As part of our climate change campaign, starting today, Bbeg Media will serialise expereinces of people affected by the East African Crude Oil Pipeline. The harrowingf stories stories were compiled by the Africa Institute for Energy Governance (AFIEGO).
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This is Gloria Twikirize’s story
A stressful and hard life: These are the only responses I think of giving when anyone asks me to list some of the positive and negative impacts that the EACOP land acquisition has had on me and my family.
I do not want anyone to ask me about positive impacts, because I have only known negative things because of the EACOP. Food scarcity, worries about how to feed my children and nephew, income loss and a morbid fear to have more children as I am too poor now: that is the legacy of the EACOP in my life!
It all started in 2018 when people from EACOP came to my village, Kijumba, and told me that my land was going to be used Single mother from Hoima district A stressful and hard life: That is the legacy of the EACOP in my life.
The people informed me that they had been sent to measure my land and record the property that I was going to lose. I held the property in trust for my nephew, Matthias Ayesiga, whose father passed away. Ayesiga, who is
seven years old, inherited his father’s property.
I was assured that I would be compensated for the property lost to the EACOP. I accepted for my property to be assessed in expectation of compensation. However, when entitlement disclosures were made to me in 2023, I noticed that the compensation of Shs. 5 million [$12674] was too little for the land amounting to three misiri, roughly equal to one acre, that we were losing.
In September 2023, the EACOP people brought me a compensation agreement to sign. The agreement said that I was consenting to cede our land to the EACOP Company. I did not want to sign the agreement because I was being given little compensation but I was in a lot of fear since others were signing. I had also been intimidated. I was told
that I cannot get in a contest with government as they would win any court challenge.
I was told that I would be taken to court if I refused to hand over my land. I consented for my land to be taken but
this was done very unwillingly and at the cost of my family’s livelihood.
Today, I am a small-scale farmer. I grow crops such as cassava and beans, which I sometimes sell for income. Before our land was acquired, I was less anxious. I could farm our land, feed my three children and nephew and pay school fees in affordable schools.
After our land was acquired for the EACOP, however, I cannot meet my family’s needs and I feel bad. I changed my children’s schools. The schools they are in now are of a lower standard of education. I also can no longer give my children adequate food.
I feel so bad because I used to rent out some of the land that the EACOP project took and I would earn money for my family. Forced to downgrade my children’s education and unable to provide them with adequate nourishment, I grapple with feelings of inadequacy and despair.
As TotalEnergies marks its 100th anniversary, I call on them to change their compensation ways. They were
very unfair to us. The company also needs to remedy its wrongs by providing adequate livelihood support and skilling people affected by their projects so that they return to being self-sustaining.
*The EACOP is a planned 1,443km pipeline that is expected to transport crude oil from two oil fields in Western Uganda to the port of Tanga in Tanzania, and onto export markets. The pipeline is owned by TotalEnergies, China National Offshore Oil Corporation (CNOOC) and the Ugandan as well as Tanzanian governments.
