With shifting deadlines to the end of gas flaring in oil exploration, many communities in the Niger Delta continue to suffer untold hardship from the deadly flames. Seun Akioye, who crisscrossed oil flare sites in the region, reports on the plight of oil-bearing communities.
Lyon Buboupakumo Genesis, one of the two furniture makers in Ogboinbiri, Bayelsa State had just finished filling a pile of wood for the fifth time. He laid it aside and wiped his forehead with the back of his hand.
“ It is not fair to have gas flare near communities. The carbon dioxide is destroying this community, most of the zinc here has gone bad because of the flare, our water is contaminated and even the air we breathe gives our children asthma. The air in Ogboinbiri is not free,” Genesis said.
Genesis is not an ordinary carpenter, he trained as an environmental health technologist and in combination with his carpentry works, he had offered his expertise as a health scientist to his community in its time of need. With an active gas flare and oil activities with its pollution of the environment, Genesis has his hands full.
“There are many children with respiratory tract infection in this community, a child just got off a serious case of asthma. We have children with measles, scabies and other skin burns, a direct consequence of the flare,” he said.
The water in Ogboinbiri is not spared; there is the Apoi creek which for many generations has provided Ogboinbiri with its water needs. Recently, Agip provided some bore holes for the community which only worked for some time. So the people depend mainly on the rain water and during the dry season, the people rely on the contaminated waters of the creek.
To show how the gas flare has contaminated the air around Ogboinbiri, Genesis has a simple experiment which he has performed many times. “When it rains, put a bucket under the rain, directly under the sky and get the water, you will see it comes with black soot and all over the bucket, there will be oil and on the surface of the water, we have no choice but to use the water like that,” Genesis revealed.
The people also suffer from erosion because “a third of the waterfront is gone due to the dredging activities of the oil company to sand fill their site,” according to Genesis. So during the raining season, the community suffers devastating flooding.
A combination of all these factors has contributed to make the people vulnerable to several diseases which were unknown before the gas flare according to Berebo Charles, the Secretary of Ogboinbiri Youth Council. Berebo, a soft spoken and gentle looking youth however displays beneath his timid voice, a fierceness fuelled by patriotism.
According to him, many children in the community have fallen victims of different kinds of skin diseases. One of them is Enebi Lubo, a primary four pupil of Apoi Clan Primary school.
“This is the second time this problem would come; I woke up and discovered the boils. I normally use local herbs to cure them but they are always painful and uncomfortable,” he said.
The same is the story of 16-year-old Okorodo Ayibamie, a senior secondary one student of Community Secondary School. According to Genesis, many babies also experience different skin problems; some have burnt skins.
But most frightening is the case of Mercy Kita who was said to have come from another clan to live with her grandfather in Ogboinbiri. At nine years, she looked at least four years younger than her age and looked frightened as she took off the towel covering her to reveal many big boils scattered all over her body According to her grandfather, the boils often cause her unbearable pain which makes her to cry all the time. Many of the adults who had gathered turned their faces away as one of the boils began to pour out pus in substantial measure.
There was also Benson Cultry, a seven-year old boy who suffers from sudden attacks of asthma. In March, he suffered one of the worst attacks but was saved by the village herbalist. None of the sick children went to the hospital, many went to the village herbalist, others patronised the many pharmacy stores usually referred to as “chemists” and were given self administered drugs, unverified, unprescribed. Many other invalids in the community also rely on the herbalist and “chemists” for cure of all manner of sickness including child bearing with its attendant consequences.
Ogboinbiri has a hospital or most appropriately a building that serves as one but emptied of drugs, patients and doctors. Ironically located a few meters from the gas flare site, the hospital is derogatively referred to as ‘cottage hospital’ by the indigenes.
The hospital or whatever remains of it is a derelict building inhabiting about half a plot of scarce land. Covered by bush almost all the doors are broken. Inside, a spider web had taken over the rooms and on one of the doors was written “No money, No drug.” Inside the hospital, emptied bottles of drugs littered the ground and the shelves in their last stages of disrepair were empty. According to many of the indigenes interviewed by The Nation, the hospital was donated recently by the NAOC and equipped in part by the Nigeria National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC).
