Niger Delta Divestment: Oilwatch Slams Oil Giants as UN Exposes Toxic Legacy
By: Abudu Olalekan
The water is poison. Fish are dead. Children play near pipelines that leak toxic sludge. In the village of Bodo, Mary Ekpe remembers when the rivers teemed with life. Now, her nets come up empty. Her grandchildren have never seen a healthy fish from the waters their ancestors fished. “We drink this water,” she says, her voice trembling. “What choice do we have?”
It’s a story repeating across the Niger Delta. And this week, the United Nations has finally spoken out. A coalition of UN experts—including the Working Group on Business and Human Rights—sent a scathing letter to the Nigerian government. Dated July 2, 2025, the letter (Ref: AL OTH 61/2025) slams Shell, Eni, ExxonMobil, and TotalEnergies for divesting from the region without cleaning up decades of pollution. “Trampling fundamental rights,” the experts wrote.
Oilwatch International, a group of environmental activists, is celebrating the UN’s intervention. But they’re also furious. “We’ve been saying this for years,” says Kentebe Ebiaridor, Oilwatch’s coordinator. “No exit without cleanup. Now the UN agrees.”
The UN’s letter pulls no punches. It links oil company divestments—like Shell’s 2024 sale of its onshore subsidiary SPDC to the Renaissance consortium—to ongoing rights violations. The right to life. The right to clean water. The right to a healthy environment. All ignored, the UN claims, as companies rush to offload aging infrastructure without proper decommissioning funds. Buyers, they warn, lack the cash or know-how to fix leaking wells or polluted land.
And here’s the kicker: the Nigerian government approved these deals without transparency. “Regulatory failures,” the UN calls it. Gaps in spill investigations. Shoddy cleanup sign-offs. Even the Ogoniland cleanup program—once backed by the UN—collapsed due to corruption.
But there’s a glimmer of hope. On June 20, 2025, the UK High Court ruled that Shell can be sued over legacy pollution in Nigeria. “A continuing legal wrong,” the court said. Translation? Companies can’t just walk away.
Oilwatch’s Nnimmo Bassey puts it bluntly: “For years, communities have insisted on ‘no exit without cleanup.’ The UN just handed us a megaphone.”
So what’s next? Oilwatch wants the Nigerian government to hit pause on all divestments. No more asset sales until there’s a binding plan to fix the mess. And they’re demanding a $1 trillion environmental restoration fund. Safe water for polluted communities. Health checks for families exposed to toxins. A full cleanup of the Delta.
Emem Okon, Oilwatch Nigeria’s coordinator, puts it in stark terms: “Divestment without repair is dispossession. Women, fishers, farmers—they’re the ones paying the price. No community should be a sacrifice zone.”
The stakes couldn’t be higher. In Bodo, Mary’s daughter Grace has a toddler with rashes doctors can’t explain. “They say it’s the water,” she whispers. “But what do we do? We have nowhere else to go.”
The UN has spoken. Oilwatch is pushing. Now it’s up to Nigeria’s leaders to act. Before another generation grows up thinking toxic sludge is just part of life.
