DORIS EGBA’S STRONGEST memory of her childhood in the village of Otuabagi, in Nigeria’s Bayelsa State, is of her parents’ interminable search for arable land. “When I look back now, out of all my memories, it is the one that stands out — the fact that they were always looking for where they could grow crops just to feed us,” says Egba, who’s now a teacher in the village school.

Otuabagi, a rustic fishing village nestled within the vast network of alluvial lands, mangrove forests, and slow-moving creeks that make up the Niger Delta, is the birthplace of oil production in the country. In 1956, when Shell D’Arcy — as Royal Dutch Shell was then known — struck black gold in the region, the fortunes of Egba’s parents and their fellow villagers, who are predominantly farmers and fisher folks, took a turn for the worse. Their ancestral land, with its rich soil and plentiful water, became part of what came to be known as the Oloibiri oilfield. At least 18 of the 21 oil wells that made up the oilfield were sited in Otuabagi, mostly on farmlands, fishing ponds, and streams that had served the villagers for generations.

Over the next two decades, the oilfield would pump over 20 million barrels of crude oil, resulting in massive hydrocarbon pollution that changed Otuabagi forever. By the time Egba was born in 1980, two years after the oilfield had ceased to produce, the once-thriving fish ponds and farms had been transformed into polluted, lifeless waters and barren lands…

Shell never cleaned up the mess it made in Otuabagi. Improperly decommissioned well heads and manifolds (the assemblage of pipes, valves, and other fittings that help direct the flow of pressurized oil from wells) still litter the landscape.

Otuabagi isn’t the only village to suffer such a fate. For decades, Shell and a host of other international and domestic oil companies expanded drilling operations throughout the Niger Delta, displacing local communities and despoiling the natural environment in the process.

Now, in the face of mounting lawsuits over spills and crude theft, as well as a decline in output from the oilfields in the restive region, all of the international oil companies that plundered these lands are attempting to rid themselves of their once-lucrative-but-now-problematic assets in the Delta.

Journalist Obiora Ikoku reports on how the international oil majors — including ExxonMobil, TotalEnergies, and Shell — are scrambling to exit the Niger Delta without cleaning up their mess or compensating impacted communities.  

Photo by Luka Tomac / Friends of the Earth International

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