Niger Delta Women Plant 150,000 Mangroves After Oil Spills

Joy Lebewi stands ankle-deep in mud, carefully spacing mangrove saplings across the swamp flats of Teenama, Nigeria. She's one of dozens of women trained by Martha Agbani to restore forests destroyed by decades of oil pollution in the Niger delta.

Growing up in Ogoniland, Agbani remembers when the air smelled like crude oil and rivers ran black. Oil spills rotted away mangrove forests and destroyed the fishing communities that depended on them for food and income.

After her activist mother died in 2003, Agbani chose a different path to fight environmental destruction. She founded the Lokiaka Community Development Centre to train local women in mangrove restoration, turning ecological repair into both healing and income.

The work isn't simple. When the women first started planting in 2018, they placed saplings too close together and the trees crowded each other out. Now they use a 2-meter stick to mark proper spacing, ensuring each tree has room to grow strong.

The challenges are bigger than technique. Shell was ordered to pay $55 million in compensation after two major spills in 2008 and 2009 destroyed over 1,000 hectares of mangroves. Dr. Ferdinand Giadom estimates more than 500,000 barrels of oil have spilled into the environment in under 20 years.

The team also battles nipa palm, an invasive species from Southeast Asia that crowds out native mangroves. Men from local communities clear the nipa while women follow behind, planting native saplings in the cleared mud.

The Ripple Effect

The Niger delta contains Africa's largest mangrove ecosystem and the third-largest globally, covering about 1 million hectares. These forests provide habitat for fish and shellfish, protect coastlines, store carbon, and support millions of people who depend on the wetlands for food and income.

For Lebewi and the other planters, restoration means more than environmental repair. "This is our forest," she says, eyes scanning the mud for crabs and periwinkles worth collecting as she works.

Agbani's goal goes beyond replanting trees. She's helping Ogoni communities rebuild the sense of ownership they lost when oil pollution destroyed their forests and fishing grounds.

In Teenama alone, the women have planted more than 150,000 mangrove saplings, each one a small act of reconstruction in a landscape of widespread loss.