Each community’s spokesman opened catalogues of woes, neglect, devastation, poverty, suffering, sickness, in their communities following spillages from oil theft and leaky, expired oil pipes in their land.
It was at a workshop organised by the National Oil Spill Detection Agency (NOSDRA) for the Nigeria Agip Oil Company (NAOC) and its host communities of Aggah, Obirikom, Okwuzi and Mgbede, in Ogba/Egbema/Ndoni Local Government Area (ONELGA) of Rivers State.
The workshop entitled: “Accessibility/availability of NOSDRA in addressing rising environmental concern in Oil and Gas production communities in the Niger Delta”, was meant to sensitise the communities on the presence of NOSDRA in the state, its roles and mandate as mediator on issues of dispute ar
The federal and River state governments’ environmental regulatory agencies such as the NESREA, NNPC (DPR), as well as State Ministry of Energy and Environment were represented at the event.
The communities lamented oil spill which has impacted on their health and environment.
The Paramount Ruler of Aggah community, Eze-Ali Ignatius Ekezie, observed that ONELGA youths were neglected in the amnesty deal of the Federal Government because they were peaceful. He queried the rationale of not including non-violent youths of his area in the programme while rewarding “militants who destroyed Agip facilities, tapped oil and did so many atrocities.
“More than 1,000 have been sent out and trained on different skills from the militant groups but nobody remembered the non-violent ONELGA people. If those that are peaceful were not also empowered, what is the encouragement?
“By what the Federal Government has done, the way then to go is to be violent, destroy things so that you will be recognized, that is what it means, but the good people of ONELGA will continue to be peaceful.
“We as ONELGA indigenes we are not saying these to attract sympathy from anywhere, but just to do the needful. We don’t even have hope on the process this NGO (GASIN), and NOSDRA is taking to protect the environment, help the helpless oil processing victims, because they may have a hitch on the process that can crumble the entire efforts.
“God has not made any mistake in putting the resources there. My family has six oil wells that have been producing since 1955, as I speak, most of the people around me are living in thatch houses, and we are producing oil.
“I get more saddened this time whenever I watch television and see robust people all over, with their dropping jaws, people getting fat on the resources from my father’s land while my people are impoverished, I get enraged, then the oil becomes a doom in ONELGA, especially Egbema.” He grieved.
Tensioned heightened at the hall when AGIP, which is at the centre of the controversy, came late to the meeting. NOSDRA Port Harcourt boss, Cyrus Nkangwung barely hid his disappointment, although he apologised on the company’s behalf.
Eze –Ali Ekezie, a Septuagenarian was visibly angry at NAOC. He said, “The NNPC and their DPR, the state Ministry of Environment, NESREA are all here today, why not go and drag NAOC out to this hall because they are your workers, now that they are not here and nothing was done to them, call this meeting again tomorrow they will still not come.
“Last year I came to understand that even in the MOU given to us, NDDC takes 3 per cent of that MOU money which sometimes is huge sum. That of 2 years ago was N800 million that was given to NDDC, to do what?” he raged.
Eze Aggah continued: “Do you know there is no NDDC or government (both Federal and State), presence in my Aggah community there? We built our three Primary Schools and Secondary Schools by ourselves. We will soon refuse NNPC from taking our oil, and we will be prepared to die inside those oil wells. We are arranging the oil sharing formula of regions.”
The chairman of GASIN, Rev. Father Edward Obi, said the NGO is out to set up a platform for meaningful discussions between host communities and the operators, adding that that was what necessitated the invitation of the government, communities and the operator (NAOC) to the meeting. He said dialogue was veritable key to addressing all issues of conflict and disagreement, between persons, but regretted that NAOC was not represented.
“The way we planned it was to have a tripartite engagement between the government, communities and the operator. We as civil society are only facilitators encouraging discussions to take place because we believe that there is nothing that cannot be resolved by dialogue.”
The Obirikom traditional ruler, Eze Christian Uzor Nkisa, urged Agip to look inwards for oil thieves, stressing that its staff members and JTF security operatives should be thoroughly investigated instead of pointing finger on the communities.
He said the presence of heavily armed JTF men at ONELGA land and sea vindicates him and community of the accusation on oil theft.
He was corroborated by Father Obi, a clergy of the Catholic Church, who noted that “with the presence of heavily armed security personnel, especially the Military and Police at the facilities it is impossible for civilians to successfully engage in vandalism. How is it possible that anybody can steal oil there and come all the way to that one road, (the military men are also at the Orashi river), and pass all the security check points and were not detected?”
Representative of NAOC, Nuhu Dahiru, Dahiru, said: “I disagree with the conclusion of the Reverend on the comments that were earlier made that as a company, we are responsible for the vandalisation of our assets and also oil theft activities that have led to huge devastation of the environment.
“We are a responsible organisation, we care about the communities we operate in, we care about the environment, we care about our assets, and we also care about our reputation.
“The NOSDRA Director and the representative of DRP have earlier thrown light on the process of JIVs. The facts there even in the regulatory agencies for anyone that cares to verify, the cause of spills are discovered during JIVs.
“We have voided a number of JIVs simply because community representative did not show up, we have not and will never ever invite somebody by giving them money or any form of inducement to act as community representative, we have not done that and will never do such a thing, the facts are there.
“All the incidences that have occurred have been investigated, and if you go through the records you will see that in the last three years, 85 to 90 per cent of oil spill incidences are due to sabotage, vandalism for no just cause.
“That is one thing that we are hoping that this meeting will be able to address.”
