When oil was first discovered in Ogale, a community in Nigeria’s oil-rich Niger Delta, residents like Godwin Bebe Okpabi saw it as the beginning of a new era. Infrastructure appeared, roads were paved, and for a brief time, the arrival of oil companies seemed to promise a prosperous future. Okpabi, now king of Ogale and a US-educated criminologist, recalls a time when children mingled freely with oil workers, marveling at the novelty of foreign cars and machinery.
But the promise of development was short-lived. As Shell and other international companies expanded their oil extraction operations, signs of environmental devastation appeared. Farmlands withered, fruits grew contaminated, and wildlife died off. For Okpabi, the arrival of Big Oil has meant nothing short of “the complete disappearance of a way of life and our ecosystem.”
Today, the companies that once dominated Nigeria’s onshore oil sector are pulling out, leaving the Niger Delta littered with polluted waterways and mangrove forests ruined by oil spills. Over the past two years, major players like Shell, ExxonMobil, Eni, Equinor, and Addax Petroleum have begun divesting their onshore assets, often selling them to Nigerian companies. Advocates of this shift say it represents an opportunity to “indigenize” Nigeria’s oil industry, allowing local companies to gain control over valuable resources. Supporters argue that Nigerian companies, being more familiar with the complex social and political landscape of the Niger Delta, are better suited to manage these assets and tackle issues like organized crime, community unrest, and environmental grievances. But critics are skeptical.
Human rights advocates and community leaders question whether these divestments are merely Big Oil’s way of offloading responsibility for the pollution and social issues they helped create.
No company is under more scrutiny than Shell, whose long history in Nigeria’s oil sector is as much a part of the country’s past as it is a source of controversy. Shell began drilling in Nigeria in the 1950s and has since become synonymous with the country’s oil boom and environmental crises. Shell’s operations in Nigeria are vast, with over 3,000 kilometers of pipelines, dozens of oil and gas wells, and multiple gas plants, making it one of the largest players in the Nigerian oil industry. But Shell’s legacy in the Niger Delta is tainted by accusations of environmental negligence, complicity in human rights abuses, and failure to address the social and economic fallout of oil extraction.
Attempts to sell its subsidiary, Shell Petroleum Development Company of Nigeria (SPDC), have stalled amid regulatory challenges and resistance from the Nigerian government, leaving the company in a state of limbo. Shell’s chief executive Wael Sawan recently remarked that the timeline for divestment is now up to the government, as the company awaits approval for the sale.
For Shell, the divestment from SPDC represents the end of an era in Nigeria. The company’s share in SPDC was initially intended to be a stepping stone into the lucrative Nigerian market, but community tensions, oil theft, and relentless environmental damage have made onshore operations increasingly unsustainable. The proposed sale of SPDC to Renaissance Africa Energy, a local consortium, would transfer ownership to Nigerian-led companies but leave Shell as an offshore operator.
Renaissance, which includes the Swiss firm Petrolin and Nigerian companies like ND Western, Aradel Holdings, First E&P, and Waltersmith, has pledged to continue SPDC’s remediation efforts. However, many environmental groups argue that these commitments are insufficient. They contend that Shell’s exit without a full cleanup is a dereliction of duty and that the responsibility for past spills should remain with Shell. The Human and Environmental Development Agenda (HEDA) argues that Shell and other departing oil companies are “running away from responsibilities and liabilities” by shifting operations offshore, where accountability is far less transparent.
Foreign oil giants have profited from Nigeria’s resources for decades, but as they exit, the environmental devastation left behind remains unresolved.
The environmental toll of Shell’s operations in the Delta is stark. In Ogoniland, a region within the Delta where Shell halted drilling in 1993 due to local unrest, abandoned pipelines continue to leak oil. Even though Shell has not extracted oil there for decades, the damage left by its infrastructure persists. In 2011, a United Nations Environmental Programme (UNEP) report found that drinking water in Ogoniland was contaminated with benzene—a carcinogen found in crude oil—at levels dangerous to public health.
More than a decade later, the situation has barely improved, with oil spills continuing to pollute water sources. Bodo, a neighboring town, witnessed two catastrophic spills in 2008 when an SPDC pipeline ruptured twice, releasing almost 600,000 barrels of crude oil into local rivers and farmland. After prolonged litigation, Shell paid over $80 million in compensation to the community, but the area’s ecosystem remains deeply scarred. The first phase of cleanup, which involves removing surface contamination, has been deemed complete, yet oil continues to seep from the ground, with rainbow-colored slicks visible on the water’s surface.
The divestment plan poses fundamental questions about responsibility and environmental justice. For communities in the Niger Delta, the exit of foreign oil companies could lead to further neglect of cleanup efforts. Boniface Dumpe, deputy director of the Bodo Mediation Initiative (BMI), a group set up to facilitate dialogue between Shell and local residents, believes that areas previously restored risk being “re-oiled” by illegal refineries and sabotage.
These clandestine operations are often protected by local power brokers who profit from the “shadow economy” surrounding oil theft and pipeline vandalism. Shell executives themselves acknowledge that by the 2010s, oil theft had evolved into an organized system of economic exploitation that even the government struggled to control. Despite improvements in regional security, Nigeria still loses an estimated 300,000 barrels of crude oil daily to theft and sabotage, a figure that underscores the scale of corruption and criminality embedded in the region.
Yet, for many community leaders, Shell’s involvement at least ensured a minimal level of oversight and accountability. Okpabi, king of Ogale, fears that local companies may prioritize profit over environmental protection and community welfare. Unlike Shell, which is mindful of its global reputation, local companies may lack the same incentives to address grievances and ensure operational standards. Amnesty International and other NGOs have called on Shell to place funds in escrow to guarantee that cleanup costs will be met, even after the sale. They argue that Shell’s legacy in the Niger Delta is one of environmental destruction, and leaving without a sustainable solution will only exacerbate the crisis.
Shell, for its part, insists that it has structured the sale in a way that enables SPDC to remain financially capable of addressing ongoing issues. The company has pledged up to $1.3 billion to fund remediation and decommissioning costs. However, local critics view this as an inadequate and temporary fix. Some Nigerian officials have voiced opposition to the sale, questioning whether local companies can manage the scale of operations and remediation required. The government initially resisted Shell’s plan to divest entirely, viewing it as a retreat that could destabilize the region further.
At its core, the issue of oil in Nigeria raises questions about the intersection of environmental stewardship, corporate responsibility, and economic justice. Nigeria’s oil wealth, while generating vast profits for foreign and local elites, has brought few benefits to the communities most affected by its extraction. Beyond the environmental degradation, the Niger Delta has also endured political marginalization, economic exploitation, and violent repression.
The shadow of Ken Saro-Wiwa, the environmental activist executed in 1995 for protesting against Shell’s activities, still hangs over the Delta, a grim reminder of the lengths to which powerful interests have gone to silence dissent.
The cycle of pollution, poverty, and protest in the Niger Delta highlights the cost of prioritizing oil profits over human lives and ecosystems. Even as oil companies transition to cleaner energy sources and Nigeria remains one of the world’s top oil producers, the communities of the Delta continue to bear the environmental and social costs of extraction. For residents like Okpabi, the legacy of oil in Nigeria is a story of broken promises and ruined landscapes. Despite Shell’s planned exit, the question of who will clean up the Delta—and at what cost—remains unanswered.
