Smoke, soot and toxic fumes: Nigerian families living in shadow of burning oil well six years after blowout

Villagers in Awoye in the Niger Delta say the ongoing pollution is causing sickness and environmental destruction, while pleas for help go unanswered

Perched on a narrow hospital cot across from her son, Bodunwa Orugbemi can hear the distant Atlantic Ocean and smell the stench of crude oil on the air drifting in from the shore. For days, her 21-year-old son has been lying in this hospital in the Niger Delta, swallowing small spoonfuls of food without being able to speak.

Seventy‑year‑old Orugbemi says Ijadopin started coughing one evening in May, inside their small wooden home in Awoye on Nigeria’s Atlantic coastline. After a few days his cough intensified, then he developed a skin irritation, followed by difficulty breathing.

“He started shivering and coughing uncontrollably. Now he can eat, but he still cannot speak,” she says.

She believes the sickness is linked to pollution around Awoye, where an offshore oil well known as Ororo-1 has burned continuously for years, releasing smoke, soot and toxic fumes into nearby communities.

Her husband, a fisher, no longer returns home with the catches that once sustained the family.

“The sea is different,” she says. “He sometimes stays out all day and barely brings anything.”

Across all the settlements along Ondo state’s Ilaje coast, people share similar stories of persistent coughs, respiratory difficulties, skin problems and collapsing livelihoods that they say are linked to the blowout incident at the oil well in April 2020.

Philip Jakpor, executive director of the NGO Renevlyn Development Initiative, says people’s experiences reflect a familiar pattern in the oil-rich region: the fallout of environmental disasters persisting for years without health monitoring for the affected population.

“What is happening in Awoye is not unique,” says Jakpor. “In the Niger Delta, the plight of oil-polluted communities has reached a point where people are forced to live with contaminated air and water. They continuously inhale toxic substances without knowing the damage this may be causing to their bodies.”

The Ororo-1 oil well was originally drilled by Chevron Corporation, which later capped and abandoned the field. Nigeria’s then petroleum regulator, the Department of Petroleum Resources, subsequently awarded licences to two indigenous firms, Owena Oil and Gas and Guarantee Petroleum, which continued operations until the blowout ignited the well.

Six years on, communities say pollution is part of daily life.

“It was around 7pm when the explosion happened. The whole community shook. At first, we thought it was thunder rolling in from the ocean, but when we rushed out of our houses, we saw thick smoke rising from the offshore drilling facility. Since that day, nothing has been the same,” says Temilorun Patrick Ajimisogbe, a fisher in Awoye. Afterwards fishers stayed away from the water for days, fearing for their lives as layers of soot and the stench of crude oil spread along the coast.

Years later, he says people here still complain of coughs, skin irritation and dizziness alongside the drastic impact on fishing.

“Sometimes, we wake up in the morning and just see oil spread everywhere, Ajimisogbe says. “Before we know it, the water will carry it away again.”

Black soot settles inside water containers and food kept uncovered say residents, yet no government agency has come to carry out a comprehensive public health assessment.

Dr Bieye Briggs, an expert in environmental health, says the core concern is the effect on people living in Nigeria’s oil‑producing regions of prolonged exposure to toxicants.

“While pollution may indeed pose a problem, our primary concern should not be limited to the mere presence of pollutants,” he says. “What is truly worrying is the lack of an adequate bio-monitoring regime to determine what people may be ingesting into their bodies.”

A recent study by the Kebetkache Women Development and Resource Centre on the health of women in Otuabagi, in Bayelsa state, where Nigeria’s first commercial oil wells were drilled in the 1950s, revealed high levels of polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) in women’s blood as well as contamination of the soil and water.

Dr Nnimmo Bassey of the Health of Mother Earth Foundation, a Nigerian think tank, says continuous burning of crude oil can release hazardous pollutants such as benzene, sulphur dioxide, particulate matter and PAHs, which are associated with cancer and with respiratory and cardiovascular diseases.

“If you consider what the people in Awoye have been continuously exposed to for six years, it may be comparable to what communities face where there is constant gas flaring and oil spills,” he says. “You can be sure there will be elevated levels of blood disorders, cancers, skin diseases, breathing difficulties and, of course, deepening poverty, because their livelihoods are being destroyed.”

Families in Awoye rely largely on local medicine vendors and underfunded clinics. Healthcare access is limited in the Ilaje riverbank communities, mostly reachable by boat, with virtually no specialist respiratory care.

Meanwhile, livelihoods tied to the sea are collapsing. Awoye’s fishers once returned from the Atlantic with baskets full of croaker, catfish, tilapia, mackerel, and barracuda.

“When you cast your net, sometimes the fish smell of crude oil,” says Ajimisogbe. “Unless you buy fuel worth 60,000 to 70,000 naira [£33 to £39], twice as much as before, and travel much farther out to sea, you’d hardly get a decent catch.”

In some parts, oil contamination forms slick layers over the water’s surface, blocking oxygen exchange and destroying vital breeding grounds for marine life. Ajimisogbe says dead fish sometimes wash up near polluted creeks after periods of heavy discharge.

For women who sell fish in local markets, dwindling catches mean lower incomes and rising debts.

“At first we thought the fire would stop,” says Christianah Abiye, a fishmonger. “Now it feels like we have been abandoned with it.”

Awoye’s traditional leader, Happiness Abiye, expresses growing frustration over repeated pleas for help being ignored amid ongoing suffering.

“Our people are dying slowly, with increased sickness and hunger linked to this pollution,” he says. “Fishermen no longer catch like before, children are coughing, and women spend their little money treating illnesses that were rare before this fire.

“We feel abandoned,” he says. “It is as if the lives of coastal people do not matter to those in power.”

Environmental campaigners say the disaster exposes deeper, systemic failures in Nigeria’s environmental governance.

“The Niger Delta environment has become a completely sacrificed zone. We talk a lot about oil spills and gas flaring, but we hardly talk about produced water,” says Bassey.

“Communities are carrying the health burden, while regulators remain largely absent.”

Experts want Nigeria to develop a system for monitoring environmental and health risks – in the delta there is no comprehensive study on oil pollution’s long-term health effects.

“You breathe it every day,” says Abiye.

No one from the Owena Oil and Gas, or the Ondo State government responded to the Guardian’s requests for comment.