What we do · Programmes and how to use them
Five programmes, and the doors each one opens
This page sets out what the People Advancement Centre actually runs, who each programme is for, and what happens after you contact us. It also contains the thing we are asked for most often: a plain comparison of the routes available when a company or an agency will not act, and an honest account of what each route can and cannot compel.
001 / Overview
How the five fit together
Our programmes are a sequence more than a menu. Somebody notices that something is wrong — a wellhead weeping into a farm, a water scheme commissioned and never run, a survey team on land nobody agreed to sell. Documentation turns that into a dated record. Oversight compares the record with what an agency says it has delivered. Accountability work carries the difference to a body with power to act on it. Memory work keeps all of it anchored to rights set out in 1990 and still unmet.
Who each is for, in short. Cleanup oversight is for communities inside the remediation programme and for anyone scrutinising public spending on it. Corporate and investor accountability is for people whose case has stopped moving in Nigeria and needs a different audience. Land, consent and resumption is for communities facing acquisition, survey or the reopening of wells. Documentation and training is for community leaders, women’s groups and youth councils who will be in the room when a Joint Investigation Visit happens. Memory, rights and public record is for students, journalists and researchers, and for the movement itself.
What we are not
We are not a law firm and we do not act as anyone’s legal representative. Everything on this page about legal process is general information, not legal advice. We do not run remediation contracts, and we do not distribute compensation. What we do is evidence, scrutiny and escalation — and, where a case needs lawyers, helping people find them.
002 / The five programmes
What each programme does, with one dated example
Every example below is a real, dated piece of work, and where the outcome is unresolved we say so.
PROGRAMME 1
Cleanup Oversight and Monitoring
What it is. Independent checking of the Ogoniland remediation programme run by the Hydrocarbon Pollution Remediation Project, which was flagged off in June 2016 and sits under the Federal Ministry of Environment. We follow three things: sites, water and contracts.
Who it is for. Communities with a remediation site, a promised borehole or a contractor on their land; and journalists, auditors and legislators who need a ground-level check on a headline figure.
What we actually do. We visit sites and record what is there, and we ask what unit any progress claim is counted in, because “sites”, “lots” and “hectares” are not interchangeable. HYPREP stated in August 2026, at the fifteen-year mark since the UNEP report, that 30 of 65 contaminated sites were fully remediated and 49 communities connected to potable water; its own June 2025 midterm report counted 50 remediated lots across 17 UNEP-assessed sites. We also read the money: the SPDC joint venture had contributed US$572 million by 2023 against a US$900 million pledge, while the Federal Government’s US$100 million counterpart funding was reported as not delivered as promised.
Dated example. On 16 November 2024 we joined civil society colleagues in a public warning against awarding Ogoni cleanup contracts to politicians. A Dataphyte investigation in May 2023 had already found five firms receiving HYPREP payments with no Corporate Affairs Commission registration, and eleven companies with expired corporate status holding contracts contrary to the Public Procurement Act 2007.
PROGRAMME 2
Corporate and Investor Accountability
What it is. Pressing oil companies through the forums that sit outside the Nigerian regulatory system: transparency bodies, shareholders and index funds, UN special procedures, and support for litigation in the countries where parent companies are headquartered.
Who it is for. Communities whose claims have stalled locally, and allied organisations preparing submissions to international bodies. It matters especially now: Shell announced the sale of SPDC on 16 January 2024 and completed it on 13–14 March 2025, selling to the Renaissance consortium for US$2.4 billion. Shell plc nonetheless remains a defendant in the UK litigation brought by the Ogale and Bille communities.
What we actually do. We draft and file complaints, brief investors face to face, and supply dated community evidence to the lawyers and researchers who need it. Amnesty International called in April 2024 for the Nigerian government to halt the sale unless human rights were protected; we track what has followed it.
Dated example. On 7 November 2023 our Executive Director, Celestine AkpoBari, spoke outside Norges Bank Investment Management in Oslo after meeting the bank — taking the argument to the investor side rather than to the operator alone.
PROGRAMME 3
Land, Consent and Resumption
What it is. Work on the single question that runs through every land dispute in Ogoniland: was consent informed, and who gave it. It covers acquisition for development projects and the current proposals to resume oil production.
