Oil Spills and Community Compensation Claims in Nigeria: The Bodo Community Experience (2008-2015)

Environmental justice struggles have remained a dominant feature of civic action and political engagement by oil-impacted communities in Nigeria’s Niger Delta, particularly in their interface with the Nigerian state and oil multinational corporations (IOCs). While most of the confrontations between oil communities, NGOs, and community-based social movements have been informed by nonviolent protests and campaigns, efforts to pursue legal avenues in order to make the Nigerian state and oil corporations accountable have been limited. This is as a result of the weak judicial setting and loopholes in Nigerian environmental torts that make it problematic to bring the state and corporations to justice. This trend changed when, with the support of national and international NGOs, the people of Bodo community in Ogoni sued Shell in a United Kingdom court and got compensated for two massive oil spills that ravaged the community in 2008 and 2009. This paper examines the Bodo oil spills, their environmental impacts, and the resilience of the Bodo people in demanding accountability and environmental justice through litigation. It argues that the payment of monetary compensation is not sufficient for the massive environmental losses suffered by the community in the face of two massive oil spills. Hence, the success of the Bodo oil spill case is not sufficient to claim that justice has been procured for the community. Although real justice may not have been achieved from the Bodo oil spill case, the paper argues that it has nonetheless inspired other communities to pursue their environmental justice claims against Shell in foreign jurisdictions.