• ‘IOCs, independent producers concealed quantities of spill 1,596 different times’
• Stakeholders seek environmental remediation fund, halt on divestment
• Local producers fingered in rising cases, 247,527 barrels poured into inland waters since 2016
• ‘Ororo oil well in Ondo spilling crude since 2020’
Over 36.1 million litres of crude oil, enough to fill about 1,090 oil tankers, has been spilled on water, farmland and Nigeria’s seas in the oil-rich Niger Delta by oil companies, especially Shell, Nigerian Agip Oil Company Limited (NAOC) and the Nigerian National Petroleum Company Limited (NNPCL).
The spill, which occurred between 2016 and 2023 as per data obtained from the Nigerian Oil Spill Monitor domiciled with the National Oil Spill Detection and Rescue Agency showed that cases of spill and pollution of water as well as land may be going from bad to worse.
Despite the rapid push to save biodiversity, over 75 per cent of the spills went directly into the sea, swamp and land to worsen biodiversity and take away the livelihood of thousands, especially farmers and fishermen, who are already facing poverty and climate crisis as 25 per cent of the oil spill destroyed inland water that communities rely on for drinking.
