RESIDENTS of Gelegele, a coastal community in Edo State, blame persistent gas flaring for crippling their primary sources of livelihood— fishing & farming—and for exposing them to serious health risks. This report highlights how years of pollution from gas flaring, according to locals, have continued to devastate the environment and endanger lives, despite their outcry.
It was a sweltering Friday in Gelegele, a quiet local community in Edo State. A group of topless kids splashed water on one another with ecstasy, their laughter cutting through the thick afternoon heat. Some rested in an old canoe by the shore, tired yet reluctant to leave the bank. A group of women loaded bags of Garri (made from cassava) into canoes headed for neighbouring villages. Not far from them, under a small patch of shade, sat Serah Awowu, a native of Gelegele, who had spent her entire life in this riverside community.
“As you can see, life here is no longer what it used to be. The kids have taken over the water since there are no longer fishes because of the fire (gas flare),” Awowu lamented. She sat on the wooden bench placed under the makeshift tent, wiping sweat from her forehead as the midday sun beat down on the Gelegele riverbank.
She told The ICIR that they have had problems fishing in the community, largely due to environmental concerns occasioned by gas flaring activities in the heart of the community by an oil firm. Her friend, who sat quietly beside her, Susan, said her own family has had to endure severe heat because their house is located very close to where the flaring occurs.
Gelegele is a riverside community in the Ovia North-East Local Government Area of Edo State, Nigeria. Traditionally, the community’s economy has been anchored on fishing and agriculture (mainly cassava), leveraging its proximity to the Ovia River and fertile lands. However, the discovery and subsequent exploration of oil resources have altered this dynamic.
The firm called Dubri Oil Company Limited (DOCL), which took over operations from the American Phillips Oil Company, owned the flare stack in the heart of Gelegele. Residents blamed the continuous gas flaring from the flare stack for severe environmental degradation and socio-economic challenges.
Gas flaring is the wasteful burning of natural gas from industrial oil extraction and production. The extraction process releases various environmental pollutants, including greenhouse gases, carbon dioxide, methane, and black carbon. The World Bank has said that Nigeria and nine other countries account for 75 per cent of global gas flaring.
The nine other countries include Russia, Iraq, Iran, the United States, Venezuela, Algeria, Mexico, Libya, and China.
Gas flaring negatively impacts the climate and environment. It releases CO2, contributing to global warming. It also causes acid rain, which affects the productivity of the soil for agriculture.
A field assessment showed that the distance of the Dubri Oil Company flare stack to the farthest residential building in Gegelele is less than 600m, and the closest residential building at Gelegele to the flare stack is about 20m.
During a visit to the company on April 25, fire was seen gushing from the flare stack situated within the community. Residents who spoke with The ICIR confirmed that this was a daily occurrence.
They said the situation has had detrimental effects on their health and livelihoods. They report experiencing excessive heat, skin diseases, and eye problems, which they attribute to toxic emissions from gas flaring activities.
According to them, the situation has also caused a decline in aquatic life, further affecting fishing activities. They added that agricultural productivity has dropped due to soil degradation, leading to food insecurity and economic hardship. Despite these challenges, residents say they have received minimal support or compensation, prompting renewed calls for an end to oil and gas exploration in the area, as well as demands for environmental remediation and restitution.
Gas flaring robs women of their livelihood
Both Awowu and Susan complained that there has been a gradual decline in their income over the years due to the gas flaring activities, and they have had to make do with other menial jobs to survive and feed their families.
“This gas flare is killing everything. When I was small, we used to take our fish to markets in other communities to sell,” she recalled, adding, “Now, there’s nothing left to sell.”
“The fishes have disappeared. Before, we used to catch big fish. We would go to the market and sell to make a lot of money. Many of our people are now hopeless, and it all began when these oil and gas people came around,” Awowu said.
Other families like Awowu’s told The ICIR that they have received no tangible benefits from the companies operating in their backyard. She said not even when hope briefly flickered for her daughter, who was shortlisted for a scholarship under the company’s scholarship programme.
Despite the promise, the scholarship never came through. Timi, her daughter, is now a student at Delta State University, and Awowu, with limited means, is left to shoulder her education costs, amounting to over N300,000 a year.
Vero Abagi, 81, who has been fishing in the community for two decades, is also forced to contend with the negative impact of gas flaring. She recalled that the situation continues to worsen over the years due to the flare on the river, which makes it hard for fish to survive.
“We can’t fish like we used to before because the water is polluted. If you went to the river before, your rubber would be full, but now there are no fishes again,” Abegi said, her eyes sunken and tired.
