Oil Spill

About 11,000 fishermen and others from Bodo community, Gokana Local Government Area of Rivers, who lost incomes when a pipeline belonging to shell burst in 2008 have rejected a £30 million (about N7.5 billion) or around £1,100 compensation offer for each person affected by the oil spill.

Martyn Day, a partner with the UK law firm Leigh Day who represented the Bodo people during the negotiation, told British newspaper, The Guardian that Shell's offer was rejected unanimously at a large public meeting in Bodo.

"The amount offered for most claimants equated to two to three years' net lost earnings whereas the Bodo creek has already been out of action for five years and it may well be another 20-25 before it is up and running properly again. I was not at all surprised to see the community walked out of the talks once they heard what Shell were offering."

Day said Bodo people unanimously rejected the compensation calling it "an insult", "cruel" and "derisory".
With the rejection of the compensation offer, a London court is now likely to decide how much the giant Anglo-Dutch company should pay 11,000 fishermen and others from the Bodo community who lost their income when the 50-year-old Shell-operated Trans Niger pipeline burst twice within a few months in 2008-09.

Shell, which took a top London negotiating team including a barrister, a QC and other legal experts to the negotiations, had indicated that it wanted to be fair, saying: "We have an interest in sensible and fair compensation being paid quickly to those who have been genuinely impacted by these highly regrettable spills."

A spokesman said: "We took part in this week's settlement negotiations with two objectives – to make a generous offer of compensation to those who have suffered hardship as a result of the two highly regrettable operational spills in 2008, and to make progress in relation to clean-up."

The company said it was disappointing that no agreement had been reached on compensation, but progress had been made in discussions about the clean-up process. Shell, which works in a partnership with the Nigerian government, had maintained that it had not been able to clean up the spills because the affected Ogoniland communities had insisted on getting compensation first and would not allow it access to the affected areas.

The spokesman told The Guardian: "Of course, the success of any interim measures and final remediation depends on the cessation of oil theft and illegal refining in the area, which re-impacts the environment and remains the cause of most oil pollution in the Niger delta."

Philip Mshelbila, Shell Nigeria’s head of communications, said: "One positive from the talks is that the Bodo community has indicated that the clean-up needs to start as soon as possible. I understand that an offer was put. We are very willing to take part in talks about the clean-up."

"Shell continues to treat the people of Bodo with the same contempt as they did from the start when they tried in 2009 to buy us off by offering the community the total sum of £4,000 to settle the claims," said Chief Kogbara, chairman of the Bodo council .

"We told them in 2009 the people of Bodo are a proud and fiercely determined community. Our habitat and income have been destroyed by Shell oil. The claim against Shell will not resolve until they recognise this and pay us fully and fairly for what they have done," Kogbara added.

Chief Tal Kottee, Bodo elected regent, said: "We had been expecting a good settlement from Shell. Our livelihoods here have been totally destroyed. It's an outrage that it has taken so long for a clean-up and to get compensation."

Chief Patrick Porobunu, leader of a Bodo fishing community, said: "Shell is cruel, very wicked. It has given us nothing again. People here are very angry. All we have is poverty because of Shell. We have no electricity, no health. Our suffering goes on."

International and regional groups condemned Shell, which is the largest company on the London stock exchange with a market capitalisation of £140.9bn, for what they called its "meanness".
Groups accused Shell of financial racism and applying different standards to clean-ups in Nigeria compared with the rest of the world.

"Is it because we are Nigerian and poor that they offer so little for the damage they have caused?" said one fisherman at the Bodo meeting. "This would be different in the US or London."

"Crude oil is the same in every country. Does the black man not also have red blood?" said another.

"It is a big shame on Shell that they are unwilling to pay a fraction of their profit as compensation after subjecting the people and the environment to such unthinkable harm they would not dare allow in their home country," said the Nigerian environmentalist and chair of Oilwatch International, Nnimmo Bassey.
- Thisday

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President Goodluck Jonathan

President Goodluck Jonathan has reshuffled his cabinet, dropping nine ministers.
The ministers affected are Ruqayat Rufai (Education); Zainab Kunchi (Power, [state]); Buka Tijani (Agriculture [state]), Shamsudeen Usman (National Planning; Ita Okon (Science and Technology);  Olugbenga Ashiru (Foreign Affairs); Ama Pepple (Lands) and Hadiza Mailafia (Environment).

Nigerians had long expected President Jonathan to rejig his lackluster cabinet which has largely failed to deliver services to the Nigerian people.
But while the expectation mounted, Mr. Jonathan repeatedly  dispelled speculation that he had plans to fire non-performing ministers.
Last August, he unveiled a rating procedure known as Performance Contract Agreement for ministers but said he would not use the result of the assessment in considering who to fire.
Mr. Jonathan said the assessment would only appraise his administration’s performance and delivery of targets to Nigerians.
“I read all kinds of thing in the media, that the president wants to assess the ministers so that he would know who would go and who would stay. That is not the purpose of this.
“We would have done it probably in the first week when we came on board, but the key thing is that we have given ourselves points that we think we will get at, we believe that if we get at those points or even if we achieve 70 per cent of that, at least it will be better off for our own country,” the president said.
According to the president, the exercise was to ensure enhanced performance, transparency and accountability in governance, adding that it is not a witch-hunting exercise.
“I want to assure every one of you who has taken part in the exercise that this is not a witch-hunt targeted at anybody,” the president said in his remarks after the signing ceremony.
- Premiumtimes

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Shell officials on Monday began talks in Port Harcourt with representatives of the Bodo community on compensation and cleanup, five years after one of the worst oil spills in the country’s history, the Associated Press reported.

Some experts say two oil spills that started in 2008 led to the largest loss of a mangrove habitat ever caused by an oil spill, affecting about 30,000 people in the Niger Delta area since then, according to a London-based law firm, Leigh Day.

