The Joint Investigation Visit (JIV) on the cause and volume of the spill from the Oil Mining Lease (OML) 29 leak suffered a setback following the exclusion of the Bayelsa Technical Committee created by Governor Douye Diri.
JIV is a legal probe that tracks every leak incident by regulators, operators, the state Environment Ministry, and host communities with the goal of uncovering the cause of the spill and the volume of the leak.
The Nigerian News Agency (NAN) reports that the JIV leak from the well, which polluted the Santa Barbra River and Nembe streams from November 5 to December 8, was marred by the absence of the Ministry of the Environment from Bayelsa and the State Committee.
Officials from Aiteo Eastern Exploration and Production, operators of OML 29, had opposed the inclusion of the media in the investigation as the Bayelsa Technical Committee insisted that the inclusion of the press was to ensure transparency.
Divergent views expressed by the two parties led to a boycott by representatives of the Bayelsa Ministry of the Environment and the Bayelsa Government Technical Committee on the November 5 incident.
Aiteo officials, who refused to reveal their identities while the disagreements lasted, argued that the JIV was made up of representatives from the oil company, regulators, the state’s Ministry of the Environment and impacted communities.
They maintained that they did not oppose the participation of the state Technical Committee, but the inclusion of media was not allowed in the statuary books that listed the statutory participants in a JIV.
The 11-member Bayelsa Technical Committee inaugurated by Mr. Diri on December 15 was comprised of five representatives and five members.
They are Solomon Ebobra, former Dean of Law at Niger Delta University (NDU) and current Director of the Niger Delta Studies Center at NDU, and Woyengikuro Agadah, former Director of Environmental Assessment at Bayelsa.
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Others are Tobin Igiri, an earth scientist, Enai Reuben, the head of the Department of Oil and Pollution at the Bayelsa State Ministry of the Environment, and Iniruo Wills, a former Environment Officer at Bayelsa.
In reaction to the development of Kemasuode Wodu, the leader of the state’s legal team described the exclusion of the press as unacceptable, as the Bayelsa government urged the committee to ensure transparency.
“Bayelsa’s government team in the JIV was blocked by Aiteo and armed security was deployed in the oil fields, so when they insisted that we leave our press team, we worried about their motives and even about our safety.
“So we don’t know if they went ahead or not, but we were emphatic that the state government wants the investigations to be carried out in a very transparent way,” Wodu said.
Mathew Ndianabasi, a spokesman for Aiteo, was not available for comment, while the Joint Military Task Force in the Niger Delta referred inquiries to Defense Headquarters in Abuja. (YAYA)