Abegi recalled, “Catching fish used to be easy, but now it’s very difficult. Over ten years ago, we could catch up to one board of catfish at a time. It’s the fire (gas flare) that’s affecting the water; not that the water is drying up. The fish now swims far away from the community. If you go farther away from here, you might still be able to catch some.”
Studies have shown that gas flaring releases air pollutants such as nitrogen oxides, carbon oxides, and sulfur oxides. These pollutants increase the acidity of the soil, making it difficult for vegetation to grow around flare sites. They also damage mangrove swamps and salt marshes, reduce plant growth, degrade soil quality, and lower agricultural productivity.
In some areas near gas flares, there is no vegetation at all due to the combined effects of intense heat and acidic soil. Similarly, a study on the impact of gas flaring on crop farming in the Niger Delta found that it significantly slows down crop growth.
Patience Gijere, a 42-year-old farmer in the community, is one of the victims. She explained that farming has not been easy for her due to the impact of the gas flares on her farmland located a few kilometres from the company.
“Our crops used to grow well, but that’s no longer the case. I just came back from the farm. When it’s time to harvest cassava, you will notice the stems are dying and the leaves look yellow instead of green. This is because of the gas flaring. It’s what is spoiling our crops.
“I used to make up to one million naira to two million naira if I farmed one acre of land and got up to 50 bags of garri, but now I get only ten bags at most. It hasn’t been easy,” she said.
Residents live under excessive heat, battle ailments
Doris Obi, another resident of the community, told The ICIR that residents battle rashes, severe headaches, dim vision, weak legs, and excessive heat due to the environmental crisis in the community.
“The heat in this community is terrible,” she lamented. If a fair-skinned person stays for just a month or two, their skin darkens completely,” she lamented.
Obi has lived most of her life in the Gelegele community. After completing her primary and secondary education, she left for some years but returned about seven years ago and has watched her community and health deteriorate under the impact of environmental pollution.
According to Obi, the pollution has also affected her eyesight. She explained that before moving back from Lagos in 2017, she had no vision problems. However, after a few years of living near constant gas flaring, her sight began to deteriorate, and she now relies on eyeglasses provided by a non-governmental organisation.
“I wasn’t using glasses before. But after coming back here, my eyes got worse. An NGO brought people from Benin who tested us and gave me these glasses. They said the environmental pollution is affecting our eyes.”
Obi said the gas flaring from oil operations has affected people’s health and their source of livelihood, as the particles released into the air have contaminated their environment, including the rivers and farmlands that once supported fishing and farming.
“The gas flare releases particles that spread everywhere, causing different kinds of diseases. Even our drinking water is not properly treated, and the contamination affects our health, making us age faster and grow grey hair early.”
She lamented the lack of basic infrastructure in the community, saying the community health centre lacks essential drugs and qualified doctors, while the roads are in terrible condition.
“When my husband was sick, there was no drip at the health centre. We had to buy 7Up and mix it with salt as a substitute. We badly need drugs, doctors, and proper healthcare services,” she said.
Godsey Kororo, a community elder and 60-year-old retiree, spent 25 years working with the company. He joined the company in 1995 and retired in 2020. He said, “The flare is not good with my skin. It is giving me heat in my body. Sometimes in the night, my body feels hot. The environment in this place is very hot. Do you know that this place is polluted everywhere? If you buy a zinc roof for your house, within one month, the zinc will rust.”
He added that the heat and the pollutants in the air have caused various health issues for the people, including skin problems and respiratory difficulties.
“People cannot even kill fish in the river. There is no fish. When I was young, people went to the river to catch fish. But now, no fish. I am telling you,” he said, highlighting how the pollution has destroyed the environment and made it impossible for the community to rely on traditional sources of food.
“We are not enjoying anything as if there is no oil company here. Do you know how much they pay to the community? Just meagre amounts as gas flaring compensation,” he said.
Godsey expressed frustration with the lack of benefits for the residents. He said that while the company pays compensation to the government for the gas flaring, the funds are not being properly distributed to the community, leaving many without the promised support.
The situation of Gelegele residents mirrors the dire conditions in Nigeria’s Delta region, which constitutes the majority of the 2 million people living within 4 kilometres away from flare sites across the country and are exposed to the black fumes and toxins emitted.
They face the risk of respiratory issues, including asthma, cough, and breathing difficulties, as well as eye and skin irritations, and prolonged exposure to gas flaring activities compared to communities without such exposure.
