Johannesburg — allAfrica's Nontobeko Mlambo attended the 20th African Investigative Journalism Conference (AIJC), held at Witwatersrand University in Johannesburg, which is the largest gathering of African investigative journalists on the continent.
The conference highlighted critical themes shaping journalism today, including data journalism, cyber and crypto crime, journalist safety, health investigations, and AI-driven disinformation. Mlambo discusses the key takeaways from the conference, focusing on how journalists should take precautions while reporting on issues of peace and security, and speaks with Nigerian investigative journalist Patrick Egwu, who is investigating oil spills in the Niger Delta.
The first oil well in Nigeria was drilled in Bayelsa State in 1956 by Shell, a multinational oil and gas company headquartered in London. After 60 years of oil extraction, people in Bayelsa suffer the human and environmental consequences of Shell's pollution.
The largest oil producer in Africa is Nigeria, where multinational oil companies extract, refine, and export oil. However, this industry has resulted in extensive environmental pollution, particularly in the Niger Delta. Oil spills, gas flaring, and water contamination have severely impacted local communities, ecosystems, and livelihoods, resulting in the loss of nutrients in farmlands, displacement, poor crop yields, and other environmental disasters.
Patrick Egwu, a freelance journalist, media researcher, and Bertha Challenge Investigative Journalism Fellow, said addressing regulatory, legal, and community-based strategies is necessary to hold multinational oil companies accountable for these environmental impacts in Nigeria.
"Journalists in Nigeria have been doing a lot in terms of holding multinationals like Shell accountable. There's been a whole lot of stories done by both local and national journalists. There's also been a lot of work done by local activists, local organizations, and environmentalists, and some of their work has yielded positive results. For example, legal actions taken by activists have led to bringing multinational companies to court and winning some cases, resulting in compensation paid to local communities and cleanups done," said Egwu.
Egwu, who investigated oil spills in the Niger Delta, particularly in Rivers, Bayelsa, and Delta States, said reporting on multinational companies' environmental pollution remains a "challenging and risky" task. Due to the billions of dollars some companies can access, journalists could disappear, get arrested, or even be killed. Despite the risk, he said small wins should be celebrated, as journalists and local communities continue to speak out and hold multinational corporations accountable.
Several decades of oil spills in Nigeria's Ogoniland have caused extensive environmental damage, as outlined in the 2011 report by the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP). The clean-up effort at oil spill sites was inadequate despite being one of the most thorough evaluations of oil pollution in the Niger Delta.
In May 2023, the Bayelsa State Oil and Environmental Commission released its report after an investigation into the environmental and human impacts caused by multinational oil companies. As part of its recommendations, the Commission proposed a new governance framework designed to ensure that host communities benefit from oil industry operations.
over 1,000 times the World Health Organization (WHO) limit
Nigeria's first commercial oil well was drilled in Oloibiri in Bayelsa, which accounts for 18-20% of the country's oil production. According to the report, as much as 40% of the mangrove forests have been lost. The report found that Shell and Eni were primarily responsible for most of the pollution.
Bayelsa State government commissioned a team of forensic scientists to review soil, water, and air contamination in Bayelsa, as well as species within the food chain to assess toxicity. More than 1,600 blood samples were collected and analyzed by Bayelsa public health professionals for a health impact study. Both results were shocking, with some locations found to have highly toxic oil-related contaminants, such as chromium, present in groundwater at over 1,000 times the World Health Organization (WHO) limit. There were also areas where the concentrations of toxic chemicals, such as Total Petroleum Hydrocarbons, exceeded safe levels by a factor of a million.
The Commission recommended concerted international action to generate and invest at least U.S.$12 billion over 12 years to repair, remediate, and restore the environmental and public health damage caused by oil and gas, while also laying the foundation for Bayelsa's just transition to renewable energy and alternative livelihoods.
Most multinational oil companies have Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) initiatives to ensure they act ethically and contribute to the societal and environmental well-being of the communities in which they operate.
"Multinational oil companies in Nigeria give out scholarships to residents where they operate, construct boreholes for people to access water because they have destroyed their rivers, and build schools and hospitals, but these facilities are not properly maintained. All of this does nothing for a company like Shell; what they spend on it is not even a fraction of the millions they make from extracting oil in those communities," Egwu said. "Despite making billions from these communities, these companies sometimes don't even hire locals."
The Harmful Effects
In its report, the Commission concluded that not all oil spills in Bayelsa can be attributed solely to oil companies or the Nigerian government; third-party interference may also be involved. Both the oil companies and the government of Nigeria are responsible for creating the conditions that have led to the ongoing crisis of oil pollution in Bayelsa. This crisis is also the result of a toxic combination of oil producer intransigence, ineffective regulation, dysfunctional politics, and a lack of international scrutiny.
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enforcing penalties for continued gas flaring and degradation
Based on the Commission's analysis, international oil companies are primarily responsible for the ongoing oil pollution catastrophe affecting Niger Delta communities.
Egwu said that journalists and local communities play a vital role in collaborating to share their narratives and ensure that multinational corporations are held accountable for their environmental pollution and the resulting harm to people.
"I believe they should continue their efforts by collaborating with various actors and stakeholders, including journalists, activists, environmentalists, academics, and legal advocates. They should engage with a broad array of networks, including partnerships with international organizations, to achieve a more significant impact rather than attempting to address these issues in isolation. It is also essential that they present a united front," he said.
Egwu urged leaders to take action in accordance with the Paris Agreement and formulate robust resolutions on how to hold multinational companies accountable for environmental pollution at the United Nations Climate Conference (COP29) in Azerbaijan. He called for enforcing penalties for continued gas flaring and degradation of the environment.
