“I was with [Kenule] Saro-wiwa in 1992, 1993 when this manifold was shut, following some environmental threats,” Christian Lekova Kpandei, tells TheCable as he struggles to keep his motorcycle stable along a slippery marshy road baptised in oil and polluted rain drops.
Like many fishermen in Ogoniland, the lanky man in his late fifties had lost his fish farm and major source of livelihood to a heavy oil spill which turned his immediate home to a pool of black blood. Fish was no more, periwinkles were wrinkling in history, and crabs have become a thing of the past.
As the ecosystem degenerates into a shadow of itself, residents fear that they are inevitably the next set of casualties to fade off the face of this portion of earth they once — and always will — call home. They now have a date with death.
Agony does not begin to define what it means for a people to lose their loved ones, yield their homes to unwanted agents, watch their children drop out of school, and bury their livelihood — all to keep alive the hopes of the nation they call home. This is the story of Ogoniland.
Oil spills in Nigeria dates back to the 1970s, and according to the federal government, there were about 7,000 oil spills between 1970 and 2000. Since the turn of the new millennium, there have been incidents of spills recorded every year, up until 2014.
As at 2010, Royal Dutch Shell, admitted to have spilled nearly 14,000 tons (about 100,000 barrels of oil) in 2009, which was majorly across the oil-rich Ogoni. Since 2007, Shell has admitted 1,693 different spills, blaming them on sabotage of pipelines by youths in the Niger Delta.
According to Amnesty International, Shell and ENI, the Italian multinational oil giant, admitted to more than 550 oil spills in 2014 alone. Total oil spill in the region is estimated between nine and 13 million barrels.
In contrast, the entire Europe recorded only 10 spills between 1971 and 2011.
Kpandei, who also works with Amnesty International, says about 100 oil wells, estimated to account for about 120,000 barrels of oil per day, have been shut in the region, following the major Bodo spills in 2008 and 2009.
The spills were said to have ruined the livelihood of 69,000 residents, whose environment remain contaminated. (The Cable)
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