“The impact is minimal,” says company’s supervisor
Dubri Oil Company Limited (DOCL) is a Nigerian-owned oil company, created in 1987. They took over the oil field after an American company, Phillips Oil, left. Since then, Dubri has been running oil exploration activities in the community.
Speaking with The ICIR, the supervisor of the company, Banigo Da-Onamata insisted that the company is adhering to environmental guidelines in its operation and giving back to the community.
“If you go round the Niger Delta, it’s a common thing. Although things are changing, and with time, we also have plans ongoing. Within the shortest period, gas flaring will be a thing of the past, meaning that as you are seeing today, you might not see it tomorrow.”
He said the company has tried to reduce the volume of the gas being flared and also engaged contractors who come to the community to analyse the impact and advise the company.
“They go to the water and take the samples. They also check community members. It’s a procedure in the oil system,” he said. “With the data that we have over time, the impact has been minimal. I don’t think we have ever had issues in Gelegele and that’s why we always engage the service of professionals.”
“The impact is even like zero. It’s not something that causes harm. For instance, you won’t feel it until you get close to it for some metres. Even if you go to other parts of Benin when there are no flares, there’s heat.”
He said the company has impacted the community in terms of healthcare and education.
“There’s a hospital built by the company for the members of the community. We have also offered scholarships to indigenous members of the community.”
However, a visit to the clinic shows that it lacks manpower, a laboratory and adequate drugs. The ICIR gathered that the hospital has four personnel.
The officer in charge of the hospital, Raphael Ekano, explained that many residents complain of heat rashes, arthritis, cough and Tuberculosis due to inhaling flames from the gas flare.
He explained that due to the lack of a laboratory, there are issues that the healthcare centre may not be able to detect. He bemoaned the inadequate supply of drugs and the shortage of manpower in the hospital.
“This is a primary healthcare centre in which we handle so many cases. It’s only when we get cases that we cannot handle that we refer them. The problem with this health centre is that we don’t have a Laboratory, and because of this, there are some cases that we cannot handle, such as Anaemia. We need to refer them. Like last week (at the time of interview), we had some cases of diarrhoea. In three days, I didn’t sleep at all. Both day and night, I treated like eight people for diarrhoea. We thank God that everything is under control.
“Tuberculosis is one of the issues we have in this community, and this is aggravated by inhaling the gas flames. We also have many people complaining of arthritis, joint pains and so on and we do treat them.”
He said that gas flaring has intensified the heat in the community, which sometimes causes residents to develop health issues such as skin rashes.
“The heat is too high in the community,” he lamented. “People are also developing coughs due to constant exposure to fumes from gas flaring. It doesn’t stop there — gas flaring can severely affect the lungs and even contribute to illnesses like tuberculosis. For individuals with pre-existing lung conditions, inhaling these toxic substances can worsen their health drastically.”
What has government done?
Although Nigeria has pledged to end gas flaring and introduced fines for oil companies that violate this policy, gas flaring continues. As a result, the health of people in the Niger Delta like the Gelegele remains at risk.
A study published in the International Journal of Scientific Reports shows that gas flaring poses damage to human health and the environment, making experts call for the need to implement measures to reduce or end gas flaring to protect the communities living near flaring sites.
The study stated that the level of ambient air pollutants in the Niger Delta region like Edo relative to Lagos State revealed that pollutants levels are uppermost in the former where the majority of flare sites are. The author maintains that some of the greenhouse gases emitted at flare sites contribute to global warming. The environmental consequences include food insecurity, a higher risk of disease, acid rain, corrosion of buildings from polluted rainfall, and increased costs from extreme weather events due to airborne toxins such as benzene.
Nigeria enacted the Petroleum Industry Act in 2021, with some of its sections designed to decrease gas flares and address the environmental and social problems caused by excessive flaring. Its goal is to safeguard the local environment, conserve resources, and ensure human safety by enforcing emergency shutdown procedures.
It states that unauthorised flaring is an offence and requires companies that flare to pay a fee, which would be used for environmental remediation and to provide relief to the affected communities. However, experts have said this approach is ineffective because the penalties are not weighty enough to be a deterrent as it enables giant companies like to continue to flare despite the impacts on the environment.
In December 2024, the House of Representatives, passed for second reading, a bill for an act to prohibit gas flaring, encourage commodity utilisation and provide for penalties and remedies for gas flaring violations.
The bill sponsored by Babajimi Benson, seeks to prohibit the flaring and venting of natural gas, except in strictly regulated circumstances, while encouraging the utilisation of gas resources to foster economic growth and energy generation.
The proposed legislation aims to mitigate the environmental, health, and economic impacts of gas flaring, aligning Nigeria’s oil and gas operations with international climate change commitments.
