In the contentious, oil-rich landscape of Nigeria’s Niger Delta, Akwa Ibom and Cross River states are often viewed through different economic lenses. Akwa Ibom is the established, major oil-producing heavyweight, contributing the highest percentage to Nigeria’s crude revenue, hosting the massive ExxonMobil-operated Qua Iboe Terminal in Ibeno, and legally receiving the statutory 13% derivation fund alongside benefits from the Petroleum Industry Act (PIA) 2021.
Cross River, by contrast, sits outside this major oil-producing bracket. It does not enjoy the 13% derivation revenue, though it is currently navigating legal due diligence to formally establish its status within the oil-producing class.
Yet, beneath these differing legal and financial balance sheets lies an undeniable geographical truth: these two states are brothers sharing the same coastline. And along that coastline, boundaries blur. The ecological devastation of oil extraction does not respect state lines; the residents of both Akwa Ibom and Cross River face a shared, suffocating environmental crisis that systematically dismantles their health, water, land, and livelihoods.
In Cross River State, pollution is rife, driven by localised oil bunkering and systemic environmental lawlessness. In Calabar South, within the Essirebom community—an area historically marginalised and weaponised as a hideout for criminal syndicates linked to the theft and illegal refining of about 20% of Nigeria’s oil output—residents live in fear. This fear is so profound that community members refuse to name a Chinese firm operating nearby that indiscriminately dumps heavy metals into their waters, fearing severe negative repercussions.
Yet, alternative narratives are emerging from the soot. The rise of Her Highness Elizabeth Nkama-Eyo, the first female Community Head of Essirebom and the leader of the fishers at Atanso Iyak beach, represents a powerful shift. Her leadership stands as a resilient counter-weight to the corporate and criminal degradation of her people’s ancestral waters.
Across the state border, Akwa Ibom State represents the mature, dark reality of about 7 decades of oil extractive legacy. Oil was first discovered in non- commercial quantities in Akwa Ibom in 1953 at Ikot Akpa Ekpo in present Akpat Enin Local Government Area. It was in the late 1950s that commercial extraction of oil officially began in the state. In the Ibeno Local Government Area, frequent oil spills have been linked to major multinational and domestic players—including ExxonMobil and now Seplat, Shell, Chevron Field, Sterling Oil Exploration & Energy Production Company Limited, Network Production and Exploration, Savannah Energy etc —have utterly devastated the ecosystem.
Today, these communities face a new threat: corporate divestment. International oil companies are offloading their onshore assets and exiting the region without addressing decades of ecological damage. This tactical move blatantly ignores international law and human rights obligations, passing billions of dollars in environmental remediation costs to new asset owners who lack the financial capacity to clean it up, effectively leaving the host communities stranded without justice.
Where corporate profits are lined, a devastating public health and economic crisis is actively ignored. Across both states, the medical consequences of oil pollution are documented and severe:
The devastating cases of respiratory failure are rising every year. The continuous gas flaring has triggered chronic respiratory illnesses, leaving a majority of residents suffering from severe coughing and wheezing. High exposure to environmental hazards has led to rampant eye irritation, partial blindness, and reproductive health issues. Gastrointestinal diseases plague communities whose water sources are toxic.
This toxicity falls directly from the sky. When it rains, these coastal communities are subjected to the “black rain phenomenon.” Massive amounts of soot and unburned hydrocarbons mix with precipitation, turning water bodies dark, giving them an offensive odor, and rendering them entirely unfit for human consumption. Rain is no longer a source of life; it is a recurring warning of an ecological collapse.
For the traditional fishing communities that have thrived here for generations, the water has become a graveyard. Oil spills and gas flares have decimated the creeks and ancient breeding grounds of aquatic species. When oil coats the water, it destroys fishing nets and boats, costing fishermen hundreds of thousands of Naira in equipment they can no longer afford to replace due to a drastic drop in income.
Forced into survival mode, many fishers have abandoned their heritage entirely to turn to petty trading. Others are forced into deeper, high-risk ocean waters, embarking on perilous voyages lasting over three days just to secure a fraction of their historical catch.
In response to this institutional neglect, civil society is stepping into the vacuum. The Peace Point Development Foundation (PPDF), in partnership with the Health of Mother Earth Foundation (HOMEF), is currently implementing a two-year project (August 2025 – July 2027) titled: “Building Community Rights Defenders in Niger Delta.” The project’s objective is to train and mobilize 100 community rights collectives across the region as a transformative pathway to climate justice.
PPDF and HOMEF recognise a critical systemic flaw: despite the manifest dangers of flooding, pollution, deforestation, and biodiversity loss, Nigerian authorities continue to enforce neoliberal environmental policies that protect corporate extractivism at the expense of communities.
The Nigeria Socio-Ecological Alternatives Convergence, which anchors this project, calls for a radical rethinking of environmental governance. It leverages powerful, community-derived frameworks—such as the Niger Delta Alternatives Convergence Manifesto (NDAC, 2022–2025) and the Nigerian Socio-Ecological Convergence (NSAC, 2024–2025)—to demand a shift toward community-led resource democracy, prioritising the rights of nature and people over corporate profit.
By expanding the FishNet Alliance—a regional network of traditional fishers resisting destructive industrial fishing and pollution—into Cross River and Akwa Ibom, this initiative connects local youth, women, and fisherfolk to the broader Eco Defenders Network, providing them with the advocacy tools and capacity they have long been denied.
Yet, resistance without a viable alternative is merely managing the symptoms of a dying economic model. For the coastal communities of Akwa Ibom and Cross River, the path toward true resource democracy and economic survival may lie right off their shores in the Gulf of Guinea: offshore wind energy. By pivoting from the finite, destructive extraction of offshore crude to harnessing the infinite kinetic energy of coastal winds, these states can pioneer a just energy transition that directly repairs the broken local economies.
Transitioning to offshore wind energy offers a dual solution: it introduces a zero-emission power grid that can permanently eliminate the localised gas flaring and toxic “black rain” suffocating public health, while creating a new, sustainable maritime economy.
Crucially, this shift does not demand that fishing communities abandon their heritage; instead, the infrastructure deployment, marine monitoring, and technical maintenance of offshore wind farms can provide thousands of localised, green manufacturing and maritime jobs, offering a generational alternative where the preservation of the environment is directly tethered to the prosperity of the people.
Ultimately, the divergent legal statuses matter very little to the tides that wash up on their shared coastline. The crude oil that enriches the federal coffers and corporate executives leaves behind an identical wake of sickness, poverty, and ecological death in both Essirebom and Ibeno.
As the brother states of Akwa Ibom and Cross River look to the future, they must confront the questions born of their shared fate:
Can fiscal derivation funds truly compensate for a poisoned ecosystem? How long will the state and federal authorities prioritize a dying, extractive economic model over the lives of the coastal people who feed the nation?
The legal battles for oil-producing status in Cross River and the corporate divestment maneuvers in Akwa Ibom are two sides of the same coin. True justice for these states will not be found in the restructuring of oil revenues, but in a radical transition toward resource democracy. Until the rights of these communities and their natural environment are placed above corporate and political profits, the black rain will continue to fall on both sides of the border, suffocating the future of the Niger Delta.
– Isua-Ikoh, Umo Johnson is a Nigerian Environmentalist & Human Rights activist; Coordinator at the Peace Point Development Foundation (PPDF).
– Okoh Ene is the Coordinator at Uyo Iban Amplifier Initiative.
The Our Oceans Conference will be taking place in Kenya, Mombasa from 16-18 June.
