Nigeria is Africa’s largest oil-producing country, and crude-oil revenue accounts for 50 percent of the country’s income. But its oil-rich regions have also suffered some of the worst volumes of oil spills from pipelines — sacking whole communities and laying vast expanses of land to waste in the West African nation.
Baruwa, a community of over 1 million people, where residents have abandoned their taps and wells due to an underground oil leak first discovered in a school’s water supply in 1996, confronts years of hydrocarbon pollution caused by ruptured government-owned pipelines.
This data reporting project produced with support from the Pulitzer Center and Code For Africa explores the health and environmental consequences residents have endured living in the community.