TEIN BISENI--Five months after a crude oil spill polluted Tein in Biseni Kingdom, Yenagoa Local Government Area of Bayelsa State, fire has finished what the pipeline began, leaving the environment scorched and lake dead.
When field monitors led by Comrade Alagoa Morris returned to the creeks of Tein community, weekend, the first sign was not smoke but silence.
The usual chirp of crickets, the rustle of undergrowth, and the splash of mudskippers, had been replaced by an eerie stillness.
Follow us on WhatsApp | LinkedIn for the latest headlines
Underfoot, leaves that should have been green and supple crunched like fried crisps. Above, trees stood blackened and lifeless, their branches raised like charred hands. This is what remains after fire rages through crude oil impacted area.
Five months ago, around December 2025, a pipeline belonging to Oando, in an area formerly operated by Shell and Agip, ruptured along the Assamabiri/OB/OB right-of-way. Crude oil sprayed into the air, drenched the canopy, and flowed into Fadino, also called Fazino Lake.
NDV, however, learned that on May 20, 2026, residents saw something worse than an oil spill, a column of thick, dark smoke rising from the same spot. Someone had set the environment ablaze.
Aye Preye, clan secretary of the Ijaw Youth Council in Biseni, who conducted a team of journalists and Environmental Conservation, Agriculture and Rural Development,ECARD, monitors back to the site on May 28, said: "They are trying to erase the evidence. But they cannot burn away the pain."
Recall that when ECARD first visited on February 14, 2026, the scene was already a testament to neglect. Oando had clamped the ruptured spot on its pipeline, but there were no booms, no absorbent materials, no sign of containment on the lake. Crude oil drifted freely, seeping into fish ponds and the roots of mangroves.
"It was as if they did the absolute minimum and left," Morris recalled. "Nothing to show they have reasonable concern for a sustainable environment."
The people of Biseni Kingdom are made up of 13 communities that depend on the ecosystem. The same lakes and creeks that now carry a rainbow sheen of crude once filled their nets with tilapia and catfish. The same farmland now stained black once grew cassava and plantain.
Oil wells and pipelines crisscross the kingdom like an industrial web, feeding crude to terminals in Rivers State. But the wealth flows one way. The poison stays.
Not even an insect
During the May 28 revisit, the team rode three motorbikes across a metal bridge that marks the boundary between dry land and the oil-slicked lake. On the left side of the footpath, burned, lifeless trees leaned at unnatural angles. A fallen log still smoldered, sending up a thin wisp of smoke days after the fire had supposedly ended.
"We saw no living creature on the ground," Morris said. "No snail, no ant, no crawling thing. On the lake? Nothing. Not even a bird standing in the shallows."
Birds were heard chirping in the distance, but none came near. The ground itself seemed sterile. Dead leaves that had absorbed airborne crude during the December 2025 spray now lay brown and brittle, fried by toxicity before the fire even began.
"That tells you everything," Morris added. "Crude oil does not just dirty the land. It kills the land's soul."
Before the rains come
The immediate fear is time. Heavy rains are approaching, and with them, the spread of crude from Fadino Lake into other lakes and farmlands across Biseni.
Though the company could not be reached immediately for comment, Preye said: "Oando must mobilise to this site now," he demanded, standing on the scorched earth. "Not tomorrow. Not next month. Now! Do proper cleanup and remediation and stop this practice of burning impacted sites as a short cut."
Sign up for free AllAfrica Newsletters
Get the latest in African news delivered straight to your inbox
NDV findings revealed that over the years, many oil spill sites set ablaze in the state were linked to the Nigerian Agip Oil Company, NAOC.
Now, community leaders are worried that oil companies appear to be following the same destructive path of what activists call "cleanup by fire" , a method that releases toxic fumes, destroys vegetation, and hides the true scale of contamination.
Regulatory capture
The people of Tein are not waiting on good faith. They have called on Nigeria's oil regulators, NOSDRA, NUPRC, and the Bayelsa State Ministry of Environment to intervene.
"There is what we call regulatory capture," Preye said. "Where the companies become so powerful that the agencies meant to check them look the other way. We are saying no more. The Bayelsa State Oil and Environment Commission Report gave recommendations. Implement them. Start with this lake."
