Nigeria: Coordinated Mass Protests Shut Down ExxonMobil

24th Octo­ber The peo­ple of Eket fed­er­al con­stituen­cy in Akwa Ibom State yes­ter­day embarked on a mass protest shut­ting down the oper­a­tions of Mobil Pro­duc­ing Nige­ria Unlim­it­ed, a sub­sidiary of Exxon­Mo­bil in Ibeno and Eket, in the state

The mass protest was staged simul­ta­ne­ous­ly around Mobil facil­i­ties, the Airstrip in Eket, Mobil Ter­mi­nal in Ibeno and Mobil Hous­ing Estate in Eket.

The protest was in respect of the sum of N26.5 bil­lion oil spill fund report­ed­ly released by Exxon­Mo­bil through the state gov­ern­ment to the four oil pro­duc­ing local gov­ern­ment areas.

The pro­test­ers who chant­ed slo­gans with plac­ards and trum­pets, bar­ri­cad­ed the oil company’s  access gates, while a cof­fin with the inscrip­tion ‘RIP Mark Ward’ was kept at the gates of Mobil Ter­mi­nal in Ibeno, amidst oth­er ban­ners and plac­ards.

At the Mobil airstrip in Eket, plan­tain suck­ers where plant­ed at the gates while the youths locked the gate with pad­lock in the full glare of a detach­ment of police­men who watched to pre­vent a degen­er­a­tion of the crises.

Also seen at one of the desert­ed gates of the Mobil Ter­mi­nal was a canoe, wrapped with tra­di­tion­al palm leaves and a white fowl, which the Ibeno pro­test­ers claimed found itself to the gate of the ter­mi­nal from the riv­er on its own, and dared author­i­ties of the oil firm to remove the canoe if they had the guts.

The com­mu­ni­ties lament­ed that Mobil was insen­si­tive to their plight, as evi­dent by its refusal to pay the com­pen­sa­tion for the 2012 oil spill inci­dent that result­ed in the dis­charge of more than 300 bar­rels of crude oil into the aquat­ic envi­ron­ment of the oil pro­duc­ing areas.

Dur­ing the protest march, some promi­nent youth lead­ers under the aegis of Eket Fed­er­al Con­stituen­cy Van­guard led by Mr. Isa­iah Abia and Mr. William Mkpa, strong­ly scold­ed Exxon­Mo­bil for being insen­si­tive to their plight of its host com­mu­ni­ties.

Exxon­Mo­bil, they said, lacked employ­ment oppor­tu­ni­ties for the peo­ple of the com­mu­ni­ty, oper­ate on a deplorable con­di­tion of social infra­struc­ture in the host com­mu­ni­ties, as well as haz­ards result­ing from the exploita­tion by the oil firm.

They warned that fail­ure of Mobil to address the ugly trend would leave them with no option than to put final­i­ty on their oper­a­tion in their land.

The demon­stra­tors also called for the imme­di­ate rede­ploy­ment of the Man­ag­ing Direc­tor of Exxon­Mo­bil, Mr. Mark Ward, over his per­sis­tent snub of all the over­tures from the com­mu­ni­ties.

Address­ing the protest at the company’s ter­mi­nal in Ibeno, Mr. Isa­iah Abia said there was no going back in call­ing Mobil to order.

He said the protest march came at the expi­ra­tion of the sev­en-day ulti­ma­tum ear­li­er issued to the author­i­ties of the com­pa­ny last week.

Abia said the peo­ple of the areas where total­ly against the notion that Exxon­Mo­bil want­ed to use the oil spill com­pen­sa­tion fund to exe­cute projects in the com­mu­ni­ties, main­tain­ing that such a notion was an attes­ta­tion to the non­cha­lant atti­tude of Mobil.