“These people, since 2008, are living on a creek of oil. You step out of the front door, you see oil, breathe in oil and toxic fumes,” said a lawyer, Daniel Leader of Leigh Day, representing about 15,000 people from the community that filed a lawsuit in 2012.

Although Royal Dutch Shell has admitted responsibility for the two spills, the impact has been disputed and will be the main focus of negotiations in Port Harcourt.

Royal Dutch Shell said a joint investigation team estimated that 4,100 barrels were lost in the two spills. That estimate is based on the initial investigations by representatives from the company and the local community, spokesman, Jonathan French, told the Associated Press.

“Having said all that, it doesn’t matter how much was spilled because the compensation will be based on the financial loss that people have suffered because of the spill in the lagoon, and that is a matter of dispute between us and the claimant,” he said.

Leigh Day said that 15,000 fishermen and 31,000 inhabitants of 35 villages were affected in and around the Bodo lagoon and its associated waterways.

The law firm said independent experts estimated between 500,000 and 600,000 barrels were spilled, devastating the environment that sits amid 90 square kilometres (35 square miles) of mangroves, swamps and channels.

“The majority of its inhabitants are subsistence fishermen and farmers. Until the two 2008 spills, Bodo was a relatively prosperous town based on fishing,” the firm said in a statement.

The spills had destroyed the fishing industry and environment there, it said.

“Those communities are still having water shipped into them. But it’s patchy, and we fear many of those communities are drinking from poisoned wells,” Leader said.

But Shell said such estimates were high.

French said the company did not have access to the area to clean it up and that not all oil spilled was a result of the company’s operations.

Shell blames most of the spills in the region on militant attacks or thieves tapping into pipelines to steal crude oil, which ends up on the black market.

Nigeria, one of the top crude oil suppliers to the United States, requires companies to promptly clean up oil spills but the policy is not enforced, according to the report.

Both parties have said they hope to reach an agreement by the end of the week.

Neither side would discuss possible settlement figures. Britain’s Guardian newspaper reported that the company was thought to be offering about $20m in compensation, while the villagers were seeking $200m.
- The Punch

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Lagos State Governor, Babatunde Raji Fashola

Lagos is the fourth worst city in the world, Economist Intelligence Unit, EIU, an independent forecasting and advisory business within the Economist Group has said.

And its top worst cities, are scattered around Africa and Asia. Lagos, the fourth on the list, shares its 137 position with Port Moresby, in Papua New Guinea on 38.9 per cent.

The report made available yesterday described it as the second-fastest growing city in Africa and the fourth worst city on earth.

“Rapid growth is not always a good thing because Lagos is now a magnet for two perpetual threats to peace: pirates and Islamist warriors.

Boko Haram have a problem with cities like Lagos and also lots of weaponry. Pirates threaten trade and use kidnapping as a method of funding. Islamist terrorist groups such as Boko Haram (“Education is forbidden”) want to create their own version of heaven on earth by destroying cities such as Lagos and imposing strict sharia law. Lagos has enormous potential but as yet little to show for it – hence its poor ranking,” the report said.

EIU in its 2013 annual survey of the world’s 140 major metropolises, said Lagos has a long way to go politically, socially and economically before it joins the emerging market club.
- Vanguard

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Minister of Water Resources, Mrs. sarah Ochekpe

The UNDP encourages cooperation in tackling water problems.

The United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) Associate Administrator, Rebecca Grynspan, says water is at the heart of a daily crisis faced by millions of the most vulnerable people in the world, as over 770 million people worldwide still lack access to potable water supply, while 2.5 billion lack access to basic sanitation.

Mrs. Grynspan told a High-level International Conference on Water Cooperation in Dushanbe, Tajikistan, on Wednesday that the development was also threatening life and livelihoods, peace and human security around the world.

She said though the world was experiencing explosive growth in the demand for water resources, water waste and water pollution were increasingly threatening the integrity of aquatic and agro ecosystems vital for life and food security.

“Climate change is not helping either, increasing variability in the water cycle, and exacerbating extreme events like floods and droughts complicate even further an already immense water management and water governance challenge,’’ she said.

She pointed out that if these trends continued by 2025, as many as three billion people could be living in areas facing water stress.

The UNDP official, however, stressed that countries must collaborate to increase access to clean water and sanitation and improve water management for irrigation and productive uses, which had the potential of lifting millions out of poverty and hunger.

“The importance of this cooperation should feature prominently in the post-2015 development agenda, as well as in the formulation of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). Water is at the heart of a daily crisis faced by millions of the most vulnerable people in the world,” she said.

She also emphasised the need for effective and inclusive water cooperation at all levels – local, national, regional, and international, adding that this was essential for effective water governance to achieve key water-related objectives and targets.

She said that at the national level, community involvement, women’s voices and participation and private sector cooperation were essential, while at the regional level, dialogue, information sharing and cooperation on trans-boundary waters to advance peace, security, environmental protection, and regional economic development should be supported.

Similarly, at global level, she said international standards, goals and targets on water and related issues like climate change and cooperation mechanisms such as UN-Water, the Sanitation and Water for All initiative, and indeed, the International Year of Water Cooperation itself, are key.

The Conference, Mrs. Grynspan said, would serve to further inform UN member states on this issue as they undertake the process of designing the post-2015 and sustainable development agenda.

“Governments, the UN system, private sector, civil society and citizens at large all have to come together, and raise their voices for a post-2015 and sustainable development agenda that will be owned by all. I urge all of you to stay engaged and participate in this unprecedented global conversation,’’ she added.

The UN said it recognised that cooperation was essential to strike a balance between the different needs and priorities and share the precious resource equitably, using water as an instrument of peace.

(PANA/NAN)

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