DANIELS IGONI writes that four months after the oil spill in Nembe, Bayelsa State, residents are reeling under its hardship while help appears not to be in the horizon
November 1, 2021 is not an ordinary date for the residents of Nembe communities in Bayelsa State. It was a day that they would not forget in a hurry, at least, not in a few years to come.
On that day, a devastating blowout occurred at the Santa Barbara South Well 01 around the Oil Mining Lease 29 operated by Aiteo Exploration and Production Company, and despoiled their ecosystem.
The residents of the ancient Nembe kingdom are predominantly farmers and fishermen and women. The marine environment and its alluring mangrove swamp aesthetics mean everything to them. Over the years, they have depended wholly on it for their survival. Their local economy thrives on their marine environment on the fringes of the Atlantic Ocean.
However, life has taken a turn for the worse for the inhabitants of Nembe since the massive spill from Aiteo’s oilfield. They have been struggling to survive four months after the environmental disaster, which destroyed their means of livelihood.
Aiteo while officially announcing the oil leak on November 10 through its Media Contact, Ndiana Matthew, reported that, “The magnitude of this incident is of an extremely high order.”
For 38 consecutive days, the affected facility consistently shelled crude oil into the tidal and ebbing waters before it was eventually stopped on December 8. It is estimated that over two million barrels of crude oil were spilled into the ecosystem from the affected facility. At least, about 45 communities and fishing settlements, including Worikuma-kiri where the OML 29 well 01 is located, were gravely impacted by the industry-induced environmental catastrophe.
The spewed crude soaked the expansive mangrove swamp and farmlands while depositing huge presence of hydrocarbon around the Santa Barbara River and adjoining creeks and rivulets, thereby polluting the fibrous mangrove roots. It has, significantly, wiped out aquatic lives such as periwinkles, oysters, fishes, crabs, crayfish, among others. Also, fishing traps and nets set at strategic locations by fishermen and women before the spill occurred were soiled and destroyed by the heavy presence of crude, which impacted the people’s livelihood.
In November, Aiteo mobilised to Opu-Nembe and donated foodstuffs and other relief items to the people to cushion the effects of the oil leak. Also in December, the Bayelsa State Governor, Douye Diri, after a visit to the spill site, set up an assessment committee and followed it up with the provision of financial support to the community to ameliorate their suffering.
The public outcry that greeted the environmental disaster forced the Minister of State for Petroleum Resources, Timipre Sylva, to visit the community on the directive of the President, Major General Muhammadu Buhari (retd). Sylva’s counterpart in the Ministry of Environment, Sharon Ikpeazu, also carried out an inspection of the Santa Barbara well 01 in December.
Apart from the assessment committee, the state government also inaugurated an 11-member technical committee to work with the Joint Investigation Visit team to find out the cause of the spill. The JIV team was made up of the representatives of the National Oil Spill Detection and Response Agency, Nigeria Upstream Petroleum Regulatory (former Department of Petroleum Resources), Aiteo and the state government.
However, the exercise was inconclusive and controversial as the state government rejected the JIV report, which attributed the cause of the spill to sabotage. Also, groups such as the Ijaw National Congress and the Environmental Rights Action/Friends of the Earth Nigeria, described the outcome as unacceptable.
But four months after the incident, the residents of Nembe are still struggling to cope with the harsh consequences of the blowout, which destroyed their means of livelihood and imposed a bleak future on their socio-economic wellbeing.
Speaking, the landlord of OML 29 well 01 and paramount ruler of Worikuma-kiri, Chief Ivory Pegi, said life had become very difficult for them since the spill occurred.
He lamented that they had been neglected by the federal and state governments as well as the indigenous oil firm after the initial outreach.
Pegi, who is also a farmer and fisherman, said, “The oil spill occurred on the 1st of November and was killed on the 8th of December, 2021. Because of the magnitude of the oil spill and our cries, the Minister of State for Petroleum Resources, Timipre Sylva, sent by the President, visited; the state governor also visited and some relief materials brought to us.
“But since then, we have not seen anything again. Nothing has happened again. Nobody has bothered to check on us to see how we are living our lives except some civil society organisations and activists. They have been calling us to fund out how we are managing with our lives.
“When things like these happen, it is the community people that suffer. There is no life here (in the fishing settlements). This area is dead. I can’t even put airtime or credit on my phone. Nobody can catch fish in the area.”