Beside the hospital was the staff quarters, also in a derelict condition and overgrown with weeds, a few meters away the fury of the flare could be seen sending its dangerous emission into the sky.
“This is our cottage hospital, they just dumped it here, it is empty,” Berebo said.
The state of the hospital had negative impacts on the community like the last time Cultry had an asthma attack, an unqualified ‘chemist’ was sent for. He was lucky to be alive and he told The Nation the attacks had ceased, at least for now.
Berebo said: “We have called for them (Agip) to equip the facility but they refused. Any small sickness, we have to charter a boat to take the person to Amasoma or Yenagoa and sometimes before we get there the person has died.”
A decade of pollution
On June 14 last year, a monumental event took the indigenes of Ogboinbiri community by surprise. A gas leakage from one of Agip’s facilities caused panic leaving the residents fleeing for their lives. Boat operators made a fortune as the incident caused a mass evacuation of the community.
There has since been no other leakage from the gas pipes, but that singular incident has shown the community how dangerously they live within striking distance of gas pipes. This is why Niger Salvation is angry about the new gas pipes being laid very close to the village.
“If there is a pipeline burst, what would be our chance?” he asked in a voice laden with bitterness. “ Why don’t these people have conscience at all, they should look for another place to pass their pipes, we don’t want to see it here,” he said waving his hands as a mark of his resolution.
Ogboinbiri is not the only community to feel the wrath of Agip. According to Alagoa Morris, an environmentalist with the Environmental Rights Action/Friends of the Earth Nigeria (ERA/FoEN), the people of Idu-Obosiukwu located in Ogba Egbema, Ndoni local government area of Rivers State are also crying for help from the effects of gas flaring in their community operated by Agip. According to Chief Friday Ehuike, the paramount ruler of the community, since Agip began oil exploration in the community in 1967, it has been tales of sorrow for the indigenes and profit for the company.
Ehuike said due to the continuous gas flaring activities of the company, the community has recorded many losses. “Our roofing sheets are corroded as soon as they are laid on the roof; some of us replace them twice every year. We also suffer serious eye, skin and respiratory problems as a result of this gas flare,” he said. The paramount ruler explained that the walls of their buildings crack easily because of the deep vibration from the flare plant and children could not learn easily in school due to the noise pollution. The foods crops are not left behind, harvested cocoyam are mostly useless as the flare would have roasted it in the soil.
Frontline environmentalist and Executive Director, Health of Mother Earth Foundation (HOMEF) Nnimmo Bassey told The Nation that gas flaring is a raw sore on the conscience of the nation and a crime against nature.
“Routine gas flaring is a big insult on our people. You just need to imagine living in a community with those toxic fires burning non-stop for decades, roaring noisily banishing the night and yet the people live without electricity.”
But the impacts of gas flaring are not only felt in Ogboinbiri, it is felt along Apoi creek. In Ondewari for instance, there is no flow station but the flare from Ogboinbiri causes destruction in that community. Tontiemotee Yeiyee, a Project officer with the Ondewari Health Education and Environmental Project, said the flare reaches Ondewari, a 30-minutes boat ride from Ogboinbiri.
“Ogboinbiri flames affects us, the only source of water we have is rain and the river. The rain is not safe but we have no choice but to use it. There are blackish substances on the rain water but we still used it like that,” he said.
He lamented the strange sicknesses in the community since the flare began, “we are not scientists so we cannot give you particular details, but we do have strange sicknesses which were not there before the gas flare.”
Bracing for war
The Executives of the Ogboinbiri Youth Association had just finished a very important meeting which held late into the night at the organization’s headquarter on Road One. It was a tense meeting which dwelt on actions to be taken against the oil’s company’s pollution of the community and more importantly refusal to give gainful employment to indigenes of Ogboinbiri.
NAOC has had a fairly peaceful atmosphere in Ogboinbiri compared to other communities, the few times the indigenes had tried to protest over welfare issues, the rebellion had been crushed using a number of tactics from intimidation and show of military force to sowing seeds of discord and divide and rule tactics. This has kept the community under check for a long time, until now.
“This community has been taken for a ride by the oil company despite the fact that they are allowed to operate freely on this land. We have written so many letters to the company asking that indigenes should be employed but they turned a deaf ear to us,” Charles Berebo said.
