Oil firms employing divide and rule system against communities – Environmental activist
President General, Akwa Ibom Oil Producing Community Development Network, Apostle Ufot Phenson, speaks to PATRICK ODEY about the state’s experience in the hands of oil companies
Since 2006, your organisation has been in the struggle for environmental sustainability. What are the challenges affecting the achievement of your organisation’s goals?
The challenges are enormous, and very important, is the uncompromising attitude of oil and gas operators in Akwa Ibom State. They don’t seem to accept their fault, negligence, and mistakes whenever they record oil spills and other harmful activities. They don’t have a single sympathy or respect for human lives and the environment they operate in. The operators are so insensitive and are not careful, as they refuse to put in place measures to check the harmful impacts of their operations.
At the moment, an oil company based in Akwa Ibom is flaring noxious hydrocarbon/gas at different locations offshore and onshore of the Atlantic Ocean and at Qua Iboe Terminal with attendant discharge of heat, air, soil, water, and the concomitant environmental degradation. Another oil firm is flaring gas at Mkpanak in Ibeno Local Government Area. All these have negative effects on the host communities of Ibeno, Onna, Eket, Esit Eket, and beyond.
For instance, it will take oil companies many years to clean up previous oil spills before a new one will occur to compound the already worsened environmental situation. The spill from one of the oil firms is so regular that the clean-up of 2020 may come to see another spill again and again. That is one challenge. The host communities have been made to suffer water pollution, destruction of rooftops of their buildings, poor crop yields, economic hardship, frustration, psychological stress and trauma, abject poverty, poor health conditions, and human rights violations.
The second challenge is the problem with government operators as they treat our organisation as their greatest enemy because of the organisation’s uncompromising position on environmental safety, promotion, and the wellbeing of the people. This is so because a good environment which the oil companies came to inherit is our heritage and must be protected. We are not enemies of progress and development as they think.
All we are saying is that they (oil companies) should carry out their businesses in line with the extant laws of the land and international best practices. The position of the African Charter on Human and People’s Rights and other international and local laws are very clear on this matter. The companies and government operators should operate in a manner that will allow for the development of their host communities and not treat them as foreigners in their land.
The people should be made to be part of the development process as they are development-friendly. But when the host communities are deliberately excluded from the development process, there is a vacuum that is very hard to fill and this breeds distrust, and insecurity and may even lead to violence. It is wrong and unfair for our people to fold their hands and watch their environment be degraded daily. The issue of a sustainable environment and the good health of our people which are often treated with ignominy by the oil companies can never and will never be compromised. The major concern of the oil companies is to make profit and take it away to the detriment of the owners of the land.
In tangible terms, what are your organisation’s achievements these past years?
The organisation for the past years has achieved a lot. Some of the achievements include propagating for environmental safety/protection and human rights of our people through awareness creation and sensitisation throughout the 31 LGs of Akwa Ibom State. This aligns with the biblical saying that ‘My people perish for lack of knowledge’. This lack of knowledge makes it possible for oil companies to deceive, cheat, exploit, and shortchange them with impunity. This has become the stock in trade of the oil and gas companies operating in Akwa Ibom State.
They (oil firms) capitalise on the people’s ignorance to expand their wealth with attendant pollution of the Atlantic Ocean and other water bodies, farmlands, pollution of their environment, killing of fishes and fingerlings, disruption and unlawful denial of people’s means of livelihood and the destruction of aquatic life. The organisation has filed suits on this matter in several courts across the country. These suits border on environmental pollution occasioned by oil spills, gas flaring impact on farming, fishing, and allied occupations by groups in the state.
What is NOSDRA doing in the event of environmental pollution in the state?
NOSDRA has failed in its responsibilities. We have written a series of letters to the Director General of the National Oil Spill Detection and Response Agency in Abuja, and the reply is that the agency is doing this or that. We have prevailed on NOSDRA to implement and execute their core mandate of clean-up, remediation, and damage assessment in the state. This is in line with the Act establishing the agency (NOSDRA) which spelt out these functions, which is that in the event of an oil spill, the agency shall remediate the impacted sites and conduct a damage assessment. However, since the creation of the agency in the State, NOSDRA has not carried out a single remediation and damage assessment.
The damage assessment, according to the Act, is the prerequisite for payment of compensation to the oil spill victims. Simply speaking, the said damage assessment is just stakeholders coming together to identify in clear terms what people’s property have been damaged during a particular spill and a proper stock of those properties recorded which will form the basis for compensation to the victims. This has been evaded and deliberately avoided by the agency in the state, and this is the main reason why Akwa Ibom oil victims have not been benefitting from oil spill compensation from oil companies. If you ask NOSDRA officials why they don’t do their jobs, they will tell you that oil companies are not cooperating with them in the discharge of damage assessment.
After that, they don’t care to go further to implement the provisions of the Acts which they know. Now, the question begging for an answer is, what has the agency done to these defaulting oil companies? Are there no laws regulating the activities of oil companies in the country? The agency’s refusal to act is a clear indication of strong connivance with oil companies to further add injuries to the oil spill victims in the state. The law says that any spiller should be made to pay a fine of N500,000 a day. This is clearly stated in the Act. Has this been enforced? The answer is no.
Why is the government not partnering with your organisation in the fight for a sustainable environment?
