Mkpoikana Udoma
Port Harcourt — Oilwatch International has applauded a damning intervention by United Nations human rights experts that exposes how international oil companies, IOCs, have been divesting from the Niger Delta without addressing their toxic legacy, thereby trampling on fundamental rights.
In a letter dated 2 July 2025 (Ref: AL OTH 61/2025), the UN Working Group on Business and Human Rights, alongside several UN Special Rapporteurs, linked decades of pollution and the current wave of divestments by Shell, Eni, ExxonMobil, and TotalEnergies to ongoing violations of the rights to life, health, safe water, a clean environment, access to information, and effective remedy.
The UN experts warned that the Nigerian government’s approval of these divestments, including Shell’s 2024 sale of its onshore subsidiary, SPDC, to the Renaissance consortium, was advanced without transparency, raising risks of weakened environmental remediation.
They flagged the absence of robust decommissioning and abandonment funds, alongside concerns that buyers may lack capacity to manage ageing, leaking infrastructure and long-standing pollution.
Reacting, Oilwatch International’s Coordinator, Kentebe Ebiaridor, called on Nigerian authorities to urgently open the process to public scrutiny.
“The Presidency, the National Assembly, and state governments must convene open hearings with affected communities, civil society, regulators, and companies. Regulators must guarantee that protections and ecologically sound conditions for any asset transfer are respected,” he said.
The UN letter also cited systemic regulatory failures in Nigeria, from gaps in spill investigations to poor remediation sign-offs, while reminding the government of its breach of binding ECOWAS Court rulings on the rights of Niger Delta communities. It further noted fresh legal momentum: on 20 June 2025, the UK High Court ruled that Shell Plc can be sued over legacy pollution in Nigeria, stressing that failure to clean up may amount to a continuing legal wrong.
Dr. Nnimmo Bassey, a steering committee member of Oilwatch International and Executive Director of HOMEF, said the UN had confirmed what communities have long demanded.
“The UN has now affirmed what we have long insisted on: no sell-off of toxic assets, leaving behind poisoned water, dead soils, and shattered livelihoods. Nigeria must halt these divestment plans immediately until there is a binding, fully funded plan to decommission, remediate, restore, and prevent further harm with communities at the centre.”
Echoing the call, Oilwatch Nigeria’s Coordinator, Ms. Emem Okon, stressed the gendered burden of unchecked pollution.
“Divestment without repair is dispossession. Women, fishers, and farmers are bearing the heaviest burden — from toxic water and lost livelihoods to alarming health risks for infants and newborns. No community should be treated as a sacrifice zone,” Okon warned.
Oilwatch International also demanded immediate action, starting with a halt to all IOC divestments until cleanup and justice are secured.
The group called for the creation of an environmental restoration fund with an initial deposit of $1 trillion, provision of safe water to polluted communities, health audits and treatment programmes, and comprehensive cleanup across the Niger Delta.
“Let us build an African energy sector that is owned, operated, and sustained by Africans,” the coalition said, insisting that asset transfers must no longer leave communities devastated and unprotected.
