When a community in Akwa Ibom State becomes hot enough to roast corn without firewood, the real story is not the flames but the governance failure that lets gas burn barely metres from people’s bedrooms.

Residents of Ikot Ebekpo, Ikot Ebidang and Ikot Annang live within metres of blazing gas flares, with people reporting heat rashes, coughs, soot in nostrils, withering crops, corroded roofs, and fish disappearing from waterways, according to Premium Times. 

According to the residents, the nearest flare sits about 118 metres from the closest house, and as you would expect, when a community becomes an involuntary barbecue pit, the people report heat rashes, constant coughing, soot in their nostrils, dying crops, corroded roofs, and fish that have quietly packed their bags and left their waterways.

This is no longer an environmental story but that of governance, because the real question is who allowed gas to burn this close to people’s homes, under what approval, with what safeguards, and with what plan for compensation and health support? 

The failure sits squarely in the machinery that regulates the oil and gas industry, protects public health, governs community rights, and manages energy resources.

Nigeria’s Petroleum Industry Act (PIA) makes gas flaring an offence unless there is an emergency or a formally granted exemption. That means the public should not be pacified with vague lines like ‘we have approval’.

So if the claimed exemption exists, then it should come with conditions, penalties, safety measures, and a timeline to stop. If regulators cannot produce it, then we are not looking at regulation, but impunity with a name tag.

The operator, Sterling Oil’s media arm, insists it has the necessary exemptions and that a meeting will soon hold with community members and local government officials. But what communities need is not conversation. They need enforcement, mitigation, compensation, and a clear health response.

Meanwhile, the people who are supposed to speak have swallowed their tongues. It is understood that the Nigerian National Petroleum Company (NNPC) spokesperson did not respond to proximity or compensation questions.

The Akwa Ibom NUPRC coordinator declined comments, while the Abuja office did not respond either. When regulators go quiet in a crisis, communities are forced to negotiate survival with oil companies. 

To understand the full picture, look at the numbers. Between May 2024 and January 2026, NOSDRA’s flare tracker estimates that Utapate field operators burned about 12.5 million standard cubic feet of gas, worth roughly $43.7 million.

The energy waste alone could theoretically power about 800,000 households for a year. Instead, that energy is going into the sky, poisoning the air, torching livelihoods, and leaving families in rural Akwa Ibom to inhale the price of the country’s production ambitions.

The asset in question is wholly owned by NNPC Exploration and Production Limited (NEPL) and operated by Natural Oilfield Services Limited (NOSL), a subsidiary of Sterling Oil, under a 15-year agreement.

These are the duty-bearers whose decisions and silence shape the daily suffering of ordinary people. And hovering over all of this are the regulators, including NUPRC, NOSDRA, and state authorities, whose constitutional duty is to protect citizens, not to act as polite bystanders.

This is a rights issue before anything else because when people cannot sleep because of heat, when soot lines the nostrils of children, when farms wither and rivers empty of fish, the state has failed in its duty to protect life and dignity.

And as always, the poorest carry the heaviest burden, as children and pregnant women face the worst health risks, while people with respiratory problems are pushed deeper into danger.

If anything is to change, citizens must act. They need to demand the actual permit. If an exemption exists, it should be published immediately, showing duration, conditions, flare limits, mitigation plan, and penalties.

Without it, the flares should stop. Communities must also press for an enforceable buffer zone, independent air and water testing, mobile clinics, compensation for destroyed livelihoods, and a grievance system that produces results, not promises.

Community members can begin documenting their reality using GPS coordinates, photos, videos, medical notes, and fishing logs, and formally send them to regulators with tracking numbers because evidence is power.

Government agencies must step up, too. NUPRC must confirm compliance publicly, while NOSDRA needs to publish fresh risk data. For their part, NEPL and NNPC must address the suffering happening on the asset they own, while the Akwa Ibom government must treat this as a public health emergency.

Gas flaring near homes is the price of governance failure, and if Nigeria insists on expanding oil production, then no community should live inside a fire so companies can hit production targets. 

Photo source: Friends of the Earth US