Who it is for. Farming and fishing families, landholding units, and community assemblies deciding what position to take. On 21 January 2025 President Tinubu hosted Ogoni leaders and the Rivers governor and directed the National Security Adviser, Nuhu Ribadu, to open dialogue on resuming production; the Ogoni Dialogue Committee submitted recommendations to the President on 24 September 2025. MOSOP and others publicly rejected the resumption moves in September 2025.
What we actually do. We help communities establish, in writing and before anything is signed, who was consulted, what they were told, what was promised and by whom. We record dissent as well as agreement. Our position is the one our Executive Director set out on Arise TV on 6 February 2026: “We will not allow the resumption of oil operations until our legitimate demands, as clearly stated in the Ogoni Bill of Rights, are met.”
Dated example. In 2018 we campaigned against the Rivers State acquisition of roughly 200 hectares of Ogoni farmland for a banana plantation. On 2 February 2026 hundreds of people protested the resumption of exploration across 17 communities in Tai LGA, in an action led by the Ogoni Liberation Initiative under its Executive Director Douglas Fabeke. Eight years apart, the same three questions.
PROGRAMME 4
Community Documentation and Training
What it is. Practical training so that communities can produce evidence that survives scrutiny, and know the statutory clock they are working against.
Who it is for. Community leaders, women’s groups, youth councils, church and school groups, and anyone likely to be handed a form to sign at short notice.
What we actually do. We teach the reporting route and the deadlines under the NOSDRA (Establishment) Act 2006 — reporting within 24 hours, containment within 24 hours, cleanup to all practicable extent with a remediation action plan within two weeks — and what Forms B and C are for. We teach what a Joint Investigation Visit is and why the cause recorded on it, corrosion or equipment failure as against sabotage, governs whether statutory compensation is payable. Amnesty International’s report “Bad Information: Oil Spill Investigations in the Niger Delta” documents systematic problems with that cause attribution, which is exactly why communities should be present and should keep their own copy. This is general information about process, not legal advice.
Dated example. The Kpean spill of 3 August 2025 is the case we teach from. A NOSDRA Joint Investigation Visit five days later recorded corrosion as the cause and recommended immediate wellhead repair and cleanup; the finding was then publicly disputed. A community that had photographs, dates and its own copy of the JIV was in a materially different position from one that did not.
PROGRAMME 5
Memory, Rights and Public Record
What it is. Keeping the documentary and commemorative record straight: the Ogoni Bill of Rights, adopted at Bori in 1990; the first Ogoni Day on 4 January 1993, when MOSOP mobilised about 300,000 people despite a ban on public gatherings; and the case of the Ogoni Nine, hanged at Port Harcourt prison on 10 November 1995 after a military tribunal that Amnesty International called a sham.
Who it is for. Students, teachers, journalists and researchers, and the movement itself — because the four demands of the Bill of Rights, including the right to protect the Ogoni environment from further degradation, are the basis of every current claim.
What we actually do. We publish dated statements, correct errors in circulation, and refuse to print figures and ordinals we cannot source. When President Tinubu announced a posthumous pardon and national honours for the Ogoni Nine on 12 June 2025, MOSOP welcomed it but demanded exoneration rather than pardon; our Executive Director, in his capacity as coordinator of the Ogoni Solidarity Forum, rejected the framing: “You cannot pardon someone that has not committed an offense; we are demanding total exoneration.”
Dated example. In 2015 we campaigned over the Nigeria Customs Service seizure of the Ken Saro-Wiwa memorial bus donated by UK organisations. On 4 January 2024 we marked Ogoni Day with a public assessment titled “Looking forward but walking backward” — commemoration used as an audit rather than a ceremony.
003 / Programme comparison
Which one do you need?