According to him, they had hoped to be relocated from the impacted area to an Internally Displaced Persons Camp while their health needs would be attended to, but to no available.
He said, “We expected that we will be taken to a camp or a safe ground where we will be catered for, but that did not happen. We are left to suffer, and it is difficult to feed, there is no good water to drink, our rivers are polluted. We are not also sure of our health situation because of the inhaling of the stench of the crude.”
When asked if they had made any effort to further draw the attention of the government and the oil company to their plight, he said,”Yes, I am the paramount ruler of Worikuma-kiri. Sometime in December (2021), I wrote a letter to the government thorough the governor’s representative in Nembe LGA, but we did not get any response.”
Pegi said he was fed up with making appeals for assistance as solutions to their predicament were not forthcoming from any quarters. According to him, “sometimes, one gets tired of talking about the same thing. We are not getting the attention that we deserve from the government or the oil company. We are left to suffer.
“We are a fishing community and our rivers have been polluted by the Aiteo oil spill. There is no fish to catch because of the spill. There is no life in this place (Worikuma-kiri and other settlements).”
A fisher woman and an indigene of Opu-Nembe, who spoke in confidence, said life had been tough as a result of the incident. According to her, they are also afraid that there could be an outbreak of epidemic in the area due to the polluted atmosphere.
She said, “Life is unbearable now, especially after the oil spill because our fishing traps and nets were destroyed. For us to drink water now, is difficult. And because of the pollution, we are afraid people might fall sick anyhow because we breath bad air around here.
“Government is aware of our problems. Our council of chiefs wrote to the Nembe council chairman. Aiteo brought a few things the first time, which never got to the primary victims of the spill. But they brought the second one, I don’t know, it is difficult to catch fish. We are fishing people.
“They said the JIV was not concluded and they have not cleaned-up the spill. The spill was huge and there is a lot of crude still hanging on the mangroves and in the creeks. Fish eat little, little things on the mangroves. To go fishing now, you will paddle two to three kilometers, but you won’t catch fish.”
The Vice President of Nembe Youth Federation, Degi Nimibofa, said it had been four months of anguish and sorrow for most of the residents, particularly the fishing folks who depend on the pre-occupation for their economic survival.
He also expressed concern that apart from prevailing hunger and economic hardship, the spill has also compromised the environment and endangered the people and aquatic creatures as a result of chemical elements contained in the crude oil discharged into the ecosystem.
Nimibofa said, “The spill has had adverse effects on the environment. Once there is a spill, the environment is compromised and most of the primary producers of the things that are essential in encouraging the growth of aquatic life are also compromised.
“So, our fishermen and women are complaining of poor yield and there are also health complications. They are highly endangered.
“We have some environmental experts that are checking and managing our environment and also monitoring lumbering activities in the ecosystem and oil exploration activities. They are concerned that polonium, a heavy metal found in crude oil; that the spill has brought about high concentration of polonium in aquatic organisms like fish, crustaceans (crabs, lobsters, crayfish, shrimp, krill, prawns etc).
“Not just that, there is also high concentration of lead and chromium, which is a carcinogenic substance that can cause cancer in human beings. The effect might not be momentary but is spontaneous. Maybe, in the next five to six years, we will be hearing of issues of cancer with the residents but they will not know it’s all as a result of the spill.”
The youth leader urged Aiteo, the state and federal government to take steps to prevent imminent deaths and ailments resulting from the extreme pollution of the environment.
He also called for sustained provision of succour and empowerment measures to mitigate the suffering of the inhabitants of the impacted area, adding that the years ahead would be more excruciating for the people.
The PUNCH gathered that the women of Bassambiri-Nembe had on March 8 and 9, 2022, staged a peaceful protest against scarcity of drinkable water around the community.
Leader of the protesting women, Jelinah John-Park, urged the government to provide potable water for the community, stressing that they could no longer bear the suffering.
“The suffering is getting too much, we can’t cope with the water scarcity situation. The government should come to our rescue,” she said.
The state Commissioner for Water Resources, Keme Wariebi, accompanied by the chairman of the Nembe Local Government Council, intervened in the demonstration and appealed to the community women to be patient with the government.
He said, “The government is working with the local government council to expedite action. Potable water will be provided. Water is life and every living being needs water to survive.” ,,
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