- Seek emergency intervention from govt
By Daniel Kanu
Awoye community in Ondo State and the Makoko community in Lagos State have raised alarm over government’s neglect in addressing life threatening concerns in their area.While the Awoye community is lamenting over the unending raging fire on Ororo-1 oil facility in the past three and half years, the Makoko community is facing eviction threat from ancestral home.
Awoye community, an Ondo coastal community approximately 145 kilometres from Akure, said they are at the brink of disappearing. The threat they noted is coming from an abandoned offshore Oil Well known as Ororo-1, which has been burning for three-and-half years nonstop.
Also the fishing Makoko community outrighty condemned the sand-filling of their riverine community, alleging plot by the Lagos State government to takeover their lands.
Some rights activists and enironmentalists, who attended the event include Achike Chude; Akinbode Oluwafemi of CAPPA; and Betty Abbah of CEE-HOPE.
At a joint press conference organised by Health of Mother Earth Foundation (HOMEF) in Lagos on Monday November 27, 2023, both communites appealed to their State governments as well as the federal government to come to their rescue.
Both reminded the government that they, like other native Nigerians, were living in their ancestral homes and therefore needed protection rather than subjected to injustice and untold hardship.
A fisherman and spokesman for the Awoye community, Temilorun Ajanisegbe, in emotion-laden voice lamented the plight of the Awoye people in Ondo State.
He said that life had become brutal for his people for the past three and a half years of Ororo-1 fire on oil facility in the community.
“This fire has remained since it started. The efforts to stop it were futile as the oil firm, which owned it, abandoned it.
“The fire has affected the means of our livelihood as fishermen.
“Fish are no longer found in our community as a result of the fire in the oil facility. For us to catch fish, we must go far in the ocean. Our children no longer go to school because no money to pay their school fees.
“Our health is also in danger as we steadily inhale smoke coming out of the raging fire. Cost of living has gone up so much in our rural community,” he lamented.He pleaded with the federal government to urgently come to their rescue to quench the Ororo-1 fire.World class environmentalist and Director, Health of Mother Earth Foundation (HOMEF), Dr Nnimmo Bassey, said Nigerian government is committing a crime against humanity by allowing the fire to burn unchecked.
Said Bassey: “The fire happened on May 15, 2020 from what we see on record. The oil well was first drilled by Chevron in 1986, and they plugged it with a steel plug because from what we read, the pressure from the Well was very high and difficult to handle, so they plugged it, secured it and left it.
“More than 30 years later, that well was given to Guaranty Petroleum and Owena Oil and Gas Limited. Owena Oil and Gas Limited is a company set up by the Ondo State government. They were given the Oil Well that had been plugged 30 years earlier.
“Within the time they were expected to fully develop that Well, they didn’t. So, the Department of Petroleum Resources cancelled the allocation. Their ownership was nullified. In fact, the Owena Oil and Gas Limited did challenge the federal government for nullifying their ownership of that Oil Well without being consulted.
“But while that back and forth was going on, these companies who probably were not able to complete the development of the well on time, continued and the pressure was so high that it broke through two blowout protectors. One, within the well, and one between the well and the skin of the well. That is, between the pipes and the wall of the well. So, both failed, and the meaning is that the blowout protectors were of insufficient capacities to handle the pressure in that oil well.
“Now, that accident happened. Government officials said it could be stopped within six weeks if they had the right contractors to stop it. But three and half years down the road, the fire is still burning,” .
Bassey said since the government nullified the allocation of the Well to Guaranty Petroleum and Owena Oil and Gas Limited, it meant the ownership of the Well reverted to the federal government.
“So, the federal government owned that fire and they have a duty to stop it. It is a crime against humanity, a crime against mother earth and it is not anything that should be condoned,” he said.
Bassey said neither the Ondo State Government nor the Federal Government is saying anything about it or doing anything about it.
“Whereas the people are suffering and are just barely surviving. If you listen to the community people they will tell you how they have lost their lands, lost their houses.
“That fire is not just an eye sore in the ocean, it’s not just killing the fishes and killing the aquatic ecosystem, it is also magnifying the problem of global warming, because millions of tons of greenhouse gasses are being released from that inferno into the atmosphere. And so the more climate change is promoted by incidence like that, the more you are having higher ocean temperatures, you are having higher salinity of the ocean, you have sea level rise and more coastal erosion,” he said.