Bodo Community Recounts Ordeal, Blames Shell For Incessant Oil Spillages

Bodo Community in Gokana Local Government Area of Rivers State has been lamenting the ordeal the people have been going through following several pollution of their lands and waters by Shell Petroleum Development Company Limited.
A community rights activist in Bodo, Damian Gbogbara, lamented that the community is yet to recover from the impacts of the massive oil spillages that devastated the community and its rivers and creek in 2008.
Speaking during an impact assessment interview organized recently by Media Awareness and Justice Initiative, MAJI, the community leader lamented that nearly two decades after the spillages, farming and fishing have remained a very tortuous exercise as farmers and fisher folks toil all day in their farms and river with scanty harvests and little or no fish catch. According to him, the spillages polluted their land and water which they depended for survival as a people primarily known for farming and fishing.
Shell has been dragged to a UK court over the destruction where the company was found guilty over the spillages that destroyed sources of livelihood of community members.
However, an out of court settlement was adopted where shell agreed to pay compensation amounting to several millions of pounds to the affected community members.
Shell also undertook to do a cleanup and remediation of the affected areas as part of the settlement terms.
Gbogbara recalled that the people in the 1990’s who engaged in fishing and farming were able to earn a reasonable living. “The catch from fishing trips were usually plentiful and produce from the farms, bountiful.”
Following multiple incidents of oil spills, most of the ecosystem goods which guaranteed soil fertility and supported aquatic lives were destroyed. Fishers are now forced to move further into the high seas for fishing due to pollution induced fish migration. “The polluted lands are no more fertile, thereby exacerbating poverty within the community,” Gbogbara said.
He described the current situation in Bodo community as the “state of nature” where life is poor, brutish and short. He further stated that the pipes are old and the oil company has not made any effort to change them and this has resulted to incessant oil spills.
A community leader, Chief Saint ImaPii blamed shell for the spillages, saying that the integrity of the company’s pipelines which are still in use may have been compromised and weakened by old age and long age of continuous usage.
Chief ImmaPii insisted that Shell Petroleum has not deemed it necessary to conduct any integrity test on their oil pipes and other facilities they inaugurated in Bodo since the 60s and 70s.
These facilities are in need of changes and the failure to change them, he said, is one of the main reasons for the incessant spills in Bodo community, especially the spill at Bodo Creek of 2008 which lasted for nearly 3 months.
Mrs. Vera Kpaii, a mother of four and a former school teacher living in Bodo community narrated how she resigned from her job to engage in farming in the community, saying that at that time, farming was more lucrative than her job. She noted that farming enabled her to cater for her family more adequately.
She lamented over the harsh realities created by the oil spills, which have impacted her farmlands and are still negatively affecting community women. She said that till date, her farmland no longer produced enough cassava to feed her family not to talk of enough to sell. Mrs. Kpaii lamented that, just like her, and many women around here, the pollution has also shown effects on their health and well-being, since they consume foods and crops that come from polluted lands, the community members noted that there is need to intensify the ongoing clean up and remediation process in Bodo to restore soil fertility in order for people to return to farming.