Giant Oil company shell is reportedly leaving thousands of Nigerians exposed to contaminated environments by not cleaning up oil spills as outlined by United Nations recommendations, Amnesty International has said.
In a joint report, Amnesty International and the Centre for Environment, Human Rights and Development said that Shell had failed to implement the UN recommendations, saying that several sites that Shell claimed to have cleaned up are still polluted.
Shell has however disagreed with the report’s findings.
The United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) in 2011 released a report that had findings which indicated that oil spills in the Ogoniland region of southern Nigeria had contaminated drinking water, wrecked the fishing industry and threatened the health of the local people.
Shell stopped drilling oil in Ogoniland in 1993 after growing unrest in the area.
Earlier this year, it agreed a $84m (£55m) settlement with residents of the Bodo community in Ogoniland for two massive oil spills in 2008 and 2009.
Although Shell accepts that spills in the region have occurred through the failure of pipelines it says pollution is also caused by oil theft and illegal refining.
The report goes ahead to accuse the Nigerian government of failing to properly regulate the oil industry.
Shell rejected the findings of the report saying that it is committed to cleaning up the spills.
