Babawale OBAYANJU from Environmental Rights Action/Friends of the Earth Nigeria reflects on the current compensation talks between communities of the oil contaminated Niger Delta, and Shell, the company responsible for these atrocities.
A warm welcoming pungent and odoriferous smell of crude oil, a horrible sight filled with dead and dying mangrove swamps, rivers blackened with and covered in a sheen of crude oil. A city with over 60,000 subsistence fishermen and farmers living in 35 villages, Bodo houses the over 50 years old shell petroleum Trans Niger Pipeline (TNP) which transports under high pressure over 120,000 barrels of crude oil daily when in active supply. This giant pipeline collects oil from nearly 100 pipelines in the Ogoni district, a place with no lands to farm and no river to fish any more. This is the current picture of the once beautiful and rich Bodo city, Gokana Local Government Area of River State Nigeria, 5 years after a major oil spill occurred in 2008.
The said spill happened in September 2008 AND remained unstopped by Shell till 7th November 2008. A month after precisely, in December 2008, another section of the TNP broke again into the swamps, farmland and rivers of Bodo and continued to leak unabated untill 19th February 2009.
Independent findings by US firm Accufacts suggested that about 1440 to 4320 barrels of crude oil flowed daily for the 72 days period in 2008 amounting to about 103,000 barrels and 311,000 barrels. Other experts believe that over 400,00 barrels of crude oil was pumped into the Bodo environment before the leakages were pluged.
Shell for once accepted liability for the 2008/2009 spills without much squirming, after a team of 11,000 Bodo people took them to court in the United Kingdom, but laid claim to third party interference and has continued to dispute the amount of oil spilled and extent of damage done. They have said that only about 1640 barrels of crude oil spilled into the ecosystem of Bodo city in the 72 days of oil rain.
Without any special mathematics can this be true? Lets do the Maths!
Another irony to the case is that this spill has remained uncleaned for the past 5 years. This is a company that have said on their website …”we are committed to cleaning up all spills from our facilities in the Niger Delta, even when they are caused (unlike these two) by oil theft or sabotage.”
A call on the people of Bodo City by Shell Petroleum Company to the negotiation table last week was welcomed with mixed feelings, and the outcome on Friday was not a surprise.
The outright rejection of the so called “generous“ compensation offer by shell of 30 Million Pounds or around 1100 pounds each to 11,000 people was a right step in the right direction for a people whose livelihoods ghave been destroyed. This offer which is equivalent to an estimated 2-3 years net earnings of affected people was rejected by the people as not acceptable.
The only worry now is, will the people hold on to this position till the end? I just hope and pray that the divide and conquer method of transnational companies will not applied to buy some off in later days seeing the poverty state of the affected people.
But with all the small victories recorded, from the out of court settlement of the Ken Saro Wiwa case in June 2011, to the January 2013 judgement in favour of 1 of 3 impacted villages in the Hague court, and now this call to discuss compensation and cleanup with the Bodo city people, it appears that justice will sooner or later be attained and will result in a thorough clean up and or remediation of the entire Niger Delta environment. We hope this will halt impunity and the mad search for new oil.
Justice will take root when we seriously seek for new and clean alternative energy sources.
Until victory, we shall continue to fight that New Oil be left under the ground, new and clean alternative energy sources be sought. We will continue to insist that due cleanup be carried out and due compensation is paid to affected communities.