Youth, Women Seize Total Facility In Rivers

Residents of five villages comprising elderly men, women and youths in Obite, Ogba Egbema Ndoni Local Government Area of Rivers State, have occupied a gas plant owned by Total E&P Nigeria Limited.
The protesters, who vowed to remain in the facility until the oil giant come for negotiation, lamented that Total had refused to obey the 2018 Supreme Court judgement on compensation for land it acquired in the area for its operations.
Mr. Daniel Clifford Uma, one of the plaintiffs in the Supreme Court’s suit, said though the court ordered Total to pay the communities in 2018 on a matter that commenced in 2005, the company had refused to obey the judgement.
He said the community was demanding about N2.5 billion from the company as compensation for all hectares of land it acquired.
He said: “The protest is because of total negligence from (by) Total E&P. This thing started 22 years ago. Some of the people that started this matter have died.
“We started this matter when Elf came to acquire this land, 28.8 hectares of land. When this started, we told them to pay us our land compensation, (but) the Land and Claim manager said the Land Use Act does not allow multinationals to pay for land acquisition.
“The communities went to court in 2005, we got judgement in our favour in a court in Ilorin, Kwara State. They went on appeal and in 2006, the Appeal Court also ruled in our favour. They proceeded to the Supreme Court. On the 19th of January, 2018, the court also ruled in our favour.
“We sent the judgement to France and we copied them here to come for negotiation. Meanwhile, the matter was in court, they came and acquired 98.4 hectares of land in addition to the earlier 28.8. Till now, they have ignored us. Anytime we come to seek the implementation of the judgement, they will use security men to intimidate us.
“We are here to tell the whole world what is happening to us here. They should come and pay us our land compensation. There is no employment for our youths”.
Explaining further, he said: “What the Supreme Court gave in their judgement is that the company should compensate us against their own claims. The court, that time, awarded N25 million for the 28.8 hectares. But today, we are demanding N2.5 billion. If they do not come for negotiation, we are not leaving here.
“Another aspect of it is that we do not have a running Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with the company and we pleaded it in court.
“We only hear that there is Environmental Impact Assessment but we have not seen it. There was a time when there was explosion in this gas plant, we carried out our own EIA, we submitted it to them, they rejected it.
“What they built here is not for the community, it is for the multinational, so they should compensate us. They have flooded our community with military and the elders have said we are not leaving here until they meet our demands”.
Also, a community chief, who identified himself as S.O. Brown, decried the refusal of Total to engage the community in dialogue, saying the operations of the company denied them their sources of livelihood.
He said: “We won them in all the courts we went to. We have told them that after the court, it was time for dialogue but the company refused. We are not leaving until they attend to us.
“This facility has caused us a lot of blindness. We don’t drink rain water any more because of contamination, many are sick and some have died. The worst is that they are not employing our youths. We shall be here till we get what we want”.
When contacted, Total’s Manager, Project and Corporate Communication, Senan Murray, said the firm had continued to maintain cordial relationships with its host communities.
He said the company would address issues raised by its host communities in an official statement.

By: Tonye Nria Dappa