Oil exploration and exploitation, which has gone on in the Niger Delta for almost seventy years now, has brought with it despoliation and a hugely polluted environment.
From 1956 when crude was discovered in commercial quantity in Otuabagi, Bayelsa State, it has been stories of environmental pollution, which year, year out have interfered with the livelihoods of the people and negatively impacted the environment.
Environmentalists and other stakeholders once again gathered in Yenagoa, the Bayelsa State Capital recently to deliberate on how to approach issues that oil production and its impacts have generated in the Niger Delta, especially now that international oil companies (IOCs) were divesting from onshore and moving offshore.
At the Fourth Niger Delta Alternatives Convergence (NDAC), an environment summit organized by Nnimmo Bassey of Health of Mother Earth Foundation, the stakeholders agreed that the Niger Delta region would need $150 billion for remediation and restoration. The theme of the summit was, “Environmental Genocide: Time for Remediation, Restoration,”
Nnimmo Bassey said besides remediation and restoration, more than $150 billion would be needed annually as reparations for human and ecological losses caused by the deliberate and systematic destruction of the Niger Delta environment.
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