Addax Petroleum is currently producing about 6000 barrels per day of oil from the Izombe and Ossu fields in the OML124 licence area within the Njaba fields in Imo state. The company recently announced it encountered more oil reservoirs totalling 289 feet of gross oil column in this area. The company was unable to hide its elation that the Njaba 2 oil fields are located within the stable and peaceful Imo state. Addax pumps oil here under the licence of Nigeria’s National Petroleum Corporation.
Addax Petroleum is currently producing about 6000 barrels per day of oil from the Izombe and Ossu fields in the OML124 licence area within the Njaba fields in Imo state. The company recently announced it encountered more oil reservoirs totalling 289 feet of gross oil column in this area. The company was unable to hide its elation that the Njaba 2 oil fields are located within the stable and peaceful Imo state. Addax pumps oil here under the licence of Nigeria’s National Petroleum Corporation.
Oil exploration and exploitation have been going on in this area for decades but running water is the most scarce commodity for people living within and near these oil fields. In a few places here, a few decrepit water bore-holes that either dried up or whose pumps packed up as soon as the commissioning officers left the scene are believed in both the federal and state governments’ reckoning to be sufficing for sources of water for about 1.5 million people clustering around these oil fields.
In this area a regional water scheme proposed by the Sam Mbakwe administration for the people during the early 1980’s is yet to take off. Water for the scheme was planned to be derived from the Njaba or Orashi rivers. The water scheme when built and articulated was meant to supply running water to nearly all the 12 local government areas in the Orlu senatorial zone where the Njaba oil fields are located. Of the five similar gigantic water schemes mapped out at the same time by the Mbakwe administration each for the then Owerri, Aba, Umuahia, Okigwe and Orlu senatorial zones, only that for Orlu is yet to be built. Tales have it that the late Sam Mbakwe, the then NPP governor of Imo state deliberately refused to start the Orlu regional water scheme when he started the other four schemes (now functional) because the Orlu zone was the political base of his political rival and the state’s NPN flag bearer, the late Collins Obi.
The Ikedi Ohakim Administration’s Connection.
With the return to democracy in 1999 and during the Achike Udenwa administration in Imo state, the federal government took over and completed the Okigwe regional water scheme started by the Sam Mbakwe administration. While the Okigwe water scheme remained uncompleted it would have amounted to fiscal irresponsibility on the part of the Achike Udenwa-led administration to set the Okigwe water project aside and embark on the Orlu regional water scheme. In the last days of the Udenwa administration in May 2007, which coincided with the period the Okigwe water scheme was completed, the then out-going governor, Achike Udenwa, chose the occasion of the valedictory visit of the then President Olusegun Obasanjo to Imo state to ask the federal government to assist the state government in realising the Orlu regional water scheme. This request was made before a huge crowd of people in an open field and in the presence of the then governor-elect and now governor of Imo state, Ikedi Ohakim. Administrations come and go, government is a continuity. When Ohakim took over the reigns of administration in Imo state people did rightly expect that the Orlu regional water scheme ought to be on his administration’s priority list.
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The consequences of absence of portable water in densely populated areas are well known, but since the inception of the Ohakim administration, mention had not been made by it of the Orlu regional water scheme. In 2008, the Southeast state governors met with President Umar Yar’ Adua and sought federal government’s assistance in the execution of some big water supply projects in their states in tune with what the federal Ministry of Agriculture and Water Resources has been doing in so many other states of the federation; but there was no mention of the Orlu water scheme by Governor Ohakim who was present at the meeting. And there was no mention of this water scheme in the Ohakim administration’s 2009 budget proposals. However, it is necessary to inform here that since the sacking of the Mbakwe administration by the military up to May 1999, none of the successive military governors or administrations ever failed to realise the necessity for the Orlu regional scheme; some even took some practical steps, however unsuccessful, to flag it off. Today the people meant to benefit from this water scheme are enmeshed in thirst and water-borne diseases.
The ordeal of those living around the Njaba oil fields is another paradox: the round-the-clock piercing flames from flaring gas and the effluents and effluvia of oil production activities juxtaposed to the absence of portable water to quench the people’s thirst.
Addax Petroleum has struck more oil in the Njaba area and the inhabitants of the area are daily confronted with the challenges associated with the absence of running water; the people need not be made to suffer any longer before the relevant authorities expedite action on the Orlu regional water scheme that has remained on the drawing board for about 27 years.
Amadi Abiaecheta
[email protected]
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