Stakeholders from the oil-bearing communities in Bayelsa State have called on the international oil companies, especially Shell, to clean their polluted environment, which they caused before divesting entirely, regret- ting that the host commu- nities are getting less than what they are supposed to get from oil exploration.
Comprising host commu- nity representatives, tradi- tional rulers, civil society or- ganisations, youth leaders, women groups, researchers, academics, legal experts, government officials, and media practitioners, the Stakeholders spoke at the weekend in Yenegoa during a one-day community town hall engagement on oil divestment and transi- tion accountability in the Niger Delta.
Organised by the Human and Environmental Development Agenda, with the theme: “Strengthening Transparency, Environmental Responsibility and Community Participation in Oil Asset Divestment,” with support from TI (AUSTRALIA) and Natural Resource Governance Institute NRGI), the stakeholders wholly admitted that there is a need for the polluted environment to be kept healthy and safe for those living now and for fu- ture generations. In a communique at the end of the one-day town hall meeting, the stakeholders admitted that the host communities were even re- ceiving less than what they are giving to the nation.
They also revealed that Bayelsa State is the heart- land of Nigeria’s oil production; the communities are oil-bearing, not oil-producing, the oil lies in their land, but they hold neither the ca- pacity nor the proportionate benefit of its extraction.
The Communique reads: “2011 Shell/SPDC Annual Report confirms that Shell lent Renaissance $2.5 billion to purchase Shell’s own divested assets, raising fun- damental questions about Renaissance’s financial ca- pacity to address pre-exist- ing environmental liabilities.
“We discovered that divestment had taken place in our communities, and we noticed that the new op- erator wore a different co- loured uniform from the old one.
No formal notification, handover communication, or community engagement preceded or accompanied the transfer of assets on the property.