Timescales are what we typically see, not a guarantee. Our office is at No. 6 Kani Road, Bori-Ogoni; there is no published opening-hours schedule, so phone or email before travelling.
| Programme | Who it’s for | What you get | How to start | Typical timescale |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Cleanup Oversight and Monitoring | Communities with a remediation site, a promised water scheme or a contractor on their land; journalists and auditors | A site visit note with dates and photographs; a written comparison of the official claim against what is on the ground; the source and unit behind every figure | Email info[at]peoplescentre.org with the community name, the LGA, the site or scheme, and what you were told would be delivered and when. Attach any commissioning photograph or letter. | 2–6 weeks to a written note; longer where a contract record must be traced |
| Corporate and Investor Accountability | Communities whose claim has stalled locally; allied organisations preparing international submissions | Help framing a complaint to a transparency body or investor; your dated evidence packaged for lawyers and researchers; escalation alongside partner organisations | Ask for the Executive Director on +234 (0) 803 273 3965, or email celestine[at]peoplescentre.org, with a one-page summary: what happened, when, who the operator is, and what has already been tried. | Months to years. Investor and transparency routes rarely move in weeks. |
| Land, Consent and Resumption | Farming and fishing families, landholding units, community assemblies facing acquisition, survey or well reactivation | A written consent record: who was consulted, what was said, what was promised, who dissented — made before anything is signed | Call the office before the next consultation meeting, not after it. Give the date and venue of the meeting and the name of the body convening it. | Days for the record; the wider campaign runs for as long as the proposal does |
| Community Documentation and Training | Community leaders, women’s groups, youth councils, anyone who may be asked to sign a JIV form | A session on spill reporting, NOSDRA deadlines, Forms B and C, and how to hold your position at a Joint Investigation Visit; a checklist to keep | Contact the Project Officer, Fyneface Dumnamene, on 08035478758, or the Gender Desk Officer, Sorbarikor Deemua, on 08067619334, with a date and an expected number of participants. | 2–4 weeks to schedule; a session runs in a day |
| Memory, Rights and Public Record | Students, teachers, journalists, researchers, commemorative committees | Sourced material on the Ogoni Bill of Rights, Ogoni Day and the Ogoni Nine, with the uncertainties flagged rather than smoothed over | Email info[at]peoplescentre.org stating what you are producing, your deadline and whether you need attributable comment. | Within days for documents; longer for interviews |
004 / Case examples in detail
Three cases, and what each one teaches
None of these is finished. We include them because the transferable lesson is in the method, not in a result we can claim.
(a) February 2023 — the EITI complaint about Shell’s Supporting Company status
On 26 February 2023 we filed a complaint with the International Board of the Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative, arguing that Shell’s standing as an EITI “Supporting Company” was untenable and asking for its membership to be cancelled, citing systematic failure to prevent and clean up massive pollution across the Niger Delta. The reasoning was simple: a company’s own reporting can be compliant while its conduct on the ground is not, and a transparency body that certifies the first without asking about the second lends its name to the gap.
What is on the public record since then is a separate process: Shell plc’s EITI company assessment of June 2023 found that it met seven of nine expectations, partially meeting Expectations 4 and 6. We are not aware of any published EITI Board decision on our complaint, and we will not describe one. Where a page like this could easily imply a win, the honest sentence is that the complaint stands on the record and the outcome is not public.
What this teaches: filing is worth doing even when nothing visibly happens, because the complaint becomes a citable, dated document that later processes can refer to. But keep the claim strictly to what you filed. An organisation that overstates one outcome invites doubt about every figure it publishes.
(b) August and December 2025 — the Kpean spills and a disputed cause
On 3 August 2025 Well 14 in the Yorla oil field — drilled around 1967 and dormant for decades — leaked at Kpean in Khana LGA. The initial estimate was about 28 barrels, some 4,450 litres. NOSDRA conducted a Joint Investigation Visit five days later, attributed the cause to corrosion and recommended immediate wellhead repair and cleanup. NNPC disputed that, claiming vandalism; the asset operator is NNPC Exploration and Production Limited. A second spill on 4 December 2025 was not contained until 25 December, and as of late January 2026 cleanup had not commenced.
The disagreement over cause is not a technicality. The recorded cause — corrosion or equipment failure as against sabotage — governs whether statutory compensation is payable, and the signed JIV document is the legal foundation for anything that follows. So a dispute recorded on paper five days after a leak can determine what a farming family is entitled to years later. The statutory containment window is 24 hours and the cleanup window two weeks: a spill contained after three weeks and untouched five months on is a documented failure against both.
