The Supreme Court, on Friday, dismissed an application by oil giant, Shell Petroleum Development Company, requesting a revisit of a January 11, 2019 judgment ordering it to pay N17bn to some Ogoni communities in Rivers State affected by oil spillage from the company.

A five-man panel led by Justice Olabode Rhodes-Vivour unanimously dismissed the company’s application for a review of the judgment after upholding the preliminary objection filed by the community’s legal team.

Justice Centus Nweze prepared Friday’s lead ruling, but it was read by another justice of the apex court, Justice Chukwudumebi Oseji, who was not a member of the five-person panel.

The apex court had in the case which lasted about 31 years from when it started at the High Court, issued the N17bn order in favour of Ejama-Ebubu in Tai Eleme Local Government Area of Rivers State, represented by Chief Isaac Agbara and nine others.

The communities’ lead lawyer, Lucius Nwosu (SAN), on Friday, said the judgment sum with the accrued interests for the 31 years period stood at about N182bn.

At the September 22, 2020 hearing leading to the Supreme Court’s ruling delivered on Friday, Nwosu described Shell’s request as scandalous and an affront to the finality of the Supreme Court.

According to him, the application is a deliberate abuse of court process.

He said the judgment being sought to be set aside by the oil company had already been partly executed with over N1bn recovered by the respondents.

Nwosu said, although Shell was reluctant to pay damages to Nigerian victims of the spillage of its oil in Nigeria, it had, in a similar situation, paid over $206m to victims in Mexico.

He urged the court to award “exemplary and punitive costs” against Shell  “in favour of the registrar of the apex court for their deliberate vexatious abuse of the apex court’s process by instructing and paying counsel to ridicule the final court of the land.”

 

Nwosu had urged the apex court to not only dismiss the application, but to also make an order against all the senior lawyers in Shell’s legal team as “deterrence” for the filing of the judgment review application which he alleged was aimed at ridiculing the integrity and finality of the decisions of the apex court.

Shell’s legal team, led by Chief Wole Olanipekun (SAN), had big shots in the legal profession including Lateef Fagbemi (SAN);a former Attorney-General of the Federation and Minister of Justice, Chief Kanu Agabi (SAN); Dr Wale Babalakin (SAN); and Wale Akoni (SAN).

Olanipekun described the preliminary objection to his client’s application as frivolous, adding that it was “meant to scandalise the court and to even scandalise the counsel.”

He cited series of Supreme Court decisions, including the ones written by some members of the apex court’s panel that sat on Tuesday, which he said permitted him to file applications similar to the one he filed on behalf of his client.

He said the judgment of a court which was not issued on merit could be set aside as requested by his client.

Responding to the request by Nwosu that he and his colleagues should be censored by the apex court for filing the application, Olanipekun said it was an attempt to destroy colleagues in the legal profession.

He stated that he and his colleagues were only doing their jobs as lawyers, adding that his client would not have come back to the Supreme Court to seek a revisit of the case if there was no precedent.

He urged the court to dismiss the preliminary objection to his client’s application for judicial review.

Reacting to the judgment, Shell, in an emailed statement, said the spill was caused by third parties during the Nigerian Civil War, which it described as a challenging period that resulted in significant damage to oil and gas infrastructure in the region.

Its spokesman, Mr Bamidele Odugbesan, said, “While SPDC does not accept responsibility for these spills, the affected sites in the Ebubu community were fully remediated.

“The claimants have – at their own admission in court – materially miscalculated and overstated the value of the award previously sought in this case. The ruling of the Supreme Court did not decide liability or the size of the award, which remain in dispute in other ongoing court proceedings.

 “It is our position that any attempt to enforce payment should not be permitted. It is regrettable that the legal process, in this case, has focused for so long on procedural issues and not the merits of the case. We have always maintained that we are ready to defend this case based on the available facts.”

Meanwhile, a group, the Youths and Environmental Advocacy Centre, has hailed the Supreme Court judgment, describing it as justice for the community.

The Executive Director of YEAC, Fyneface Dumnamene, in a statement issued in Port Harcourt, described the judgment as the end of the road for Shell.

The statement reads in part, “We are particularly happy because Shell had been frustrating the efforts of the community to get justice over a matter they instituted in court since the past 31 years over oil spills that occurred in the 1970s.”