The presence of international oil and gas companies (IOCs) and their various facilities in their community does not evoke excitement among the people of Finima Community in Bonny Local Government Area of Rivers State.

Facilities owned by the oil and gas majors in Nigeria located in Bonny Island include Shell Nigeria’s Bonny Oil and Gas Terminal (BOGT), ExxonMobil’s Bonny River Terminal (BRT), Nigeria Liquefied Natural Gas Limited (NLNG) Gas Liquefaction Plant, Export Terminal and Waterwells, and those of Chevron, BelemaOil, Total Energies, amongst others.  

Finima Community, where some of these facilities are located, is populated by three chieftaincy houses namely Attoni House, Buoye Omuso Brown House and Tobin Konibo-ye-Awanta House.

The Buoye Omuso Brown House says certain factors such as absence of the right leadership, engagement template, unresolved relocation issues, denial of its status as host community, and non-compliance with agreed employment quota, have divested its inhabitants of the excitement and fulfilment the presence of these multinationals and their high profile economic facilities should attract.

The Chief and Head of BOBH, Aseme Alabo Dagogo Lambert Brown expressed this sad notion in an interview with Kristina Reports recently in Finima, regretting that the expected altruism from the companies and their major client, the Federal Government has been lacking.

For instance, he referred to the unwillingness of some of the IOCs to accept in principle and practice the provisions of the Petroleum Industry Act (PIA) which defines a host community as one where an oil and gas company’s operation is taking place or through which an oil or gas pipeline passes through or where a facility of an oil and gas firm is located.

He further referenced the NLNG’s Corporate Head Office (CHO) which the company advertised as located in Amadi-Ama and Ogbum-nu-Abali communities not in Okrika or Rebisi Kingdoms which the two communities respectively belong to, pointing out that when it comes to the NLNG plant, the gas firm said on its website that it was located in Bonny Kingdom and not Finima.

Aseme Alabo Brown, who disclosed that the BOBH constitutes more than 90% of the population of Finima Community and is, therefore, majorly affected by policy decisions, crisis situations, rights denial and social upheavals, asserted that had the afore-stated factors been addressed Finima Community should ordinarily be an Eldora of sorts by now.

“The engagement has not been properly managed actually because you see, it takes leadership to be able to set things in the right perspective, because if you don’t have the right leadership, things go this way…”

“When you get the right leadership, you will be able to separate the chaff from the real thing, you know, that’s key. There is a gross leadership instability in Bonny.”

A former staff of Mobil Producing Nigeria Unlimited (MPNU) prior to his installation as the Chief and Head of Buoye Omuso Brown House and Amadabo of Finima, HRH Brown pointed out that he and some of his kinsmen have had exposure in the oil and gas environment, which affords them the understanding of how things work there, maintaining that the right things have not been done.

“For us who have been advantaged to work with some of these IOCs, we know the way they operate, and so when we decide to engage them, we engage them by their standards, and to make sure that when they are going outside their standards, we call them to order.”

“If you bring somebody that does not understand how these companies operate, and all that, it’s a problem, they would rather choose a standard for them just for their economic benefits. They’ll not be able to.

The Finima traditional ruler posited that the promises made by the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC), which has now metamorphosed into Nigerian National Petroleum Company Limited (NNPC Limited) were yet unfulfilled, stressing that these comprise social amenities, social impact projects and opportunities for employment and business in the projects.

He further asserted that the relocation was involuntary and falls short of the globally established parameters of resettlement of displaced peoples set out by the United Nations High Commission for Refugees (UNHCR), explaining that Finima Community as a whole had to make the very excruciating sacrifice of relocating from their ancestral home to make way for Nigeria’s economic development as represented by the NLNG gas liquefaction and export plant.  

“Our resettlement is involuntary; it is involuntary in the sense that at any point Finima people did not say they want to relocate. It is because of the economic benefit of the country that they said move, we’ll properly resettle you.”

“Now, the question is: was our resettlement compliant to global standards? No! Do we still have issues of resettlement since we came 30 years ago? Yes!”

“We still have what we call IDP in Finima, internally displaced persons who are still paying rent in Finima in their own land because the standard that was used – if your father builds 10 mud rooms, a mud house, they won’t give him 20 mud rooms they will give him three rooms.

“It means they are displacing people. These are some of the IDPs we have. There are lots of outstanding resettlement issues we are still grappling with NLNG. So, these are some of the things.”  

Efforts by Kristina Reports to reach the Nigerian National Petroleum Company Limited, the Federal Ministry of Petroleum Resources and the Attoni and Tobin Houses to respond to the issues raised by the Amadabo of Finima were yet to yield any results as no responses were provided as at the time of this report.