The oil spill reported in the Bonny area of Rivers State has rendered more than 6,000 fishermen jobless, according to the Bonny Environment Consultant Committee.

The News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) recalls that the spill from a vandalised pipeline belonging to Shell Petroleum Development Company (SPDC) was reported by fishermen through the committee on August 2, however, SPDC claimed to have received the report on Aug. 8.

A spokesman for the committee, Sodienye Abere, told NAN in Port Harcourt on Thursday that more than 6,000 registered fishermen had remained jobless since the spill was reported.

“It might interest you to know that more than 6,000 fishermen have not gone to the sea for 26 days and as we speak, Shell has not done anything for them in form of compensation,” he said.

Abere said that from preliminary studies, more than four million barrels of crude oil had been spilled into the Bonny River since the incident was reported in early August.

He said that the oil had covered more than 10 kms of the river and destroyed about 14 kms of the beach.
“We cannot quantify the number of fish and other wildlife already killed by the spill. But we are worried that Shell is in the area doing clean up without us.

“We are the ones affected and we need to be directly involved. We have not even quantified the biodiversity loss to our area,”  he said.
Abere, therefore, called on the Federal and State Governments to persuade Shell to send relief materials to fishermen already out of work because of the spill.

Meanwhile, Shell’s spokesman, Mr. Precious Okolobo, had in a statement two weeks ago, blamed the spill from the company’s pipeline at Cawthorne Channel facility on sabotage by unknown persons.

Hussaini Umar