We have tried to partner with the governments at all levels but to no avail. It may sound funny when I say that in a particular administration in the state, we wrote and accordingly dispatched 17 letters to the Chief Executive and none of them was even acknowledged talk less of giving us a reply. We booked several appointments with government officials but to no avail. We have come to discover that some government officials are feeding fat from oil companies to the detriment of the oil spill victims in the state. This is why we are being despised and avoided. Due to this, stepping into their area of interest (oil companies), they simply declare war against you and that is what is happening.
How will they relate with you when they know that you are there to watch over their nefarious activities? We are not enemies of the government or anyone. We always give government information. The case in point is our report on toxic gas discharge into the Ikot Ebidang environment on the 21st through 23rd of August, 2023. We also wrote to the Ministry of Environment in Akwa Ibom State, but no response whatsoever to date. Go and see the environmental situation of Ikot Ebidang and its adjoining communities, including Ikot Ebekpo, Ikot Annag, Ikot Ntuen, Ikot Akpatek, Ukpana, Ukpaeto, Akpabom, Ndon Eyo in Onna Local Government Area of Akwa Ibom State.
How would you describe the fate of oil-producing communities of Akwa Ibom State?
It is nothing to write home about. Oil-producing communities in Akwa Ibom State are generally suffering the worst level of humiliation, hardship, frustration, and abject poverty due to the harmful economic activities of oil companies. They are living in an environment that is already polluted with attendant human rights consequences. The people are suffering daily; their means of livelihood have been destroyed and unlawfully denied. They are only surviving through the mercy of God and nobody is speaking for them because of the pecuniary interest of internal collaborators. They are determined to frustrate the interest of AKIPCON for the sake of their stomachs.
Your organisation has been demanding the remediation of the impacted environment and compensation in some cases. What has been the response from oil companies?
There is nothing like remediation from the oil companies. The clean-up said to be conducted by oil companies is bringing a few indigenous people without adequate protective gadgets to scoop spilled oil into containers. That is what they do and they call that clean-up and NOSDRA will give them a certificate of clearance and good performance. Is using bare hands by women and youths to scoop oil into containers clean-up?
How true is the claim that some oil companies engage in divide and rule policy to cause disagreement among communities?
That is exactly what is happening. Divide and rule is the system where they create more problems that have eaten deep into the fabric of the people. They will deliberately recruit surrogates from the communities to do the talking for them, defend them, and protect their interest to the detriment of the interests of other members of the community. They may recruit a father and leave the son and the son will now be fighting his father. Due to this ugly development, many homes have broken. You remember what happened during the slave trade era when a bottle of hot drink was able to give the slave masters as many slaves as possible. So, the same practice is applicable today as a family will be divided into many factions. The one that is ready to go with the oil company will eat fat while the other faction that is not ready to compromise in the interest of posterity will be treated as enemies.
In all the cases your organisation has filed against oil companies polluting the environment. Is there any hope of your organization obtaining justice?
I am very happy that the master of justice is God. He is a perfect God of justice. He always listens to the cries of His people. When God told Moses, my son, I have heard the cries of my people, go and save them; He stood solidly behind him and made him find favour. Maybe our organisation is in that line of Moses. God has sent us, we are doing it and we will continue to do it. We have seasoned and God-fearing judges in Nigeria. AKIPCON still has that confidence in the Nigerian judicial system. The learned judges will do the right thing. They will listen to all our cases and do justice to them accordingly. They are living with us, and have seen the situation of our environment.
Besides litigation, what other means is AKIPCON deploying to address issues of environmental pollution and human rights violations in the state?
There are other means – violence, which is the language oil and gas companies operating in Nigeria simply understand, but we will never go that way. We will instead apply a peace advocacy approach to achieve our demands. We have laid our complaints against oil and gas companies operating in the state to the National Human Rights Commission of Nigeria which set up a special investigation panel to investigate oil pollution and human rights violations in Akwa Ibom State in 2015. The commission did a good job of investigating our complaints but the oil companies frustrated the efforts of the commission by going to court to challenge the jurisdiction. At the moment, the two cases have since been filed in the Supreme Court of Nigeria and are awaiting a hearing.
I am an Apostle of the living God; I am a preacher of the gospels. So, I value peace more than anything. We will not be provoked to the extent of taking laws into our hands. We will continue to use the press to expose the wickedness of oil companies to the world. Their home countries will read their activities in the print and electronic media. Our next strategy is that the organization has published a book which will be launched very soon in the state, concerning the wickedness of oil and gas companies operating in the state.
Many are complaining that the three per cent allocated to oil-producing communities by the Petroleum Industry Act is too meager. What is your take on this?
The three per cent earmarked for host communities is too meager considering the extent of the suffering and devastation the people are going through daily. The host communities do not know what their tomorrow will look like. Their fishing nets have been destroyed because of oil spills; their farmlands have been polluted and they cannot plant and harvest anything. To the best of my knowledge, we have brought environmental consultants to conduct studies to determine the situation of our environment. The results have been quite alarming, proving beyond reasonable doubt that Akwa Ibom people have been severely impacted, so giving them three per cent allocation amounts to mockery.
From what you have said, is your organisation seeking amendments to the law?
Yes, the arrangement is on the way to send a document to the National Assembly to review that law. Again, we also thank the 8th National Assembly for the passage of the said law. However, 10% for the host oil-producing communities will not be too much to be considered by the present National Assembly of Nigeria.
