By Moses Patience Chat
Members of Bodo City, a community in Gokana local government area of Rivers State, have discovered a fresh incident of oil spillage, following a leakage from the Trans Niger Pipeline (TNP) operated by a multi-national oil giant, Shell.
The current oil spill, which occured last Friday at the Sugi area of the community, was discovered by the locals on Sunday.
Valuechain findings revealed that this will be the sixth oil spillage case to occur in the area in the past one year, all traceable to the same pipeline.
Five spills have occured in the community, prompting a a non-governmental organisation, the Youths and Environmental Advocacy Centre (YEAC-Nigeria) to declare that it would work with the community leadership and its people for Guinness World Records as the community with the highest number of crude oil spills in the world.
Reacting to the recent development, YEAC-Nigeria Executive Director, Fyneface Dumnamene Fyneface, said that information from the organization’s volunteers indicated that the latest spill was allegedly caused by equipment failure.
Fyneface, who stated that the organisation has lost count of oil spill reports from Bodo city alone due to incessant occurrences, said their clamour for the spills in the community to be put on record was to seek Guinness World Record attention for the community.
He said the record will also enable polluters to be globally named and shamed to serve as a deterrence to both indigenous and multinational oil companies operating in the Niger Delta region.
The YEAC-Nigeria Boss stated that the records will further help to hold international oil companies (IOCs) to account on the nation’s ecosystem destruction and save the fragile Bodo, Ogoni, and Niger Delta communities, especially with the ongoing cleanup exercise by the Hydrocarbon Pollution Remediation Project (HYPREP).
Fyneface called on the National Oil Spill Detection and Response Agency (NOSDRA) to immediately embark on a joint investigation visit (JIV) with Shell and other stakeholders to the spill site in Bodo City.
He advised NOSDRA not to delay the visit like it has refused to carry out JIV on the June 18, 2023 crude oil spill in Eteo Community of Eleme Local Government Area of the State till date.
