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As a new oil spill has been reported again in Bodo City in Gokana Local Government Area (Ogoni) of Rivers State, a few months after many other multiple crude oil spills have occurred, among others over the years, the Youths and Environmental Advocacy Centre (YEAC-Nigeria) has said that it would work with the community leadership and its people for Guinness World Records as the community with the highest number of crude oil spills in the world.
In a press statement issued by the organization in Port Harcourt, the Rivers State capital, on Monday, August 21, 2023, signed by its Executive Director, Fyneface Dumnamene Fyneface, the latest spill occurred on Friday, August 18, at the Sugi area of Bodo Community, not far from where multiple oil spills have occurred in recent times on the trans-Niger Delta pipeline operated by Shell Petroleum Development Company of Nigeria (SPDC) Ltd.
Members of YEAC-Nigeria’s One Million Youth Volunteers Network on Human Rights Defenders and Promoters in the Niger Delta and the Crude Oil Spill Alert System (COSAS) in the community report that the latest spill is allegedly caused by equipment failure.
The frontline environmental advocacy organization said it has lost count of oil spill reports from Bodo city alone due to incessant occurrences, and there was a need to go beyond press statements that put these spills on record to seek Guinness World Records for the community and for the putter to be globally named and shamed to serve as a deterrent to both indigenous and multinational oil companies operating in the Niger Delta.
This will help further hold these companies to account on our ecosystem destruction and safe the fragile Bodo, Ogoni, and Niger Delta communities, especially with the ongoing cleanup exercise by the Hydrocarbon Pollution Remediation Project (HYPREP).
YEAC-Nigeria calls on the National Oil Spill Detection and Response Agency (NOSDRA) to immediately embark on a joint investigation visit (JIV) with Shell and other stakeholders to the spill site in Bodo City and not to delay it like it has refused to carry out JIV on the June 18, 2023 crude oil spill in Eteo Community in Eleme Local Government Area till date.
Mr. Fyneface said the JIV report is very important as it would add to the pull of materials to be gathered and presented to Guinness World Records to seek approval for a title for Bodo City as a “community with the highest number of crude oil spills in the world”.
FYNEFACE DUMNAMENE FYNEFACE,
Executive Director, YEAC-Nigeria
August 21, 2023
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