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Top1. Introduction
Accounts in literature have shown that the rise in oil pollution has caused the degradation of the oil-bearing communities’ livelihood and natural environment by Multinational Oil Companies (MOCs) operating in the affected countries. The anger and frustrations were related to the constant destruction of the livelihood and the health implications of the pollution of the natural environment of the oil-bearing communities by Multinational Oil Companies (MOCs) operating in the affected countries (AmnestyInternationalReport, 2016; Chen et al., 2019). Therefore, this scenario’s long-term impact has caused considerable health and economic consequences as the environment play an essential role in health and economic outcomes (Bodo & Gimah, 2019; Onyena & Sam, 2020). For example, Nigeria’s above observations portray a scenario of the country’s innumerable economic, social, and health impacts and defects of oil pollution on oil companies’ host communities. However, influential players in the oil industry and certain government officials have struggled to prevent and clean up the oil pollution.
As Bodo and Gimah (2019) argue, oil pollution and other environmental degradations are world issues. Any air pollution into the atmosphere in any part of the world would contribute to world pollution and further aggravate nature. Thus, the discharge of crude oil into the environment directly or indirectly threatens the local population’s overall socioeconomic and health. Environmentalists (Azlan Abas, 2019; Rodrigues, 2018; Steven, 2019) explained that the rise in oil pollution and other forms of environmental anomalies, such as climate change and global warming, has caused a “global environmental regime.” This has also manifested in widespread hunger, food shortages, and adverse health effects, particularly among people living in oil-polluted communities. Oil pollution is characterized as ecological hazards affecting all aquatic living organisms, such as fishes, lobsters, and crabs (Karlapudi et al., 2018; Kostianaia, Kostianoy, Lavrova, & Soloviev, 2020). Oil pollution is any environmental damage that perpetuates food insecurity, depletes farmlands, and demotes environmental sustainability and viable rivers for other economic activities within a country (FAO, 2017).
Besides, Andrews et al. (2021) add that oil pollution had affected the fish industry, which is the primary source of livelihood and financial support for the oil-producing communities in the Niger-Delta region. Thus, this situation has caused a decline in people's protein intake and a rise in human health problems such as malnutrition, obesity, and birth deformities. Oil pollution negatively impacts small-scale fish farmers and communities living along the coastal lines resulting in environmental stress to the quality of fish, size of the fish, increases in the mortality of and contamination of fish species (Hernández Ruiz et al., 2021).
Examining the rise in oil pollution in Nigeria, for instance, is essential to ensuring that affected oil-producing communities and other relevant stakeholders receive accurate and reliable information through news framing and help maintain a safer environment for all (Bodo & Gimah, 2019). Within the last ten (10) decades, Nigeria and Ghana reported 18,151 and 9,090 oil pollution incidents, respectively (Nwadinigwe, 2020). This condition has further endangered peasant farmers’ well-being and existence in both countries and throughout the African continent. There is also no doubt that oil pollution from the oil industry, located mainly in Nigeria’s Niger Delta region, has harmed the environment and its inhabitants (Mba, Mba, Ogbuabor, & Arazu, 2019). This situation has increased the susceptibility of households, thereby affecting their well-being negatively, with a threat to the region’s future means of sustenance, while governments’ response and remediation measures to preserve the region’s ecosystem have not been very successful (Aniefiok E. Ite, 2018; Okafor-Yarwood, 2018).