People Advancement Centre · Bori-Ogoni, Rivers State
Turning evidence into accountability in Ogoniland
We are a civil society organisation founded in 2007 and based in Bori. We work with Ogoni communities to document pollution, hold the cleanup to its promises, and make sure people know exactly what they are entitled to and how to claim it. Everything on this site is written to be used, not admired.
2007
Year the Centre was founded in Bori
900×
WHO benzene guideline exceeded in Nisisioken Ogale drinking water (UNEP, 2011)
24 hrs
Legal deadline for a spiller to report a spill to NOSDRA
001 / Who we are
A place where civic voice is rebuilt
The People Advancement Centre exists because the gap between what Ogoniland has been promised and what has actually arrived on the ground is measured in decades. We describe ourselves as a space for solidarity building and the rediscovery of civic voice, and in practice that means three unglamorous things: we sit in meetings and write down what is said, we go to the communities and check whether it happened, and we publish the difference.
We are not a service delivery organisation and we do not run the cleanup. We work alongside the movements that carry this struggle — the Movement for the Survival of the Ogoni People, the Ogoni Solidarity Forum-Nigeria and allied Niger Delta networks — and our contribution is documentation, scrutiny and the stubborn insistence that communities be present when decisions about their land are made.
In one sentence
If you want to know whether a promise made about Ogoniland was kept, this is the organisation that goes and looks.
002 / What we work on
Five fronts, one problem
These are not separate campaigns. They are five angles on the same question: who decides what happens to Ogoni land, and who pays when it is damaged.
Cleanup oversight
We track what the Hydrocarbon Pollution Remediation Project says it has delivered against what communities report on the ground — site by site, water scheme by water scheme, contract by contract.
Corporate accountability
We pursue oil companies through the mechanisms that actually bite: transparency bodies, investor engagement, and support for litigation in the courts of the countries where parent companies are headquartered.
Land and consent
When land is acquired or wells are reactivated, we ask who was consulted, what they were told, and whether consent was informed. We campaigned on this in 2018 over farmland acquisition, and we are doing it again over oil resumption.
Memory and rights
Ogoni Day, the Ogoni Bill of Rights and the case of the Ogoni Nine are not history for us; they are the legal and moral basis of every current demand. We keep that record public and accurate.
Community capability
A community that knows what a Joint Investigation Visit is, and insists on being at one, is in a far stronger position than one that does not. Much of our work is simply making that knowledge ordinary.
Need one of these now?
Programme detail, eligibility and how to request support are set out in full on the programmes page.
003 / The record
What the science found, and what has happened since
In August 2011 the United Nations Environment Programme published the most detailed environmental assessment ever conducted in the Niger Delta. It surveyed more than 200 locations over fourteen months, examined 122 kilometres of pipeline right-of-way, analysed over 4,000 samples from 142 groundwater monitoring wells and 780 boreholes, and consulted more than 23,000 people. Its findings still set the terms of every argument about Ogoniland.
The 2011 findings in numbers
| Measure | What UNEP found | Reference point |
|---|---|---|
| Benzene in drinking water, Nisisioken Ogale | More than 900 times the WHO guideline | UNEP called for emergency action here ahead of all other remediation |
| Refined oil floating on groundwater, same community | A layer 8 cm thick | — |
| Peak groundwater hydrocarbon concentration | Over 1,000,000 µg/litre | Nigerian standard: 600 µg/litre |
| Communities with hydrocarbons in drinking water | At least 10 | — |
| Depth of soil contamination | At least 5 metres, in 49 cases | — |
| Mangrove cover lost, Bodo West | 10%, over 307,380 m² | Roots coated in a bitumen-type layer 1 cm or thicker |
| Estimated time to full restoration | 25–30 years | Individual land sites: around 5 years each |
The money: what was promised, what arrived
UNEP recommended an Environmental Restoration Fund with an initial capital injection of one billion US dollars from the oil industry and government. The table below is deliberately incomplete where the public record is incomplete — we would rather show a gap than fill it with a guess.
| Item | Amount | Status |
|---|---|---|
| UNEP recommended initial fund | US$1 billion | Recommendation, 2011 |
| SPDC Joint Venture pledge | US$900 million | Paid in tranches: $180m (2018), $180m (2019), $212m (2022) — US$572m by 2023 |
| Federal Government counterpart funding | US$100 million | Reported as not delivered as promised |
| Oil company contributions, as stated at the October 2025 House of Representatives hearing | US$900 million collectively | Figure given by company representatives at the hearing |
Read this before quoting a progress figure
Cleanup progress figures in circulation are not comparable with one another. They count different things — “sites”, “lots” and “hectares” are three different units — and they come from different dates. In August 2026 HYPREP marked the fifteenth anniversary of the UNEP report by stating that 30 of 65 contaminated sites had been fully remediated, alongside 1.5 million mangrove seedlings planted, more than 1,000 hectares of shoreline rehabilitated and 49 communities connected to potable water. Its June 2025 midterm report used different units again: 50 remediated lots across 17 UNEP-assessed sites closed out, and 13 Category N sites certified. Whenever you see a number, ask what it counts and when it was published. We always name both.
