**2. Obufia community since oil extraction**

Obufia is one of the 16 communities, which comprise Egbema. While three of the communities are in Rivers State, the rest are in Imo State. A few features may be identified as common to these communities in Egbema. There are visible lines of pipelines crisscrossing the terrains, a good number of which are dilapidated and abandoned. Apart from that, oil wells can still be found across the communities. Some of them are still productive, while others are dried up. There are some communities that host flow stations of the oil firms operating in the area. Some of these flow stations have gas flaring sites as well, and are often fenced with barbed wires and perimeter fences to restrict movement around them.

On its own, Obufia has some peculiar features. Despite that official population figures hardly exist, by 2006 the population census of Ohaji/Egbema LGA, to which Obufia belongs, places it at about 183,000 (One hundred and eighty-three thousand). Roughly however, the population of Obufia may be placed at about 18–10,000. Obufia, or any other autonomous community in Egbema-Imo may not be correctly depicted as ethnically mixed. About 98 percent of the population is Igbo speaking. Less than 8 percent of this majority, may be regarded as outsiders in Obufia, having not been either born, or adopted into the community. In other words, only about 8 percent of the local population of Egbema-Imo belong to the category of the people, whom those born or adopted into any Egbema community regard as *U*̣*mu*̣*isu*. *U*̣*mu*̣*isu* (Literally, descendants of *Isu*) refers to another Igbo group found around the Orlu axis of Imo State. The Egbema tradition has it that the *Isu* people came into Egbema for business reasons. Such businesses included collecting wild vegetable, *o*̣*kazi*̣/*o*̣*kashi*̣, and palm fruits. Others included fishing, or engaging in jobs, which the local people were not very adept at. The manual cultivation of farmland is one example of such jobs. Overtime, the term came to be applied to every other ethnic Igbo, who is neither born to or adopted in any Egbema community.

The rest of the population in Obufia are non-Igbo speaking people who are hired by the oil companies. They also include people who have been employed by privately

#### *Responding Creatively to Faulty Corporate Social Responsibility Practices: The Case of Nigeria's… DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5772/intechopen.106249*

owned establishments in Obufia, such as schools or grain mills. People who engage in assorted forms of small-scale business, such as dry meat (*suya*) vending, or hawking of articles of assorted kinds belong to this category as well. Most times these hawkers either head-load these articles, or carry them in push-trucks. Within Obufia, or any other community in Egbema-Imo, one does not expect to hear people carrying out conversations in English, as may be the case in several places across Nigeria, where the population is ethnically mixed.

SPDC yard, locally known as Location is situated in Obiakpu, a neighboring community to Obufia, both in Egbema. The Location is less than two miles from the border of Obufia and Obiakpu. SPDC has several oil wells, flowstations and pipelines—both underground and over ground—within Obufia. This is the major factor connecting SPDC and the rest of the communities in Egbema.

The community has all but a few of its narrow streets richly coated with quality nylon tar. The access road into the community from the nearest city, which is also the highway connecting the community to other Egbema communities in Rivers State, is hardly in any condition comparable in quality to the narrowly paved streets within the community. For the most part, the narrow highway was dotted by potholes, making motoring cumbersome. The community also has a very nicely built state managed secondary school, and a not-so-good looking state owned primary school. There are a few other privately owned schools there as well. Many potable water points are quite conspicuous across the community. Some of these water points were constructed and handed over to the community, courtesy of SPDC. Some were connected to boreholes drilled in private homes. Thus, access to water by members of the community is not so difficult. Quite recently, the town has added a magnificent civic centre, alongside a community health clinic to its credit. Most of these modern facilities came courtesy of the oil business taking place in the community. They would have been funded by either the SPDC or the special state commissions such as the Niger Delta Development Commission (NDDC) and the Imo State Oil Producing Areas Development Commission (ISOPADEC). Obufia community has also benefited from the oil companies and the special commissions in other ways. SPDC has constructed a town hall and awards scholarships to successful Obufia secondary school leavers each year, just as it liaises with different associations of the community for development.

I came into this field intending to observe and interview the actors I believed were implicated in one way or the other by the oil extraction business and sundry activities connected to it. Deploying purposive sampling method, I examined actors such as the SPDC public relations officer, the traditional ruler, and state representatives in the community, including the Local Government Chairman, and the community representative at the State House of Assembly. It means that these were significant to the objectives of my study. Apart from the latter, other figures that I considered directly implicated in the oil extraction issues, included state political office holders, and officers in the special state commissions—ISOPADEC and NDDC—established for the Niger Delta.
