Environmental Rights Action/Friends of the Earth Nigeria (ERA/FoEN) has urged the National Assembly to organise a public hearing to address environmental and human rights concerns raised by host communities, as regards divestment plans of the international oil companies in the country.

The Executive Director of ERA/FoEN, Chima Williams, stated this during an advocacy visit to the Minority Leader of the House of Representatives, Kingsley Chinda, in Abuja, as part of ERA/FoEN’s efforts to ensure that oil-bearing communities in the Niger Delta are not short-changed by divesting International Oil Companies (IOCs).

Speaking at the meeting, Williams explained that the controversy generated by the plans by the Italian Energy group, Eni, to sell its Nigerian subsidiary to Oando has exposed how the multinationals mine with reckless abandon, leaving toxic assets for indigenous companies that refuse to shoulder their liabilities.

He stressed that the decision of the oil firms to leave the region without remediating oil pollution on farmlands and water systems was tantamount to sucking the juice from a fruit and leaving the chaff behind.

Williams said: “In virtually all the cases where IOC divestment has happened, host communities feel used and dumped; hence, a legislative intervention has become necessary. A public hearing is one among several approaches to address the new trend of the divestment by the multinationals, as they now see divestment plans as a way of running away from their responsibilities.”