Community Turns Down Shell’s $800 Compensation

In addition to suing Shell Petroleum Development Company, SPDC, for N1 billion damages for oil spillages, pollution and damages to its ecosystem in Michigan, USA court, the Ogale-Eleme Community, in Eleme Local Government area of Rivers State, has rejected a paltry sum of N119,040 only, about $800 paid to it as compensation for oil spills in the community.

The Paramount ruler of Ogale, His Royal Highness, Godwin Bebe Okpabi, who disclosed this to journalists at Ogale, while conducting them round spill sites and sources of drinking water polluted due to crude oil exploration by Shell, lamented that Shell paid the paltry sum to the community on 9 September, 2011, four years after the incident occurred, 25 May, 2007, to be precise.

The traditional ruler expressed disappointment that “three months after the United Nations Environmental Programme, UNEP, that benzene, a cancerous chemical found in our sources of drinking water is 900 times more than the internationally accepted standard nobody from the federal ministry of Petroleum resources,the Presidency,Shell,or NNPC has visited our community to provide us emergency sources of drinking water.”

In a letter to the community by Shell said “The lump sum compensation for surface rights,structures,inconveniences and such injurious affection that may have been caused by the said spill incidents and all interests in respect of the incident.”

Meanwhile, Governor Chibuike Amaechi, who had visited the community after the UNEP report directed the State Ministry of Water Resources to be supplying emergency drinking water to the community with an enlightenment campaign on the dangers of drinking the polluted water.

—Okafor Ofiebor/Port Harcourt