Kindly endorse this petition to Stop Shell and other multinationals from divesting out of the Niger Delta, without the full restoration of the Environment they have damaged. 

Shell Petroleum Development Company (SPDC)’s decision to sell its Nigerian subsidiary and all onshore assets to investors without consulting communities is unhealthy, unethical, irresponsible, and therefore unacceptable. The information came to women in communities as a surprise. Communities in the Niger Delta have been at the receiving end of the environmental devastation caused by the company's activities. Shell PLC plans to sell SPDC shares to Renaissance Africa Energy, a consortium of investors, without regard for its legacy of environmental damage and the need for appropriate consultation with all stakeholders, remedies, social and legal license to exit. It is instructive that the company has already divested OML 34 to ND Western; OML 17 and OML 29 without proper guidelines. 

The story is similar to other oil majors in Nigeria. Nigeria Agip Oil Company (NAOC), Exxon Mobil Nigeria Limited, and Total Energy Nigeria Limited are poised to divest their onshore assets without engaging host communities and rectifying the damages done to their environment and the well-being of people.

As affected Niger Delta women, we are concerned about the swiftness of these divestment plans because the government has not provided guidelines to resolve pollution issues before SPDC, AGIP, and Total Energies leave. The companies involved have failed to create women's development funds to help victims of oil extraction. Women in the Niger Delta suffer severe environmental consequences of oil extraction. Decades of oil pollution and destitution have placed them in a vulnerable position, impeding subsistence agriculture and causing health complications. 

Kebetkache Women Development & Resource Centre in 2022 conducted an Environmental and Socio-economic Assessment in Ibaa Community, and the key findings from the field revealed widespread crude oil contamination in the seven groundwater and four soil samples covering a radius of about 6 km. based on the risk associated with undue exposure to crude oil contamination, the assessment recommended as an emergency measure that the impacted families and others within 1500m across the pipeline right of way be relocated to safe locations within the community, provision of safe drinking water for the community and the rectification of the cause of the leakage in addition to other long term remedies. To date, Shell and its contractors have done nothing or negotiated with the families involved.

Niger Delta women do not agree with divestment because companies abandon the communities they have destroyed over the years through their profit over people extractive activities and leave the legacy of ecological disaster known to man without remediation. 

Support the Niger Delta women get justice by signing this petition with the following demands:

1.   The Ministry of Petroleum Resources and the Nigerian Upstream Petroleum Regulatory Commission to make public all documents submitted to them by SPDC on divestment.

2.   Renaissance Africa Energy should make public all documents submitted for the acquisition of SPDC and all proofs of compliance with the checklist and guidelines for divestment of oil assets.

3.   The Federal Government should not approve the divestment of oil assets until all polluted farmlands, rivers, air, and forests in the Niger Delta have been cleaned and restored.