Stakeholders at a one day Dialogue in Yenagoa have expressed concern over the exclusion of host communities in divestments by International Oil Companies from onshore operations in the Niger Delta.
This was a major thrust of an eleven point Communiqué at the event organized by the Environmental Rights Action and Friends of the Earth held in the Bayelsa State capital.
The Dialogue which was attended by community leaders, traditional rulers, the academia, women leaders and the media stressed the need for IOCs to take into consideration the interests of host communities in the process of selling off their subsidiary assets and investments.
At the Community Dialogue, Participants observed that International Oil Companies have deliberately ignored Memorandum of Understandings (MOUs) and Global Memorandum of Understandings (GMOUs) agreed with oil-bearing and producing communities in the process of selling off their onshore assets and investments to Domestic Oil Companies for offshore operations.
According to resource persons, guests and community leaders and activists, Divesting IOCs abandon toxic assets and complex problematic relationships with communities that the Domestic Oil Companies (DOCs) have inherited and continue to perpetrate, thereby threatening the existing peace in the area of operations.
In a welcome remark, Executive Director of the Environmental Rights Action and Friends of the Earth, Mr. Chima Williams noted that divestment in Nigeria has become a major issue as oil majors abandon their liabilities onshore and go offshore where they evade monitoring, in the process excluding communities as they sell off their assets.
In a Lecture titled ‘Redefining Divestments: The Nigerian Experience’ Professor Sofiri Joab-Peterside of Department of Sociology, and Director, Claude Ake School of Government, University of Port Harcourt said most of the International Oil Companies were divesting under the cover of resorting to cleaner energy by abandoning their responsibilities in their operational environment.
Vice Chancellor of Federal University of Otuoke, Professor Teddy Adias dwelled on how the host communities of Otuabagi, Otuogidi and Opume Communities, owners of the Oloibiri Oil Field in Ogbia Local Government Area of Bayelsa State where crude oil was first discovered in commercial quantity have been abandoned after the wells dried up, warning that other host communities may have same experience as IOCs begin to divest.
Other participants including Monarchs, Community, women and youth leaders urged the Federal Government to compel divesting IOCs to honor MOUs, GMOUs and other agreements entered into with communities and ensure that the multinational corporations decommission their toxic assets and carry out remedial actions monitored by independent bodies and civil society in the communities as well as integrate communities and make them the central focus of ongoing divestment processes.
