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By Chukwumaechi Godwin, Port Harcourt
Participants at the Environmental Rights Action/Friends of the Earth Nigeria ERA/FoEN have concluded that over and above claimed militancy, oil installation vandalism and sabotage, most of the international oil companies seeking divestment from Nigeria are doing so to run away from liabilities arising from the over 50 years of degradation of the Niger Delta region through their operation standards in the region.
The participants came to the conclusion at a one day media-CSO dialogue on ‘Motives behind IOC Divestments in the Niger Delta’ held in Port Harcourt on Monday.
Consisting of CSOs, community, women and youths representatives, the media and government agencies, the participants agreed that the IOCs were leaving the Niger Delta to escape paying for the remediation of the Niger Delta environment, extensively polluted by their oil exploration and production activities, and paying compensation for destroying the livelihood of many people in the region.
They argued that the claim by the IOCs of insecurity and militancy in the Niger Delta region was a huge lie, explaining that even at the peak of militancy in the region, “they were all there doing their business.”
They posited that the sudden rush for divestment now is necessitated by increased indictments of the companies by international and local courts, which award huge amounts against the companies for devastation of the environment and the people’s livelihoods.
In his address, executive director, ERA, Chima Williams, said the level of environmental polluted which Niger Delta region has suffered in the hands multinational oil companies was incomparable globally.
Williams stated that the activities of IOCs in the region have destroyed the aquatic life in the Niger Delta and shortened life span of the people.
ERA’s executive director maintained that the IOCs’ claim that militant activities had adverse consequences on their operations was a mere smokescreen.
Similarly, executive director, ‘We the People,’ Ken Henshaw, in his presentation, said oil companies were scrambling to divest because it provides them an opportunity to abdicate their years of responsibility for the ecological damage in the region.
He said: “After over 70 years of oil extraction and the devastating impacts it has had on oil producing communities, there are emerging indications that the people’s quest for ecological and resource justice may never be achieved.
“While frontline communities and civil society organizations have made significant effort in highlighting the ecological, social and economic conditions in the region, new pressures are now emerging from the divestment moves by multinational oil companies that portend further calamities for oil producing communities.”
“Oil companies are divesting from onshore oil fields and moving further offshore and away from communities, while national companies are buying off the oilfields left by the oil majors without clear provisions about who is liable for historical contaminations and related socio-ecological issues.
“The over 30 million people who live in the oil and gas producing Niger Delta have not benefitted from the huge amounts of resources pumped from beneath their lands, rivers and creeks. Rather than engender better welfare, infrastructure, healthcare, education and security, revenues from oil and gas have instead driven an unusual paradigm of poverty, conflict, repression and underdevelopment.
“The Nigerian government and its subnational affiliates have mostly failed to lift the people out of poverty and underdevelopment. A long history of mismanagement, corruption, elite capture and oil company complicity has made communities in the region among the least developed in the country.
“Despite their appreciably higher revenue accruals, states of the Niger Delta do not fare relatively better in terms of infrastructure and other development indicators”, Henshaw added.
Former Commissioner for Environment in Bayelsa State, Iniruo Wills, noted soot in Port Harcourt and its environs, as a major effect of environmental pollution, adding that the years of illegal oil exploration in the Niger Delta is an indication of conspiracy.
He stated: “Port Harcourt is an open gas chamber with the existence of soot. We live in a gas chamber in Port Harcourt.
“If this madness (illegal oil activities) has been going on, it is not just the government; it is not just the OICs. It is not just the communities. But, somebody must take responsibility for what is happening. That responsibility is lacking in everyone.”
