By Ben Omotomiye
ben.omotomiye@live.com
The current attention on Eba Island has understandably centred on which state owns it. That is a legitimate and important question. But it should not be the only one. Eba Island sits within the Alape and Oluwa river system, home to communities whose fishing, farming, and timber-based livelihoods depend entirely on those waters staying clean and productive. As exploration and, eventually, exploitation activities advance, government and operators have an opportunity — and a responsibility — to engage these catchment communities as thoroughly as they are currently contesting the island’s territorial status.
Experience elsewhere in the Niger Delta shows what is gained when this is done well, and what is lost when it is not. This piece is offered in that constructive spirit: not to alarm, but to make the case that environmental safeguards and genuine community engagement are sound, practical investments that protect people, livelihoods, and the long-term viability of the oilfield itself.
The Communities Whose Engagement Matters Most
The settlements most connected to the Alape and Oluwa river system include, among others, Atijere, Eba, Akata, Agerige, Agbala-Olope-Meji, Ile’fun, Mofeyitokun, Irokun, Igbedun, Ode-Omi, Makun-Omi, Basa, Lugboroko, Kema, Ago Sani, Betegbofo, Ago Alaja, Ago Balogun, Tedo, Olomididu, and Mesagan. These communities sit on both sides of the contested boundary — some administratively in Ondo, some in Ogun — but the rivers connect them as a single ecological and economic unit regardless of which state exercises jurisdiction. Any engagement strategy that treats them separately, or engages only those nearest the drilling site, will fall short.
For these communities, the rivers underpin nearly the whole local economy. Freshwater fishing on the Alape and Oluwa rivers is the primary source of protein, income, and trade for most households. Farming along the fertile riverbanks and floodplains sustains food security for the wider Ilaje/Ijebu Waterside area. Wood logging and raffia and timber harvesting from the surrounding forest reserve support construction, boat-building, and a secondary income stream for many families.
Because these livelihoods are so closely tied to the health of the rivers, they are also a useful early indicator. Falling catches, declining soil fertility, or forest degradation would be among the first visible signs that safeguards need strengthening. Building a monitoring and engagement relationship with these communities now gives government and operators an early-warning system, not just a compliance obligation.
Ownership, Revenue, and the Case for Broader Engagement
Much of the current urgency around Eba Island is tied to the 13 per cent derivation revenue guaranteed to oil-producing states under Section 162(2) of the 1999 Constitution, along with the standing that comes with oil-producing state status. This is a legitimate interest for both Ondo and Ogun States to pursue. At the same time, experience across the Niger Delta suggests that when engagement is concentrated mainly on state-level revenue and a small circle of traditional rulers or politically connected local leaders — some of whom may not reside permanently in the riverine settlements — the benefits of oil activity can end up unevenly distributed, while the operational realities of exploration are experienced directly by fishermen, farmers, and timber workers in the wider catchment.
This is not an argument against the ownership process. It is an argument that ownership and grassroots engagement should proceed together, not sequentially, so that whichever state prevails, and whichever operator leads the fieldwork, the arrangements already in place ensure that benefits and safeguards reach the communities actually living along the rivers, not only their representatives.
Lessons from Elsewhere in the Niger Delta
Nigeria has considerable experience — some of it hard-won — with how oil activity interacts with river- and coast-dependent communities. These examples are worth studying closely, not to predict doom, but to identify what proactive engagement could have changed.
In Ogoniland, Rivers State, the UN Environment Programme’s assessment found groundwater contamination, including benzene levels well above World Health Organisation guidelines in some locations, linked to years of pipeline leaks and delayed spill response. UNEP projected that full ecological recovery could take 25 to 30 years. The clearest lesson from Ogoniland is the value of early, independent environmental monitoring and rapid-response spill management, both of which are far cheaper and more effective when built in from the start than when introduced after contamination has already occurred.
