Environmental Genocide: Urgent Agenda For Mr. President

President Bola Ahmed Tinubu might still be settling down to duties after the elaborate inauguration on May 29, 2023 and other ceremonies that ushered him into office. However, it is heartwarming to note that those rituals of inauguration have not blurred his vision to urgent matters of state, given the dispatch with which he has treated some very sensitive national issues so far, like the removal of subsidy on fuel, the suspension and investigation of the Governor of the Central Bank of Nigeria and the Chairman of the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission and assenting to the power and student loans acts.
There is yet one urgent matter that the President cannot afford to ignore now that his government is taking shape. It is the rescue of the Niger Delta, its environment and people from total destruction. The region, whose soil and land have been producing the wealth of the nation, has over the decades following the discovery of crude oil and gas been successively subjected to mindless and reckless release of hydrocarbons and other pollutants into its ecosystem by the international oil companies as they prospect and exploit oil deposits in the region. The direct result of the pollution is the destruction of both aquatic and land lives in the region. The region that was well known for its rich biodiversity is suddenly becoming a graveyard of sorts for both animals and plants. A lot of the seafood in the region are no longer spurning and the environment has become uninhabitable.
Previous Nigerian governments had approached the Niger Delta with political mindsets and failed to squarely tackle the real challenges of the region . The President does not have to look too far to find a compass with which to approach the situation in the Niger Delta.
A few days ago, the coalition of Ijaw interest groups and other critical stakeholders in the environmental sector met and deliberated on the multinational panel of Bayelsa State Oil and Environment Commission (BSOEC) report on environmental genocide and the human cost of Big Oil in Bayelsa State and made far reaching recommendations to the Federal Government on ways by which the Niger Delta situation can be tackled.
The recommendations include the commencement of a Niger Delta-wide Environmental Remediation Programme for all the communities whose environments had been damaged due to oil and gas exploration activities; stern sanctions for companies indicted for repeated and serious environmental breaches; dedication of 5-10 percent of revenues of Niger Delta states for the environment recovery; and the formal demand on shareholders of Shell, ENI/Agip, Chevron and other operators and their parent companies for verifiable comprehensive reports on their environmental pollution footprint in the Niger Delta and remedial measures taken, including the environmental status of their oilfields at the time of divesting them to Nigerian private operators.
Home governments of indicted international oil companies should be made to investigate and sanction them accordingly, while formal complaints against the companies should be filed with the Office of the Prosecutor in the International Criminal Court to investigate the ecocide in the Niger Delta as environmental genocide and a continual crime against humanity.
Mr. President should inaugurate an ‘Environmental Marshall Plan’ for the Niger Delta and properly fund, stabilize and sanitize the Niger Delta Development Commission and Hydrocarbon Pollution Remediation Project to effectively develop the Niger Delta and remediate impacted areas as the functional failure of these agencies are already creating huge setbacks for the region.
Like the BSOEC panel recommended, a fund should be floated to finance the recovery of the Niger Delta environment. As suggested by the Coalition in their conclusion, “Let us stop the talk and clean up the oiled wasteland.”