Advocates Redesign

Category: Nigeria

  • ACA ventures to promote public interest law in Nigeria

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    With the help of Advocates for Community Alternatives (ACA), Nigerian lawyers are building new institutions that champion the fundamental human rights of West Africa’s poor and marginalized communities, especially those that are threatened by the destructive impacts of extractive activities. 

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    At the beginning of November 2023, ACA signed Memoranda of Understanding with three such institutions – the Public Interest Lawyering Initiative for West Africa’s Nigeria Chapter (PILIWAN), Caleb University College of Law (COLAW) in Lagos, and the Nigeria Bar Association Port Harcourt Branch (NBA-PHB) – to boost public interest law and representation.

    Legal Clinic at COLAW

    ACA, PILIWAN, and COLAW have agreed to collaborate to launch a public interest legal clinic at COLAW by March 2024.  Clinical students will gain practical experience of the law while contributing to concrete public interest cases – in other words, they will learn by doing, while doing good. 

    ACA will provide curriculum, guest instructors, strategic guidance, and some financial support for the clinic’s operations.  PILIWAN will also collaborate on curriculum and guest instructors, provide opportunities for practical learning, and coordinate fieldwork, while COLAW will host the law school, provide basic instruction, and propose further opportunities for collaboration (such as research endeavors).

    Public Interest Litigation Desk at NBA-PHB

    A new partnership between ACA, PILIWAN, and the Nigerian Bar Association (NBA) centers on a public interest litigation desk, to be hosted at the NBA’s Port Harcourt Branch.  This collaboration will create a space where individuals and communities threatened by powerful economic actors can be connected to lawyers who will support their struggle.

     “This partnership with Nigeria Bar Association is to strengthen the public interest work they do, especially the human rights aspect of it”, said Courage Nsirimovu, PILIWA Nigeria South-South Coordinator and Founder of Pilex Centre for Civic Engagement.

    “They have limited resources, so they need encouragement.  This collaboration will help the NBA Human Rights Committee to do more. We want them to do more so we can help indigent persons who do not have the opportunity to get access to justice”.

    Jonathan G. Kaufman, the Executive Director of ACA, explained, “We are trying to bring to West African countries the idea that the law is an instrument for social justice.  This means that lawyers and the Bar can use the law to help make life better for communities, and individuals.  Being a lawyer is not just about greasing the wheels of the society and serving the interests of the rich and powerful.”

    “That is what this partnership between ACA, PILIWA, and the NBA is all about.  Using law for social justice can mean so many things, like fighting for environmental justice when there is an oil spill, representing people who are wrongfully imprisoned, standing up for women whose rights have been downtrodden or subjected to abuse and seeking to change reality for them.  Human rights include all the things people need to live a dignified and reasonable life, and we hope the public interest litigation desk will help marginalized Nigerian communities to secure these rights.”

    PILIWAN is the Nigerian national chapter of the Public Interest Lawyering Initiative for West Africa (PILIWA), a network of lawyers, law firms, and non-profits in nine West African countries that promote public interest law and representation for marginalized and threatened communities. 

    Advocates for Community Alternatives (ACA) is a Ghana-based non-profit organization that helped West African communities that are threatened by the destructive impacts of extractive projects to take control of their own future, through a combination of community-driven development support and community-based legal and advocacy programming.

     

     

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  • Italian energy superpower ENI and Nigerian community reach historic agreement to mitigate chronic flooding of village

    Joint Press Release

    Port Harcourt, Benin City, Accra, Rome, Paris – 8 October 2019 — After years of battle, residents of the community of Aggah in Rivers State, Nigeria, finally have hope for relief from the floods that have plagued them for five decades, thanks to a ground-breaking agreement with Italian energy company ENI S.p.a published on 2 October 2019. A community association, Egbema Voice of Freedom (EVF), and its representatives, Advocates for Community Alternatives (ACA) and Chima Williams & Associates (CWA), had filed a complaint against ENI in front of Italy’s OECD National Contact Point on 15 December 2019, with the support of the International Federation for Human Rights (FIDH).

    The complaint stressed the devastating impacts the flooding had on the health, property, livelihoods and environment of the Aggah community. It was submitted under the OECD Guidelines, which establish international standards of corporate conduct to which Italy and its corporations are committed. In a rare successful case before an OECD National Contact Point (NCP), the agreement addresses the essential concern of the complainants, i.e. the urgent construction of drainage solutions to mitigate the flooding and a potential resort to a technical expert if more efforts are needed.

    “We are celebrating this news in Aggah.  The agreement is an achievement that follows years of battle to get ENI and its subsidiary NAOC to act to resolve the flooding they have created. We remain however vigilant on how the company and its Nigerian subsidiary will implement the agreement,” affirmed Pastor Evaristus Nicholas, spokesperson for Egbema Voice of Freedom.

    “The community had been asking NAOC, ENI Nigerian subsidiary, to fix the flooding problem for years, but to no avail,” said Jonathan Kaufman, Executive Director of ACA.  “The game changed when we went to Italy on the basis of the OECD Guidelines, which apply to all Italian companies, and asked ENI to take responsibility for what was happening on the ground in Aggah.”

    ENI has drilled for oil in and around the town of Aggah since the 1960s. The complaint alleges that the company built elevated roadways, embankments and platforms that completely block natural streams that used to flow through Aggah, causing violent annual flooding of large swathes of farmland and residential areas since 1970. According to a survey of over two thousand Aggah residents, 90% of households have lost agricultural products while over 65% reported severe health problems as a result of the flooding. Several people have drowned in the floodwaters – including one villager who died just last month. Floods also destroy sewage systems, resulting in vast pollution and harm to the ecosystem.

    “This is particularly positive news. First, because the community’s central demand is finally acknowledged by ENI. Second, because successful cases for victims before the OECD complaint mechanism are extremely rare. This is the result of a relentless and joint effort by the community, advocates and NGOs to get the company to act,” said Giacomo Cremonesi, Italian lawyer and FIDH representative in the procedure before the Italian NCP.

    After the complaint was deemed admissible, the Italian NCP opened a mediation procedure between the parties in the presence of a third-party Conciliator; the process led to an agreement that was made public on Wednesday 2 October 2019. The terms of settlement provide for the urgent construction of new culverts/drainage channels and maintenance and management of the existing ones to avoid flooding. It also indicates the verification of the impact of those measures in the presence of a technical expert, to determine whether further action should be taken. NAOC’s surveyors have already entered the community to determine the setting of any new construction.

    “This success story shows that it is possible, when victims properly coordinate with their advocates and present their cases with strong evidentiary backing, and when the NCP does its job to make companies – no matter how mighty –  listen and act accordingly. This further underscores the benefits of following due process and the rule of law rather than the rule of self help,” said Prince Chima Williams of CWA, the Nigerian law firm representing the complainant (EVF).

    Press contacts:

    Advocates for Community Alternatives (ACA)

    Jonathan Kaufman: jonathan@advocatesforalternatives.org   +233 55 555 0377

    International Federation for Human Rights (FIDH)
    Sacha Feierabend:     sfeierabend@fidh.net   +33 6 85 12 24 53

    Chima Williams & Associates (CWA)
    Prince Chima Williams:     princewchima@yahoo.co.uk; +2348023649890.

    Egbema Voice of Freedom (EVF)
    Pastor Nicholas Evaristus:     royalgraceassembly_evarist@yahoo.com; +2348064329322.

    Aggah-Eni Terms of SettlementDownload