son of the soil, founded the Movement for the Survival of the Ogoni People (MOSOP) in 1990 and mobilized his people to protest the ruination of their farmlands, pollution of the fishing waters, and unmitigated releases of carcinogenic gases and black carbon in the atmosphere which have proven tendencies of causing cancer, heart, and respiratory diseases. The pain of Ogoni people was aggravated by the realization that despite the huge revenues extracted under their feet, the wealth had no improvement on the material conditions of the host communities. Conversely, they had poverty, disease, and unrest.
The perennial negligence and lip service radicalized the MOSOP activists, and the agitations turned violent. Shell had to shut down operations as attacks were targeted at its staff and facilities. In consequence, Nigerian government adopted a heavy-handed approach and clamped down on the suspected perpetrators allegedly implicated in the murder of four Ogoni chiefs. Their activities were adjudged economic sabotage and Abacha’s military junta tried and executed Ken Saro-Wiwa and other eight activists, dubbed ‘Ogoni Nine’ by hanging, in Port Harcourt, on November 10, 1995, defying all local and international appeals.
Nonetheless, the issues have metastasized. There has been no strong political will for remediation of despoiled environments. Harvard International Review notes that “On October 10, 2004, one such leak, in the village of Goi in Rivers State, led to the forced evacuation of an entire town. The initial leak met a cooking fire, which then set the oil-coated creek and the mangrove canopy alight.”
Though Shell denied any complicity in the circumstances that led to the gruesome execution of the ‘Ogoni Nine’, it however, in 2009, agreed to a compensatory payout of US$15.5 million to the deceased families, a whooping sum which has been described as the first of its kind on human rights abuses by any multinational corporation across the globe. Yet, the fundamental issues still stare on the faces unattended to. A renowned historian, Professor Tekena Tamuno, in his rendition, notes that “Nigeria has transformed from a Protectorate of Palm Oil (1914-1957) to one of Crude Oil (1958-2011) … with oil becoming the de facto, if not de jure, Ruler of the vast majority of her citizens.”
In August 2011, the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) released a commissioned Report to the federal government with recommendations to the government, oil and gas industry and the host communities. The Report specifically made a case for the creation of Ogoniland Restoration Authority, Environmental Restoration Fund for Ogoniland with US$1 billion for cleanup costs, in the first phase, and coordination of multi-stakeholder efforts. Thus, in June 2016, former vice-president Yemi Osibanjo launched the cleanup exercise in Port Harcourt, on behalf of the federal government.
In line with UNEP recommendations, the federal government set up the Hydrocarbon Pollution Remediation Project (HYPREP) to coordinate the remediation efforts and restoration of polluted environments in Ogoniland. The US$1 billion project fund which was about N360 billion in 2016 was to be contributed by SPDC Joint Venture Limited (Shell, Total, Agip and NNPC) and the Nigerian government. The SPDC JV pledged to bring 90% of the money ($900 million) staggered over five years. According to Dataphyte, the JV has remitted $572 million, 64% of the pledged $900 million, but Nigerian government had not paid a dime of its N100 billion (10%) obligation to the project.
HYPREP has claimed significant milestones in its mandate. It, for instance, said that the “restoration of 560 hectares oil-degraded mangroves in Ogoni is 75 percent completed” just as it also claimed that shoreline cleanup in the area has reached 20 percent completion. But there are concerns that corruption, lack of transparency and bureaucracy are marring the delivery timelines of the HYPREP. The host communities are still grappling with the problems. The feeling of exclusion is still high. Even the 45-minute Port Harcourt – Ogoni Road takes over 4 hours journey because of its sorry state. There should therefore, be a verifiable commitment in addressing the plight of Ogoni people if the planned resumption of crude oil exploration in the area would get their buy-in. Government must bolster the people’s trust through wider engagement, especially the youths. Mainstreaming the wellbeing of about 1.5 million people where the nation gets a huge chunk of her wealth should be a priority.