By Nnimmo Bassey
Up to 37 persons are reported to have breathed their last early this week, at Okrika in Rivers State, Nigeria. Others are missing. The deceased are said to have been engaging inillegal siphoning of oil from a pipeline operated by Indorama Eleme Petrochemical Company. The Indorama Pipeline is said to have been transporting what they called INDORAMA FUEL (technically known as CRACK C5) to an export jetty or terminal.
There is yet to be an official or independent investigation into what caused the fatalities. Obviously the last breath of the dead may have been of noxious gases released under high pressure. They may have been asphyxiated by inhaling hazardous gases or they may have drowned when they had gone unconscious and fell into the river.
This horrendous incident should be seen as an alarm over the extreme hydrocarbon and toxic waste pollution that has gone on for decades in the Niger Delta. It is hoped that this sad incident of mass death will rouse oil companies and responsible government agencies to their duty to safeguard the health of the people and the environment. This wake up call is a big indictment of the corporations and agencies for the crass negligence they have displayed for decades in the region.
So, 37 persons died in a sudden burst of lethal gaseous substances. Mournings will follow. Then silence. And the dead will become dead statistics. That silence that has shrouded the region is as toxic as what took the lives of the individuals. It must not continue.
This gassing of the individuals who tampered with the pipeline at the unholy hours of the night can be compared to what has been happening at Bille where methane gas has been bubbling across the community since December 2025. As we write this, the gas is still dangerously emitting in the community and could erupt in flames at any time. There has been some palliatives or relief materials by the government, and provision of a fire truck that cannot access much of the community. We also hear of provision of fire extinguishers in the community. These are all laughable actions in the face of an impending tragedy. Visitors to Bille end up getting sick within a short period of time. Residents, especially children and the elderly, develop sicknesses at rates that signal that something toxic is going on in the community and that the risks go beyond that of possible fire outbreaks. Truth is that Bille community is being gassed while the government and the oil companies are wringing our hands and watching from the side lines. I recall hearing one minister of state claiming on television that there were no oil facilities in Bille. Such crass obnoxious ignorance!
The dead will be buried. They will be branded criminals, and perhaps rightly so. But we all know that oil thievery is an industrial activity with a long value chain, and players, so to speak. Sadly, life will go on at Ofiomina-ama Alakiri, Okrika community where an inferno has been raging in their river from an oil well blowout since 26 February 2024. Life will go on at Awoye, Ondo State off whose coast the Ororo-1 Oil well has been burning since May 2020 —for over six years now. Life will go on and international oil companies and their proxies will keep dumping crude into the creeks and rivers of the Niger Delta, as happened recently at Nembe Creek on OML 29. This particular oil spill is said to have been caused by operational failure. In all cases, decrepit pipelines and facilities are involved.
Fires may not be breaking out everywhere in the Niger Delta. Not yet. But the unfolding environmental genocide is inescapable. The spilled crude, the gas flares and the burning crude contain deadly cocktail of compounds that our people should not be subjected to. These hydrocarbons contain benzene – a known carcinogen, hydrogen sulphide and other highly volatile hydrocarbons that can irritate, choke and kill.
How many more tragedies before we know it is time to clean up the Niger Delta, quench the roaring flames, dismantle and remove decrepit facilities and secure all pipelines by replacing and burying them in the ground?. It is time to implement the Bayelsa State Oil and Environment Commission Report. It is time to act on just decommissioning and not just parrot calls for unjust transition. Our lives are worth more than crude oil.