What this teaches: be in the room at the Joint Investigation Visit, read the cause field before signing anything, and keep your own copy and your own dated photographs. Where the regulator and the operator disagree, the community’s independent record is the only account that belongs to the community. This is general information about the process, not legal advice.
(c) 2018 — farmland acquisition, and the same questions in 2026
In 2018 we campaigned against the Rivers State acquisition of roughly 200 hectares of Ogoni farmland for a banana plantation. Our questions were about process rather than crops: which landholding units were consulted, what they were told about the terms, and whether the people whose livelihoods were on that land had any way to refuse.
Those questions returned unchanged with oil resumption. On 2 February 2026 hundreds of people protested the resumption of exploration across 17 communities in Tai LGA, in an action led by the Ogoni Liberation Initiative. On 6 August 2026, after Dutchford Exploration and Production Company Limited won the bid for the Yorla South field, 51 civil society organisations — among them Oilwatch International, HOMEF, ERA/FoEN, Policy Alert, CAPPA, Peace Point Development Foundation and Amazon Watch — demanded an immediate moratorium on that field, full cleanup of the 2025 Kpean spills, an independent environmental assessment, disclosure of licensing and ownership, a legally binding remediation framework, and the decommissioning of ageing wellheads rather than their reactivation. Their closing demand was blunt: “Do not reopen the wells. Decommission them. Clean them up. Restore the land. Protect the people. Ogoniland has suffered enough.”
What this teaches: consent is a procedure, not a signature, and the procedure is identical whether the project is agricultural or petroleum. Ask who was told, what they were told, who was absent, and what disclosure exists about licensing and ownership — and ask before the meeting, because afterwards you are contesting a record somebody else wrote.
005 / The accountability toolbox
Seven doors, and what is behind each
The mistake we see most often is choosing a forum by how loud it is rather than by what it can compel. Read the second column before the fourth. Nothing here is legal advice; for a specific claim you need qualified legal representation, and the choice of route is a decision to take with a lawyer.
| Route | What it can compel | Realistic timescale | Precedent |
|---|---|---|---|
| NOSDRA — the Nigerian regulator oilspillalerts@nosdra.gov.ng · 08168308820 | Reporting by the spiller within 24 hours, with a fine of ₦2,000,000 for each day of failure. Containment within 24 hours. Cleanup to all practicable extent with a remediation action plan within two weeks; on conviction a fine of up to ₦5,000,000, up to two years’ imprisonment, or both. A Joint Investigation Visit to determine cause, impact and scale. Statutory mediation between community and spiller. | Hours to weeks in law; in practice often far longer | Kpean, Khana LGA: JIV five days after the 3 August 2025 leak, cause recorded as corrosion, disputed by NNPC. Second spill 4 December 2025 not contained until 25 December; no cleanup started as of late January 2026. |
| National Assembly — committees and public hearings | Summonses to ministers and agency heads, public testimony, and formal reports. It cannot order remediation or award compensation, and attendance is not always secured. | Months; hearings recur over years | 2022: a joint panel summoned the Environment Minister and HYPREP; officials skipped three invitations and panel chair Degi Eremienyo alleged an “appearance of concealment of information”. 16 October 2025: House Ad-hoc Committee on Mismanagement of Oil Spill Clean-Up Funds held a public hearing and summoned the Minister. |
| EITI — transparency bodies | Assessment of a company against published expectations, and a decision on its supporting-company status. It cannot order cleanup or compensation. | Months to years; outcomes may never be published | PAC complaint filed 26 February 2023 seeking cancellation of Shell’s Supporting Company status. Separately, Shell plc’s June 2023 EITI company assessment found it met 7 of 9 expectations, partially meeting Expectations 4 and 6. No EITI Board decision on the complaint is on the public record. |
| Investor engagement — shareholders, pension and index funds | Nothing directly. It can move a fund’s engagement, voting or divestment decisions, and it reaches decision-makers who are not in Nigeria. | Months to years | 7 November 2023: PAC’s Executive Director met Norges Bank Investment Management and spoke publicly outside its Oslo offices. |
| UN special procedures — rapporteurs and working groups | Formal communications to companies and states requiring a response, plus authoritative public findings. Not binding. | Months from submission to publication | 2 July 2025, published 31 August 2025: seven UN special rapporteurs and working groups wrote to Shell, Eni, ExxonMobil and TotalEnergies over divestments that “lacked transparency”, citing about 110,535 barrels (17.5 million litres) leaked from SPDC-operated pipelines between 2011 and 2017. |
