Port Harcourt — September 25, 2026
Tension gripped Port Harcourt on Thursday as residents from more than 100 oil-producing communities across six Niger Delta states converged on the gates of Renaissance Africa Energy Company, pressing for payment of roughly ₦87 billion in ground rent they say has gone unpaid for nearly a decade.
The demonstrators — drawn from Rivers, Bayelsa, Delta, Imo, Akwa Ibom and Abia states — say the disputed sum covers rent owed by the former Shell Petroleum Development Company (SPDC), now rebranded as Renaissance Africa Energy, for the years 2014 to 2023. Protesters marched with placards urging the company to honor a 2019 Senate resolution and warning that Shell’s divestment from onshore operations would not erase the debt.
At the heart of the grievance is a long-standing pay disparity. Community representative Chief Ayiba Job of Azagbene in Bayelsa State said his community has received far less per hectare than communities in Bonny, Forcados and Shell’s residential areas in Rivers and Delta states — despite all of them sitting on land that produces the same oil. He argued the arrangement inverts the natural order of landlord and tenant, insisting the company should defer to community terms rather than dictate its own.
According to Job, rent rates have shifted unevenly over the years: ₦40,000 per hectare in 2009, rising in 2014 to as much as ₦200,000 for some communities and ₦600,000 for others. A Senate resolution passed in March 2019 called for a uniform rate of ₦600,000 per hectare nationwide, but protesters allege the company has yet to comply — and instead challenged the resolution in the Federal High Court in Abuja, a case that was ultimately struck out. Job noted that the ground-rent claims apply specifically to lands acquired between 1970 and 1978, not to every oil-producing community in the region.
The protesters are calling on President Bola Tinubu to step in and compel Renaissance Africa Energy to implement the Senate’s directive in full.
Responding on the company’s behalf, Vice President for Relations and Sustainable Development Igo Weli said Renaissance Africa Energy considers the matter to be under the purview of the relevant government agencies and urged the demonstrators to let due process play out under existing joint venture agreements and constitutional guidelines. Weli maintained that the company has documentation confirming it met its obligations to the landowners it deals with directly, and that leases are renegotiated whenever existing terms expire.
For now, the standoff remains unresolved, with communities vowing to keep pressing their case and the company insisting it is fulfilling its commitments as agreed.
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