Whilst the foregoing section explored accountability based on some preconceived notions of accountability drawn from the literature, early interview themes and preliminary review of corporate reports, this section explores accountability from in- depth stories or narratives given by the stakeholders. From the interviews conducted, a number of interviewees view accountability as responsibility in the general sense rather than being responsibility to provide information to explain and justify actions.
According to one NGO interviewee:
Accountability is an umbrella word to mean a lot of things and basically it means acceptance of responsibility as well as remediation for injuries caused. At least that is the basic definition (Personal Interviews: Independent NGO 2).
In addition, one legal expert who works with an international sustainability organisation has a similar view but provided more details according to the narrative below:
[E]ssentially when you are talking about accountability of a company to the local communities, the overall meaning should be that whatever the company does that impact on the local communities the company: one, should take responsibility for their action and two, that they [companies] will be the ones to address any negative impacts
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so that as much as possible they can return the community to the state they were before that negative impact … When you are demonstrating accountability to someone, you make sure that you prevent the person from harm; and if what you do causes harm to the person you should be the one to address it and take responsibility for it. (Personal Interviews: Legal Expert 2).
However, others also view corporate accountability as involving obligation to render accounts about impacts of corporate operations or actions as shown by the following narratives:
Accountability is not just giving out money; it is when you present information … If money is paid to certain persons in the community, the community should be informed of who has received what and the amount involved (Personal Interviews: Community Stakeholder 8).
To the extent that impact and the activities of a company are in an area, the company remains accountable to that community. If anything happens, the community should be able to call you to account for what has happened, what steps you took to manage this process and all that (Personal Interviews: Partnering NGO 3)
Furthermore, in an informal conversation with a manager at the Department of Petroleum Resources (the main regulatory agency of the Nigerian oil industry), the manager argues that accountability relationship does not exist between the MNCs and communities. Arguing further, he claims that the MNCs are only accountable to the Government for which purpose they periodically submit reports to DPR [presumably to discharge that accountability]. Whereas the manager recognises the import of
information in accountability relationship, he does so within the strict terms of the law. A professor of oil & gas and environmental law holds a similar belief that MNCs have accountability relationship with the Government but not communities (Personal Interview: Legal Expert 3). He further argues that oil companies discharge their accountability to Government when they pay their signature bonuses, taxes and fulfil other legal requirements. The accounting profession stakeholder also only linked accountability to the requirements of the law albeit he added that accounting standards also had a role to play (Personal Interviews: Accounting Professional). Independent NGO 4 interviewed equally expressed doubt over whether a corporation has accountability obligations to communities based on Nigerian law65, but he further claimed that an
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But the Nigerian Environmental Impact Assessment Act for example requires the corporations to engage with community stakeholders that will be impacted by corporate operations in order to address social and environmental concerns and how they will be mitigated. However, EIAs in Nigeria are regarded in by critics as ceremonial exercises. Moreover, they have not been used in Nigeria (as far as I am aware) as a legal basis of enforcing rights.
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accountability relationship might exist when corporate actions produce negative impacts on their health and life.
I don’t know if the companies have any accountability to render to communities. It is very difficult. But if you consider it from the angle of health, because the right to health is a constitutional right; the communities are entitled to it. Not only the right to health but also the right to life is the primary right; in as much as polluting the environment affect the livelihood of the people, it affects their health and safety, that it also affects their rights to life. In that case you can even find local laws to buttress that argument. The right to health is linked to the right to life. In as much as the right to life stands, the right to health cannot be removed from it because you need health to enjoy life
(Personal Interviews: Independent NGO 4).
Independent NGO 4 appears to tie accountability to responsibility for action and not necessarily the duty to explain and justify actions. Still he sees accountability strictly through the legal lens by pointing out that the communities could draw on several laws to seek redress when their right to health and life is breached66. However, Partnering NGO 3 was a bit critical by saying that accountability relationship does not exist between oil companies and communities and that the accountability relationship that seemingly exists between the companies and the Government only exists in the imagination of people – by citing the Government’s claim that it does not know the quantum of oil drilled or even exported in Nigeria67.
Whilst some of these views, at the surface, apparently contradict the earlier notion in Section 6.3.2.1 that communities have right to information and that the corporations also have obligations to provide information to the communities, they do not
emphatically weaken the views of respondents in Section 6.3.2.1. The reason is that these interviewees situated their notion of accountability within legal context rather than corporate environmental impacts on the communities. As such, those interviewees that contemplated the existence of accountability relationship between the companies and communities - whether in the form of responsibility to provide information or perform certain actions – did on the basis of corporate negative environmental impacts on communities as the questionnaire questions were specifically linked with environmental
66 Similar argument was made by Shinsato (2005: 200) that: “Because environmental injustices cannot be addressed directly in international human rights law, fundamental human rights such as the right to life, the right to health, and the right to an adequate standard of living can be used instead; increasingly, redress for environmental destruction is being sought through substantive human rights.”
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Volume of oil accounted for in Nigeria is at the export terminal rather than at the point of production, whilst part of the oil produced could be siphoned and exported before the export terminal.
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impacts. The next section explores corporate conceptions of accountability from their annual reports.