| Nigerian courts | Damages and orders against the operating company, with NOSDRA’s statutory mediation function available alongside. The signed JIV record is the foundation of the claim. | Years | This is route two of the four standard redress routes: negotiated settlement on the JIV record; Nigerian courts; foreign courts against the parent; international complaint mechanisms. We do not cite a specific recent Nigerian judgment here because we have not verified one to the standard we apply to this page. |
| Foreign courts — England & Wales, the Netherlands | Damages against the parent company, and injunctive relief such as ordering equipment to be installed. Jurisdiction has to be established first, which is itself years of litigation. | Five to ten years or more | Bodo, England: £55 million settled in 2014, four months before trial, for 15,600 claimants from a community of about 49,000, each receiving over £3,000; remediation targets 963 hectares with mangrove replanting monitored to 2028. The Hague, 29 January 2021: Shell Nigeria held liable for pollution at three locations, the parent held to owe a duty of care on leak detection, and a leak detection system ordered. Okpabi/Alame, England: claims filed 2015 for the Ogale and Bille communities (~50,000 people); UK Supreme Court allowed them to proceed on 12 February 2021; on 20 June 2025 Mrs Justice May held that ongoing pollution from unremediated spills is not time-barred, since continuing pollution may be a fresh actionable nuisance each day, and that Shell can be liable even where third-party sabotage occurred if it failed to prevent it. Main trial listed for 2027. |
The one legal point worth memorising
People frequently assume an old spill is too old to pursue. The English ruling of 20 June 2025 held that unremediated historic pollution is not necessarily time-barred, because continuing pollution may amount to a fresh actionable wrong each day it persists. That reasoning applies to a specific case in a specific jurisdiction, so do not treat it as a general rule — but if you were told years ago that nothing could be done, it is worth asking a lawyer again. This is general information and not legal advice.
We do not publish compensation rates. No authoritative current schedule exists that we can verify, and a wrong figure circulating in a community does more harm than no figure at all.
006 / Work with us
Four ways in, with the next step spelled out
We are a small office in Bori. Telling us plainly which of these you are saves a week of correspondence.
If you are a community
Bring what you already have: photographs with dates, the name of the site or well, who you reported to and when, and any copy of a JIV form. If a spill is happening now, report it to NOSDRA first and tell us second — the statutory clock runs from the incident, not from our reply.
Next step: call +234 (0) 803 273 3965, then email the photographs to info[at]peoplescentre.org.
If you are a journalist
We will give attributable comment, help arrange community interviews, and tell you which figures we think are shaky and why. We will not confirm a number we cannot source, and we will say when a claim is contested rather than picking the version that suits us.
Next step: email celestine[at]peoplescentre.org with your outlet, your angle and your deadline.
If you are a researcher
Two conditions. Research in Ogoni communities is done with the community’s informed agreement, on terms they understand, and findings come back to the people who provided them in a form they can use. Extractive fieldwork is a live grievance here, and it is one we take seriously.
Next step: send a one-page outline — question, method, timeline, what returns to the community — to info[at]peoplescentre.org.
If you are a funder
The costs that limit this work are unglamorous: transport to sites, phone credit, printing, and the time to sit through long meetings. We work with allied organisations including the Ogoni Solidarity Forum, Social Action, Environmental Rights Action, the Bonadum Foundation, United Action Democracy and the Movement Against Corruption, and we are willing to be funded jointly with them.
Next step: write to celestine[at]peoplescentre.org stating what you fund and your reporting requirements.
Start with the smallest checkable thing
You do not need a complete case to contact us. One dated photograph, one meeting nobody was invited to, one form you were pressed to sign in a hurry — that is where nearly every piece of work on this page began.
Last reviewed August 2026. Everything on this page describing legal process is general information and not legal advice. Figures are attributed to their source and date because published cleanup and spill 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.