Not far from Eba Island, the community of Aiyetoro, in Ilaje Local Government Area of Ondo State, has experienced significant Atlantic Ocean incursion over more than two decades, which residents and traditional rulers have linked to offshore oil activity and gas flaring in the area. A shoreline protection project first awarded in 2004 has seen limited follow-through. Aiyetoro illustrates the importance of timely infrastructure commitments and sustained follow-up — coastal and riverbank protection works best when it is planned and funded alongside extraction activity, not treated as a separate, lower-priority undertaking.
Across Bayelsa, Rivers, and Delta States more broadly, oil spills over the decades have affected fish populations, mangroves, and farmland in various locations, with some communities reporting reduced catches and soil quality issues well after individual spill incidents were resolved in the news cycle. The recurring lesson is that sustained, transparent engagement with affected communities, including honest communication when incidents occur, tends to preserve trust and cooperation far better than engagement that fades once initial attention moves on.
Given that the Alape-Oluwa system is a freshwater riverine environment rather than the more open estuarine systems found elsewhere in the Delta, contamination or ecological disruption here may take longer to recover from naturally. This makes early, well-designed safeguards a particularly good investment for this specific project.
A Framework for Comprehensive and Strategic Engagement
Several practical steps could help government and operators engage the Alape-Oluwa catchment communities as seriously as the ownership question is currently being pursued. A joint baseline Environmental and Social Impact Assessment covering all the listed communities should be completed and shared publicly before full-scale exploitation begins, so that water quality, fish stocks, and soil conditions are documented as a shared reference point for all parties. This should be paired with accessible, independently verified water quality monitoring on the Alape and Oluwa rivers, with results shared regularly with community representatives rather than held solely by the operator.
A pre-agreed spill contingency and compensation framework, financed through regulator-mandated operator bonds, would give communities clear and fast compensation triggers without requiring lengthy litigation to be made whole. Host-community development trusts, established under the Petroleum Industry Act, should be structured to reach the riverine settlements directly, with meaningful representation for fishermen, farmers, women, and youth in trust governance, alongside traditional leadership, so that engagement is broad-based rather than concentrated among a few.
Operators should also commit clearly to minimising gas flaring and avoiding untreated discharge into the Alape and Oluwa rivers, with agreed monitoring to verify compliance over time. Nearby Ilaje communities have associated flaring and discharge from offshore operations with coastal and riverine changes, so building strong practice into this project from the outset is a reasonable and achievable safeguard.
Because the rivers connect communities across the Ondo-Ogun boundary, a joint engagement and monitoring framework for the shared Alape-Oluwa system — coordinated through the National Boundary Commission and the relevant federal petroleum regulator — would help both states collaborate on environmental stewardship across the full catchment, rather than each limiting its involvement to its own side of a contested line. Continued investment in shoreline and riverbank protection, informed by the experience of the Aiyetoro project, should be planned and funded alongside the oilfield’s development timeline rather than treated as a later or separate priority. Finally, the ongoing legislative and judicial review of the ownership dispute should be aligned with clear, binding environmental commitments, so that whatever resolution emerges on ownership is paired with firm safeguard obligations for the communities involved.
Conclusion
The communities of Atijere, Eba, Akata, Agerige, Agbala-Olope-Meji, Ile’fun, Mofeyitokun, Irokun, Igbedun, Ode-Omi, Makun-Omi, Basa, Lugboroko, Kema, Ago Sani, Betegbofo, Ago Alaja, Ago Balogun, Tedo, Olomididu, and Mesagan stand to be significantly affected by how the Eba Island Oilfield is developed, for better or worse, depending on the choices made now. The experience of Ogoniland and Aiyetoro shows that early, sustained, and broad-based engagement is not simply good ethics; it is good project management, reducing the likelihood of costly disputes, delays, and remediation later on.
Government at both federal and state levels, together with the petroleum regulator, the national oil company, and the operators involved, have a genuine opportunity here: to demonstrate that ownership and environmental stewardship can be pursued together, with the same seriousness. The Alape and Oluwa river communities are asking, in effect, for exactly this — comprehensive, strategic engagement that goes beyond the question of whose territory the island sits on, to the question of how the people who live along its rivers will be protected and included in what comes next.
Omotomiye can be reached at ben.omotomiye@live.com
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