Education
Four decades of spills, flares: Group urges grieving community to appeal as court dismisses suit against Shell – EnviroNews
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The Federal High Court sitting in Yenagoa, Bayelsa State, on July 17, 2026, under Justice Ayo Emmanuel, dismissed the suit filed by King Bubaraye Dakolo of Ekpetiama Kingdom against Shell Petroleum Development Company of Nigeria (SPDC) and six other defendants, including the Attorney General of the Federation and the Nigeria Upstream Petroleum Regulatory Commission.
The suit: FHC/YNG/CS/8/2025, sought to hold Shell accountable for four decades of oil spills, gas flaring, and the systematic destruction of rivers, forests, and farmlands across the Gbarain oil fields before the company’s controversial divestment of its onshore assets to Renaissance African Energy Limited.
However, Health of Mother Earth Foundation (HOMEF) rejects the dismissal and believes that King Dakolo, the Ekpetiama people, and their legal team should pursue an appeal to the highest court in the land.
The court reportedly dismissed the suit on four grounds:
- Failure to comply with statutory conditions precedent under the Petroleum Industry Act 2021 and the Upstream Petroleum Remediation Funds Regulations 2022;
- The statute of limitations under the Public Officers Protection Act and the Limitation Law of Bayelsa State;
- The characterisation of the fundamental rights framing as secondary to tortious claims; and
- The consequent sustaining of the defendants’ preliminary objections.
HOMEF has expressed concern about these reasons. The group states that where aged oil infrastructure remains in use, noxious gas continues to flare, and where contamination has not been remediated, the injury is not historical, but ongoing and framing decades of unaddressed harm as a series of expired causes of action is a judicial gift to extractive corporations and a betrayal of the communities bearing their costs.
HOMEF executive director, Nnimmo Bassey, notes with concern: “Every one of these grounds is procedural; not a single finding goes to the merits of the environmental harm Ekpetiama people have suffered for over six decades. The Federal Government, through the Minister of Petroleum Resources, the NUPRC, and the Attorney General, was a co-defendant in that suit for a reason, because their approval of a divestment that circumvented the Petroleum Industry Act’s environmental obligations makes them complicit in what the Ekpetiama people have endured.”
HOMEF legal officer, Onome Etisioro, stated that Shell’s obligations to the Ekpetiama people do not lapse with a court ruling.
“Nigerian jurisprudence has long needed a definitive ruling on what constitutes a continuing environmental wrong and the resulting ecocides that occur, and on whether limitation statutes designed for ordinary civil disputes can be applied without modification to the slow, cumulative violence of oil extraction.
“The Ekpetiama case was built to force those questions, but it was dispatched before the judiciary could answer them; the communities of the Niger Delta are the poorer for it. Every dismissal on a technicality is a deferral of the environmental jurisprudence this country urgently needs,” submitted Etisioro.
The group added: “This ruling is the latest instance of a troubling pattern in Nigerian environmental litigation: cases of profound public consequence, carrying the weight of decades of documented harm, are dismissed on procedural and technical grounds before a court ever reaches the substance.
“Nigerian jurisprudence has long needed a definitive ruling on what constitutes a continuing environmental wrong and the resulting ecocide, and on whether limitation statutes designed for ordinary civil disputes can be applied without modification to the slow, cumulative violence of oil extraction.”
HOMEF commended legal counsel, Chuks Uguru, and the Ekpetiama legal team for their commitment to pursue the matter through every available avenue.
“The appellate courts must have the opportunity to examine whether the procedural bars applied here serve justice or obstruct it. We call on legal advocates, environmental groups, and human rights organisations across the Niger Delta and beyond to support the appeal process that may arise with expertise, solidarity, and visibility,” concluded HOMEF.