004 / How we work
Listen → Document → Escalate → Publish
The same four steps, whether the subject is a single leaking wellhead or a billion-dollar fund.
01 — LISTEN
Start in the community, not the report
Community meetings, women’s groups and youth councils tell us where the water tastes wrong and which borehole was abandoned. That is the raw material. A federal progress report is a claim; a village elder pointing at a dry standpipe is evidence.
02 — DOCUMENT
Dates, names, photographs, paperwork
A grievance that cannot be dated and located is a grievance that can be dismissed. We record when the spill was noticed, who was told, whether a Joint Investigation Visit happened, what cause was recorded on the form, and who signed it. That last detail decides more compensation claims than any speech ever will.
03 — ESCALATE
Choose the forum that can actually compel
Regulators, the National Assembly, transparency bodies, investors and foreign courts each have different powers and different appetites. In February 2023 we filed a complaint with the Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative arguing that Shell’s status as a Supporting Company was untenable. In November 2023 we took the case to Norges Bank Investment Management in Oslo. Different doors, same argument.
04 — PUBLISH
Put it where it cannot be quietly withdrawn
We publish what we find with its sources attached, including where sources disagree with each other and where we could not verify something. An organisation that only publishes the convenient half of the record is not doing accountability work.
005 / If you need help today
There has been a spill. What now?
The first seventy-two hours matter more than anything that follows. Here is the short version; the full step-by-step guide, with the forms explained, is on the resources page.
| When | Do this | Why it matters |
|---|---|---|
| Immediately | Photograph and video the spill with a visible date. Note the exact location, the time you first saw it, and who else saw it. | Your own record is the only one you fully control. |
| Same day | Report it to NOSDRA: oilspillalerts@nosdra.gov.ng or the emergency line 08168308820. Tell the community leadership at the same time. | The law requires the spiller to report within 24 hours. Your parallel report means the clock does not depend on them. |
| Within days | Insist the Joint Investigation Visit takes place with community representatives physically present. | The signed JIV document is the legal foundation for any compensation claim or court case. |
| At the JIV | Check what cause is written down — corrosion and equipment failure are treated differently from sabotage. Do not sign anything you disagree with. Keep a copy. | The recorded cause governs whether statutory compensation is payable. |
| Two weeks | The spiller is required to clean up to all practicable extent, with a remediation action plan. | Missed deadlines are themselves evidence. |
| Anytime | Contact us. Send the photographs, the dates and the JIV copy. | Individual incidents become a pattern only when someone is collecting them. |
A worked example: Kpean, Khana LGA
On 3 August 2025 a well in the Yorla oil field — drilled around 1967 and dormant for decades — leaked at Kpean. A Joint Investigation Visit five days later attributed the cause to corrosion and recommended immediate wellhead repair and cleanup. The operator disputed that finding and asserted vandalism. A second spill on 4 December 2025 was not contained until 25 December. As of late January 2026, cleanup had not begun. This is precisely why the cause field on the JIV form is worth arguing about at the time, and why a community keeps its own dated record.
006 / Track record
Some of what we have done
Dated, checkable, and in several cases still unresolved — which we say plainly rather than presenting every campaign as a victory.
| When | What we did | Where it stands |
|---|---|---|
| 2015 | Campaigned over the Nigeria Customs Service seizure of the Ken Saro-Wiwa memorial bus donated by UK organisations. | Raised internationally; the seizure became a widely reported symbol of official attitudes to Ogoni memory. |
| 2018 | Opposed the acquisition of roughly 200 hectares of Ogoni farmland for a banana plantation. | Consent and compensation questions we raised then are the same ones now being asked about oil resumption. |
| 26 Feb 2023 | Filed a complaint with the EITI International Board arguing Shell’s status as a Supporting Company was untenable, citing systematic failure to prevent and clean up pollution across the Niger Delta. | Complaint is on the public record. We are not aware of a published Board decision responding to it, and we will not claim one. |
| 7 Nov 2023 | Took the case directly to Norges Bank Investment Management in Oslo, engaging the investor side rather than only the operator. | Part of a continuing strategy of pressing shareholders and index funds, not just companies. |
| 4 Jan 2024 | Marked Ogoni Day with a public assessment titled, in effect, looking forward but walking backward. | Ogoni Day continues annually; the underlying demands of the 1990 Ogoni Bill of Rights remain unmet. |
| 16 Nov 2024 | Warned publicly against awarding Ogoni cleanup contracts to politicians. | Subsequent National Assembly scrutiny of cleanup contracting has kept this question live. |
Bring us something checkable
A photograph with a date. A borehole that was commissioned and never worked. A contract award that does not look right. A JIV form you were asked to sign in a hurry. Small pieces of evidence are what accountability is actually built from.
Last reviewed August 2026. Figures on this page are attributed to their source and date because published cleanup numbers vary by unit and by year. If you believe something here is wrong or out of date, write to us and we will check it and correct the page.