The Environmental Rights Action (ERA)/Friends of the Earth Nigeria has condemned the ongoing divestment of International Oil Companies (IOCs) in the Niger Delta region after exploitation and devastation of the region.
The Executive Director of ERA, Mr. Chima Williams, said this in his remarks at a town hall meeting with representatives of civil rights groups across Akwa Ibom in Uyo.
Williams decried the health hazards and effects on aquatic animals that the activities of the IOCs had caused the people of the Niger Delta region.
He expressed displeasure that for over six decades of oil exploration in the region and its consequences on the region, the IOCs now want to abandon the region and escape to the offshore to avoid taking their responsibilities of cleaning the region.
Williams said that the in view of the level of environmental pollution, oil spillage and gas flaring which Niger Delta region had suffered in the hands of multinational oil companies, divestment was not the best option for now.
He said that the activities of IOCs in the Niger Delta region had destroyed the aquatic life and caused untold health hazards and even shortened life span of the people of the region.
“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,” Williams said.
The executive director dismissed the claims by the IOCs that militant activities had adverse consequences on their operations, insisting that this reason for their planned divestment is grossly insufficient. .
Also speaking, Mr. Ufot Phenson, President, Akwa Ibom Oil Producing Community Development Network (AKIPCON) said that the perceived reasons of multinational companies embarking on divestment is to evade their obligatory responsibilities and liabilities.
Phenson added that the IOCs divestment policy is to further entrench in the region the tendency of neo-colonialism characterised by use and dump tactics, exploitation, cheats, abandonment, enslavement and impoverishment of the people.
He said that the divestment policy of the IOCs is to evade the remediation of the battered and polluted Niger Delta environment by the oil giants.
“Their responsibilities to the host communities in this regard, which they have failed to discharge include payment of compensation arising from oil spills, gas flaring effects, hydrocarbon pollution effect on the environment.
“To save their funds and maximize profit to the detriment of oil producing communities in the region in particular and Nigeria in general. To operate under cover or in proxy using the new company as a cover,” Phenson said.
Phenson said that the IOCs wishing to divest should as a matter of priority pay compensation to alleviate the suffering of the Niger Delta region and remediate the polluted environment to its original state before any divestment.
He called on the people of the Niger Delta region to come together and fight the common cause legally without resulting to self-help as such does not pay.