His position was corroborated by the youth president, Mamutobighe Promise and other executive members who claim that since the oil company began work in the community only three indigenes have been employed. Presenting several letters written to the company, the youths say they are ready to take action against the oil company.
In a letter written to the company on August 8, 2011, the youth through their counsel Kamalu, Wodu & Associates wrote: “You are building a gas plant on our land and an already existing flow station and none of our people is working in your system for seventeen years. Do you realise the injustice you have perpetrated on us? Maybe you are waiting for us to take the laws into our hands, we are not asking for billions of naira to share but rather to employ our people.”
It was apparent the veiled threat contained in the letter yielded little or no result as the company still refused to respond. But the community continued to petition the oil giant and in one of the petitions sent to the company and copied to the governor of Bayelsa state, Chief Seriake Dickson and other security agencies on February 22, 2014, the youths gave NAOC two weeks ultimatum to address the issue of unemployment of indigenes into the junior and senior staff cadre of the company:
“The community is giving NAOC two weeks ultimatum to employ Ogboinbiri indigenes into NAOC after which the community will have no option than to disrupt your operations,” the letter warned.
This time Agip reacted fast; a meeting was called where the company promised that six indigenes would be employed immediately. “We are still waiting for their call,” Berebo said.
In Abuja, the Petroleum Industry Bill (PIB) which the government says will address the problems of gas flaring still awaits the passage from the National Assembly. But environmental activists are unimpressed with the new PIB.
“ The PIB does not offer any solution to the problems of gas flaring, it is the same old story. Nothing could be more lax, the oil companies must be laughing at us,” Bassey said.
But the secretary of the House of Representatives Committee on the Environment, Titus Jatau, said Ogboinbiri community should bring their complaint to the National Assembly and the committee would take it up.
“We handle the issue when they come as a form of complaint, the community needs to write a petition and we will call the affected parties to settle it. For now, we have no such complaints from the community,” he assured.
Jatau also said achieving zero flare is not on the plan for now. “ It cannot be overnight, we are trying to see how we can reduce gas flaring now, it has to be gradual.”
Efforts to speak with NAOC proved abortive but ENI, an Italian oil company operating in Nigeria as NAOC, said it is already thinking about zero flare in its operations in Nigeria. “In the exploration and production of hydrocarbons, NAOC is committed mainly to reducing gas flaring.
According to the World Bank, annual flaring and venting gas amounts to around 150 billion m3, which is equivalent to 30 per cent of the EU’s consumption of natural gas? NAOC is playing an important role and has the objective of reaching zero operational gas flared by 2017,” ENI wrote.
The company also said: “With the completion of activities “Idu Phase 2 Works Completion & Flaring Down” in 2012 and “Ogbainbiri Flow Station Upgrading” in the 2013, there has been a reduction of about 1.39 MSCMD in gas sent to flare which has allowed a further decrease up to 75% of the volumes burnt in 2007.
“ In the last quarter of 2013, the flared gas at NAOC was about 6% of the gas produced, meaning that 94 per cent was used towards generating electricity, supplying the petrol-chemical plant at Eleme, supplying the Bonny liquefaction plant, and in injection into the field. Further important initiatives to reduce flaring are underway to recover the flaring gas from the low and low/low pressure stages, starting from Kwale Gas Plant.”
Back in Ogboinbiri, the sun rose early and as early as 7:am, its intensity has reached the zenith.” There is sun in Ogboinbiri, it is very hot. This is how it is every day,” a man commented. Unknown to him, Ogboinbiri may just be witnessing the effects of global warming, and the chief contributor to it is gas flaring which the Ogboinbiri people have now grown used to.
Shifting the goal post
The Associated Gas Reinjection Act of 1979 fixed 1984 as deadline. During the democratic dispensation December 31st 2008 was fixed for the end to gas flaring. But while the Senate fixed a December 31st 2010 as deadline, the Executive again shifted the date to December 2011. Meanwhile, the House of Representatives declared the end of 2012 as its deadline. Recently, the Minister of Petroleum and Natural Resources, Mrs Allison Deziani Maduekue said the most realistic reduction date would be 2017.
•This investigative report was done with a grant from the Wole Soyinka Centre for Investigative Journalism (WSCIJ).
