Six decades of unmitigated crude oil exploration, exploitation and gas flaring are responsible for the cases of cancer, blindness and menopause amongst Niger Delta dwellers, a civil society organisation (CSO), We The People (WTP), has asserted.
It therefore appealed to the federal government to hold the International Oil Companies (IOCs) to account in order to remediate the health issues and the environmental degradation caused by their activities before they pull out from the region.
Besides, the group tasked the Nigerian government to set the right template and framework for the Seplat Energy and other indigenous oil firms in the new assets sharing regime, to “not only inherit the assets, but with the liabilities of remediation of the challenges of crude spills, gas flaring and humanitarian crises occasioned by the exploratory activities of the IOCs.”
While faulting the rush by IOCs to divest their onshore oil and gas assets at a press conference in Uyo, the Akwa Ibom State capital, the CSO described the planned relocation as a “criminal flight to abdicate responsibility for several years of poisoning the environment and the people.”
At the press conference held weekend, where it presented a new report titled: “Dirty Exit”, the group’s executive director (ED), Ken Henshaw, said the oil companies were selling their assets because of the growing anxiety over demands for justice and accountability.
He said a framework should be produced in collaboration with civil societies and host communities, and should contain a scientifically-developed post-hydrocarbon impact assessment report on the exact ecological and livelihood impacts of oil extraction.
Henshaw added that the framework should also capture the health audit of people located in close proximity to extraction sites as well as others exposed to oil contamination and gas flaring.
He said, “For communities in the Niger Delta, there is finally the opportunity to hold oil companies accountable for decades of destruction. It is anxiety over these mounting demands for justice that is driving international oil companies to divest. In the thinking of these oil companies, selling off their assets will technically pass the buck of responsibility for fixing their mess to Nigerian firms who are ignorantly buying them.
“For occupied communities who have lost everything to oil extraction in the last 6 decades, what oil companies are doing is not divestment, but criminal flight, attempting to abdicating responsibility for several years of poisoning the environment and people of the Niger Delta. They must never be allowed to simply run off.
“The federal government needs to immediately produce a framework and guide for how oil companies disengage from areas where they have operated. This guide should be developed by a multi stakeholder group including communities and civil society organisations. The federal government should immediate place a moratorium on all oil company divestment in the Niger Delta, pending the ascertaining of issues of community concern.”
He said his organisation is ready to institute a legal action against the oil companies and the federal government in a situation where the issues were not addressed.
Responding, the manager of public affairs, ExxonMobil, Lagos, Mr Ugochukwu Udeagha, said what the people needed to understand is that it is not “asset sale, share sale.”
“Shareholders of Mobil Producing Nigeria (MPN) are selling their shares, so it is not divestment, that is what people need to understand. This was stated clearly in the press release that was issued during the signing of the Share Purchase Agreement (SPA),” he said.
