I wish Governor Douye Diri’s Bayelsa State Government would take a cue from Governor Soludo’s Anambra State Government and also implement key recommendations of the commissions it set up, especially the Archbishop John Sentamu Commission on environmental pollution.
The commission was set up 19 or 7 years later than it should have been, depending on how one looks at it. Due to constraints traceable mostly to the state government and not to the panel, it then took 4 years to probe pollution in the state and produce its report, which with the right support could have been done in 2 years max.
After a lot of waiting and pressure from various quarters, the report was finally released at a room in the House of Lords premises in London (like many things Nigeria) on 17 May last year. Over a year later, not a word of the report has been implemented nor (if we must follow our obsession with ceremonies) formally launched in Bayelsa State, the oil pollution epicentre of the world, and the state with the largest share of over one billion litres of petroleum equivalent spilled in Nigeria from 1956 till date.
If you can reach my Governor please beg or demand by any lawful means that he implements that report of the Bayelsa State Oil and Environmental Commission
And please remind Archbishop Sentamu and his fellow multinational panelists that they owe pollution-choked villagers from Ikarama to Otuabagi to Gbarain to the Nembe communities and Aghoro, who now feel like tired guinea pigs in frequent seemingly academic sorties, a duty to apply their moral capital to insist on full, faithful and immediate implementation of the report.
It is time for Niger Delta people to ask their leaders to stop blaming ‘others’ only and start cleaning their hands before coming to equity.
– Iniruo Wills
6 July 2024.
