The
host community to the Oil Mining Lease (OML) 29 has opposed the intention of
the federal government to sell the oil block to interested buyers.
Anglo
Dutch oil giant, Shell, has been offering several of its onshore oil assets for
sale to interested buyers as part of global divestment strategy.
However,
the host community to OML 29, Nembe Bassambiri, Bayelsa State, in a position
paper on Tuesday, said it rejected any purported divestment or sale by the
Shell Petroleum Development Company of Nigeria Limited (SPDC), Nigerian Agip
Oil Company Limited (NAOC) and
Total Nigeria Limited (Total) of their stake
holdings in the oil block.
In
the paper which was written under the auspices of the Opu-Nembe Council of
Chiefs, the host community said it totally rejects any move to sell the OML 29
without recourse to it.
According
to the position paper which was addressed to the Minister of Petroleum
Resources and signed by the Chairman and Secretary of the Opu-Nembe Council of
Chiefs, Chief Eferebo Igoma and Chief Ayebasin Edoghotu respectively, the host
community said it was wrong to put OML 29 for sale without taking what it
called “fair, reasonable and adequate account of the Opu-Nembe Kingdom’s
ancestral ownership, legal rights and equitable interests of Opu-Nembe
territory.”
Giving
an insight into its claims, the host community said: “As you are aware, the
minister, the Opu-Nembe Kingdom and its constituent clans and communities own
the largest portion of the acreage covered by OML 29 and, in particular, host
the following locations and facilities within the OML 29 acreage which are the
Tora Manifold, Odema Creek Flow Station, Bassambiri Flow Station, over 80 per
cent of the trunk-line from Nembe Creek to Bonny, and sundry oil wells and
other facilities in the state.”
According
to the Council of Chiefs, the globally “notorious” fact that the operations of
SPDC and its predecessors/partners in the said acreage in all these years have
caused unremitting damage to the lives, means of livelihood, economies,
physical health, social balance, peace, security, cultural heritage and natural
environment/ecosystem of the Opu-Nembe Kingdom and its clans, communities,
indigenes and residents in perhaps an unquantifiable measure.”
It
stated that the operations of these oil majors in OML 29 have posed a grave
threat to the continued meaningful existence of the Nembe-Bassambiri Kingdom
and its people, and fundamentally altered the prospects and quality of life for
the host community.
The
host community argued that it was unacceptable that after causing such
cumulative degradation of lives and environment as well as profiting maximally
from its socio-environmental havoc, “SPDC and its corporate cohorts are now
attempting to escape their massive liabilities to the Opu-Nembe Kingdom, and
profiteer further in the process by surreptitiously divesting their
stake-holdings without factoring in our rights and equities nor resolving the
untold negative impact of their operations.
“This
constitutes a grievous infringement of our fundamental rights as a people,
including our inviolable right to sustainable development, which rights are not
only inherent in us but are a also guaranteed by the Nigerian Constitution, the
African Charter on Human Rights and numerous sub-regional and international
instruments and treaties.
“We
have in several meetings, especially on April 6
and 29 engaged SPDC on these issues, made our demands for a just
resolution and made explicitly clear that the people of Opu-Nembe Kingdom will
not allow this fraudulent divestment to go unchallenged and without due
sanction, and that no strangers in the guise of new owners will be allowed to
operate in our territory without our just demands being met,” it added.
It
therefore called on the federal government to suspend the sale of the oil block
to any new entity or consortium of entities, and not accorded ministerial
consent unless and until the United Nations Environment Programme, the United
Nations Development Programme, the International Maritime Organisation, the
National Oil Spill Detection and Response Agency, Stakeholders Democracy
Network, and the Nigerian Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative
supervise an environmental impact assessment (EIA), social impact assessment
(SIA), among others.
It
also called on the federal government to accord it a direct equity stake of not
less than 5 per cent in the OML 29 acreage, through a special purpose entity,
owned by or held in trust for the Opu-Nembe Kingdom.
According
to the host community, it wants SPDC to fulfill all its outstanding Global
Memorandum of Understanding (GMOU) obligations and legacy community development
projects, which it has been dodging for years. A reasonable proportion, not
less than 25 per cent of contracts, sub-contracts, employments, professional
services, supplies and other benefits incident to OML 29 operations which are
reserved by mutual agreement for indigenes and businesses of Opu-Nembe and, by
extension, Nembe Se and Bayelsa State origins.
Thisday
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