{"id":28580,"date":"2023-05-08T07:37:16","date_gmt":"2023-05-08T07:37:16","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/newsroom247.com.ng\/?p=28580"},"modified":"2023-05-08T07:37:16","modified_gmt":"2023-05-08T07:37:16","slug":"era-accuses-iocs-of-distorting-concept-of-divestment-to-confuse-communities-and-make-them-poorer","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/newsroom247.com.ng\/?p=28580","title":{"rendered":"ERA Accuses IOCs of Distorting Concept of \u201cDivestment\u201d to confuse communities and make them poorer"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" src=\"https:\/\/alternativeadvert.com\/show.php?z=30&amp;pl=19271&amp;ad_type=81&amp;rl=1800\" width=\"336\" height=\"280\" frameborder=\"0\" marginwidth=\"0\" marginheight=\"0\" scrolling=\"no\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>The Environmental Rights Action\/Friends of the Earth, Nigeria(ERA\/FoEN) has accused the international oil companies(IOCs) of distorting the concept of divestment to confused host communities \u00a0so that they will not be held accountable for years of polluting the environment<\/p>\n<p>Executive Director of ERA, Barr Chima Williams, said at a one-day \u201cCommunity-CSOs Engagement\u201d organised by ERA\/Friends of the Earth Nigeria in Effurun, Uvwie Local Government Area of Delta State that the IOCs were craftily selling their assets to local operators who did not have adequate information and capacity to clean the environment<\/p>\n<p>In the one-day programme tagged, \u201cMotives Behind IOCs\u2019 Divestments in the Niger Delta.\u201d \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0Barr Chima explained further that the IOCs were now moving their exploration activities up stream where they might not be adequately investigated by organizations like ERA\/FoEN and well as avoid protest from host communities<\/p>\n<p>He urged the host Communities to unite and demand for adequate compensation from the multinational oil companies operating in their area just as ERA\u00a0charged the multinational companies not to hide under the guise of divestments and refused adequate compensation to the oil producing communities for the negative impact of their Oil Exploration and Exploitation activities over the years<\/p>\n<p>The ERA Director said further: \u201cWhen the divestment started taking place towards end 2021 early 2022, we felt that this is abnormal and we did internal analysis of the situation. We discovered that the IOCs were turning the concept of divestment upside down. Whereas, in global setting, the issue of divestment is removing public funds from private business but what we have in Nigeria is multinational selling off their investment and moving upstream were we lack the capacity to monitor them, so they can continue to pollute our environment..\u201d<\/p>\n<p>On his part, the Coordinator, Kristal Kare Foundation, Mr Jonah Gbemre said the multinational companies have impoverished Niger Deltans as their exploration and exploitation which have resulted to gas flaring have impacted negatively on the people. According to him, gas flaring has reduced the life span of the people as many now suffer from blindness, cancer, miscarriages among others.<\/p>\n<p>He said, due to the activities of the oil companies, poverty was now rampage because many of the fishes have died, lands for agriculture have been taken over by the oil companies yet, no adequate compensations are paid to the various communities. He said until consorted efforts are made by all, Niger \u00a0\u00a0Deltans would continue to suffer amidst abundant natural resources.<\/p>\n<p>Speaking also, Chief Omafume Amurun, a veteran journalist said some Niger Deltans\u00a0 collude with the \u00a0government \u00a0to \u00a0work against the interest of their people just as he said the OICs and government use \u00a0divide and rule tactics to suppress the people hence \u00a0it is \u00a0possible for \u00a0multinational companies to pollute the environment without adequate compensations.\u00a0 According to the Uvwie Chief, multinational companies use propaganda to confuse the people and they begin to fight themselves.<\/p>\n<p>He cautioned the youths not to fight themselves in name of what they will get from oil companies just as he advise the people also not to collude with the government to work against themselves as at the end of the day, the unborn generation of Niger Deltans \u00a0would \u00a0suffer.<\/p>\n<p>On her part, Founder, Development Initiative\u00a0 For Communities Impact, Dr. Rachael Misan \u00a0Ruppee \u00a0said, \u00a0divestment has \u00a0negative impacts \u00a0on the\u00a0 women as the domestic companies cannot \u00a0afford to pay what is due for the women in the various communities whereas most \u00a0women are heads\u00a0of \u00a0household.<\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" src=\"https:\/\/alternativeadvert.com\/show.php?z=30&amp;pl=19271&amp;ad_type=81&amp;rl=1800\" width=\"336\" height=\"280\" frameborder=\"0\" marginwidth=\"0\" marginheight=\"0\" scrolling=\"no\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The Environmental Rights Action\/Friends of the Earth, Nigeria(ERA\/FoEN) has accused the international oil companies(IOCs) of distorting the concept of divestment to confused host communities \u00a0so that they will not be held accountable for years of polluting the environment Executive Director of ERA, Barr Chima Williams, said at a one-day \u201cCommunity-CSOs Engagement\u201d organised by ERA\/Friends of [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":28581,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"spay_email":"","footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false},"categories":[11],"tags":[6092,5674,1913],"class_list":["post-28580","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-environment","tag-barr-chima-williams","tag-chief-omafume-amurun","tag-environmental-rights-actionfriends-of-the-earth-nigeria-erafoen"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"http:\/\/newsroom247.com.ng\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/05\/unnamed-e1683531394819.jpg","jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p4oswh-7qY","_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/newsroom247.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28580","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/newsroom247.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/newsroom247.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/newsroom247.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/newsroom247.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=28580"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"http:\/\/newsroom247.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28580\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":28583,"href":"http:\/\/newsroom247.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28580\/revisions\/28583"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/newsroom247.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/28581"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/newsroom247.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=28580"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/newsroom247.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=28580"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/newsroom247.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=28580"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}