The massive oil spill at Yiba-Ama (formerly Oruma) community has still not been cleaned up, and it is now 4 years. SACA teams have visited both the spill sites and some community leaders numerous times since then, starting from January 2016, to see if it had been cleaned up as promised by the company. But it has not. The community has been lamenting and calling on the government and non-governmental organisations to help them put pressure on the company to come and rescue them as they are trapped in the oil mess everyday. Their fishing grounds and farmlands have been polluted and the spills have kept spreading. The head of the community, King Wafebiama Amakiri, told SACA that he wondered why Shell was carefree about this incident, attributing the alleged negligence to the peaceful disposition of their community towards the company.
SACA raised this issue with Shell Nigeria during a meeting with 7 of the company’s managers in Port Harcourt, including the company's General Manager for Community Relations & Sustainable Development, Mr. Igo Weli, on December 13, 2017. The managers replied that they were assessing the spill with regulatory agencies. However, the managers put the blame for the spills on the community youths, arguing that it did not make sense spending the available funds on cleanups when it was likely that the boys would sabotage the pipelines again.
