Page:Niger Delta Ecosystems- the ERA Handbook, 1998.djvu/234

Human Ecosystems: Okoroba-Nembe drinking and dangerous for bathing. Also the spoil from the slot was dumped onto farmland blocking the natural surface drainage and causing flooding. Just outside Okoroba Shell have built a new cottage hospital which is promoted as a philanthropically minded Shell development project, whilst in fact, it only replaces the building destroyed by the slot construction. One of many statements made at a meeting in Okoroba in November 1993 sums up the situation:

"agriculture is the basis of our wealth. Before Shell, the river was not as wide as today and we caught a lot of fish. They came and surveyed the land and we did not know what was happening. They destroyed crops and economic trees. If the chiefs called attention, we had pathetic compensation. Thereafter we heard about oil wells and the youths jubilated for a change of life, but things happened in a different way. They cleared the river and drilled a well destroying the fish ponds, etc and trees. They made a lot of promises: the hospital and toilet houses were destroyed as were the burying grounds. They pumped out water and destroyed the farmland with promised compensation like community and secondary schools, a road to Nembe and pipe-borne water. But they left and nothing has happened. It is like a dreamland. Since crops are no longer growing fine there is no money to train children and most youths have dropped out of secondary school."

Although some of the statements may be exaggerated there is little doubt that Shell promised more than it intended to give in order to facilitate the dredging and canalisation work, and water quality has deteriorated subsequent to the work. Moreover it seems also that Shell did not carry out an environmental impact analysis before building the canal, and has no intention of rectifying the problems that it has caused.

We believe that the company is environmentally and socially careless and tactless, having allowed itself to be seduced by the climate of low environmental standards and carelessness for human rights within which the Nigerian oil industry works. Moreover, as a major transnational company that has had a substantial impact upon the communities amongst whom it has worked, Shell has shown, to say the least, a cavalier attitude to the well-being of these communities that currently amounts to a cowardly disregard, at a time when these communities most need their help. This attitude of Shell's not only costs the local communities dear, but must cost Shell many millions of dollars annually as a result of lost output and down-time caused by inevitable community anger with the company's actions. Taking the most cynical view, Shell is not very good at public relations.

What was not mentioned in the statement (of 1994), because at the time ERA surveyors were not aware of the fact, is that by shortening the river, and by increasing the depth of the out-fall, the canal has increased the velocity of the water flowing into it from the Oghobia Creek (because the same amount of water per unit time is flowing a shorter distance). The result of this is that during the wet season something akin to a whirlpool is created at the junction of the canal and the Oghobia Creek, which is strong enough to break have broken a number of canoes.

Since the statement was made the situation of Okoroba has deteriorated: not one of Shell's promises to the community that caused the "jubilation" have been kept, and although some compensation was received (about one million Naira) it was only after a long legal battle and a hefty payment to the claims agent and the lawyer, so that in the end the community received only about N500,000 (ca. US$6000) for the loss of 232