CHAPTER ONE
INTRODUCTION
1.1 Background of the Study
Oil was discovered in the Niger Delta area of Nigeria towards the late 1950’s (Mbendi 2010) and the Ilaje communities are parts of this oil rich region. Due to the continuous spills of crude oil (Waado 2010) from the oil mining rings; the entire ecosystem in these communi-ties has been decaying for decades. Healthy seafood’s and fresh agricultural produce are becoming scarce including clean drinking water. The UN says that at any time half the hos-pital beds in the developing world are occupied by patients suffering from diarrhea and other water related ailments (UNDP, 2004).
Ilaje local government consists of over four hundred towns and villages, covering an area of 3,000 square kilometers. It southern boundary is by the Atlantic Ocean, and the extreme south is covered by silt, and mud and superficial sedimentary deposit. The Ilajes are a dis-tinguished, distinct linguistic of the Yoruba stalk, the Ilajes occupies the coastline in Ondo State, South-West, Nigeria. Ilaje as a whole is endowed with vast oil and gas reserves, there are oil wells and fields spread all over the Local Government Area both offshore and on-shore, Oil Companies such as Shell, Chevron, Texaco Nigeria Ltd and Consolidated Oil, Ex-press Petroleum and Gas Company, Atlas Oil Company, Allied Energy Oil Company, Caven-dish oil Company, Exxon-Mobil were at a time already operation in the Local Government Area thereby leading to the constant pollution of the riverine communities and their entire ecosystem, despite its 180km shoreline which makes Ondo State the state with the longest shoreline in Nigeria; Ilaje region still lacks potable drinking water.(Coastline news, 2010). Many locals fetch water from stream, pond, river, sea and traditional wells which are gen-erally considered unhealthy for drinking. Currently, development of surface