Whoever violates the proposed law would face stringent penalties, including fines of $5 per 1,000 standard cubic feet of gas flared and potential suspension of operations for repeat violations.
The current penalties for gas flaring in Nigeria officially stand at $2 per 1,000 scf. Currently, companies producing more than 10,000 barrels per day (bpd) pay a fine of $2 per 1,000 scf of gas flared, while companies producing less than 10,000bpd pay a fine of $0.5.
Efforts to reach the Edo State Ministry of Environment proved abortive at the time of filing this report. The ministry’s Public Relations Officer, Joy Efekwe, said the director in charge of the matter was not on seat.
In August 2024, the state government told Dubril Oil Company to stop gas flaring in the community and do more to alleviate the suffering of the people by focusing on Corporate Social Responsibility.
The government urged the company to capture and liquefy the gas being flared in the centre of the community with modern technology to prevent the women from health hazards. However, checks by The ICIR show that the company continues to flare gas within the community despite the order.
Expert calls for stricter penalties
Analysts have emphasised the need for more stringent enforcement of existing policies and laws to curb gas flaring further and increase penalty collection.
“Overall, Nigeria’s gas flaring activities have considerably reduced over the years, as a result of certain government policies that have been put in place to incentivise the reduction of flaring,” Joshua Olorunmaiye, an oil and gas lawyer had told Business Day.
“However, it would seem that not enough is being done to enforce policy direction and laws that are meant to stifle incessant gas flaring.”
An Environmentalist and Executive Director of Gbolekekro Women Empowerment and Development Organisation (GWEDO), Cynthia Bright, urged the government to enforce stricter penalties for gas flaring and ensure that oil companies are held accountable for the social and environmental damage they cause.
She explained that years of oil exploration and gas flaring have left women and children in the Gelegele community battling health and environmental challenges.
She pointed out that the companies only require to trap the gas and channel it for other uses, such as electricity, rather than flaring it, which is detrimental to the environment.
Cynthia, who began her advocacy journey in 2017, explained that when she first arrived in the community, residents were unaware of the dangers of gas flaring.
“When I got to Gelegele, I met women using gas flares to dry pepper and the children were using it to dry clothes because they saw it as normal fire,” she said, adding, “We had to educate them that it was not a good practice because they didn’t know the risks.”
She also highlighted several health conditions prevalent among residents, such as arthritis, frequent fever because of heat, skin rashes, miscarriages, and partial blindness due to the gas flaring.
According to the Petroleum Industry Act (PIA) 2021, particularly Chapter 3, Sections 234 to 257, oil companies operating in host communities like Dubril Oil are required to establish a Host Communities Development Trust, funded with 3 per cent of their annual operating expenditure. This Trust is designed to finance projects that promote the socioeconomic development of host communities, including the provision of healthcare, education, and infrastructure.
However, despite this legal obligation, Cynthia described the Trust intervention as inadequate. She said they once received nearly expired children’s syrups and a few packs of paracetamol without providing medical personnel or proper healthcare support.
“The community rejected the expired drugs after we educated them about the dangers,” she said.
Despite continuous extraction activities, Cynthia said the Trust has failed to provide basic amenities like clean water or functional healthcare facilities. She criticised the government’s handling of gas flaring, citing a conversation with a principal engineer in the company who denied polluting the environment.
“He now said they are working towards zero emissions, and I asked, “what are you emitting that you are working towards zero emissions? You can see that it is a very critical issue. Is it that they are aware, and they are pretending like they are not aware, or they don’t even know?” she asked.
“These companies do not care. Even the government does not care. Whatever happens in Niger Delta or Gelegele community is none of their business as far as money (fine) is being channelled to their treasury.
“Don’t forget that these community people were so impoverished, but they were enjoying their impoverished life because when they went to the river, they would see fish, and some of them would take them to another community to sell those fish.
“My late mother-in-law built her house through fish trading, but today, that is no longer possible,” she said.
Cynthia urged the Federal Government to prioritise the well-being of the citizens over profit and look into the policies and framework around gas flaring in Nigeria.
“The government should look at the frameworks and policies and see how they can rephrase them. If you say gas flaring is prohibited, let it remain like that. What is the essence of putting a fine? Putting a fine means it is just a joke because these companies will continue to pay the fine.”
Nurudeen Akewushola is an investigative reporter and fact-checker with The ICIR. He believes courageous in-depth investigative reporting is the key to social justice, accountability and good governance in society. You can reach him via nyahaya@icirnigeria.org and @NurudeenAkewus1 on Twitter.