Port Harcourt, Nigeria – Prince Gbosidan still remembers April 12, 2009. Vividly.
It was the day fire from a big oil spill spread to his hometown Deeyor-Kira from an oil facility in neighbouring Kegbara-Dere and destroyed his farmlands.
“Before the spill, you can plant within four to six months and you will get a good yield,” the 49-year-old father of four told Al Jazeera. “But now, we are living in abject poverty because our livelihoods have been destroyed. I have stopped farming because there is no point farming when you don’t get anything.”
In the mid-1970s, when Gbosidan started farming alongside his father, in Deeyor-Kira in Nigeria’s oil-rich Rivers State, yields were…
