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.
Dr. Otive Iguzor and Ibiba DonPedro
November 10 As National Day:
On behalf of the stakeholders, Bassey declared November 10 as Niger Delta National Day, as he urged host communities in the region to mark it annually to raise awareness.
He said, “NDAC aims to ensure that mindless ecological assault does not continue. The key demands made in the Niger Delta Manifesto for Socio-ecological Justice provide key pathways for halting the environmental genocide that continues to overwhelm the region and commence the urgent steps for the remediation, restoration of the Niger Delta.
“Ensuring redress for the decades of unmitigated exploitation, exploration and human rights abuses requires payment of direct reparations by oil companies before their attempt to divest are considered.
“Environmental and health audits of the entire Niger Delta are urgently needed considering the environmental genocide and the brevity of life in the region. The Bayelsa State Oil and Environmental Commission, (BSOEC) called for a restoration fund of $12 billion over 12 years for Bayelsa State.
“For the entire region, about $150 billion will be needed for remediation and restoration efforts over the first five years. Besides remediation and restoration, more than that estimated amount would be needed annually as reparation for human and ecological losses occasioned by the clearly deliberate and systemic destruction of the Niger Delta Environment.
“This is a tiny amount when we consider that BP paid a bill of $61 billion for the 2010 Deepwater Horizon oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico. In fact they further set up a settlement of $20.8 billion with the US Department of Justice in 2015 and set up a compensation fund of $20 billion for other claimants.
“That was for just one oil spill. We have a situation where spills occur daily, abandoned oil wells continue to drip oil for decades and where a well blowout would be deliberately left burning and spilling for over five years.
“Time is running out and delay is a luxury. We cannot afford considering the heavy injuries being inflicted on our peoples and environment on a daily basis. It is indeed time for remediation, restoration and reparations.”
Dr. Isaac Asume Osuoka, the keynote speaker, said despite the polluted state of the Niger Delta, African political leaders like President Bola Tinubu were still calling for the expansion of oil activities.
Osuoka, whose paper was titled, “Environmental Genocide and the Struggle for Justice in the Niger Delta: Why Shell’s Divestment must be Stopped,” said President Tinubu’s demand for resumption of oil production in Ogoniland was without regard to the completion of the UNEP recommended cleanup of Ogoniland.
Osuoka, the Coordinator, Social Action International, said, “Tinubu’s government has displayed shocking disregard for the health, environment and dignity of Niger Delta Communities. Indeed, this administration may be the most openly contemptuous of Niger Delta peoples in recent memory, perhaps, even surpassing the authoritarianism of the Abacha era in its disdain for environmental justice.”
“That is the main example of the artificial nature of Nigeria as a state created by the British colonialists, which created majority ethnic groups that undermine the minorities.
Osuoka said a constitutional order was needed to guarantee the rights of all ethnicities and communities for survival. “The issue of resources control shouldn’t be a subject for debate really because if you have a federation as Nigeria claims to be, then the federating units should manage some of those extractions.
“You don’t expect in a central system for the federal Government to have everything as we have in Nigeria. That is not obtainable in other federations,” he said.
On the right of artisanal refiners, Osuoka said what was important was having access to energy and the right to energy. “Everybody in the world needs access to energy. You cannot have any development without energy. Energy is what you use for cooking, for transportation and when the people in the Niger Delta, in fact, Nigeria don’t have access to energy, there has to be a way.”
And that is what the artisanal refiners have done to create access of the people to energy. “The bulk of what they use in cooking in Nigeria comes from artisanal refinery. You should even thank them for what they are doing.
“They are responding to the failures of the state and inability of the state and the oil industry to provide energy access to the people. With that failure, there is need to provide alternatives including modular refineries.”
He suggested that apart from hydrocarbons, there has to be other sources of energy including solar energy.
He accused the elite of the Niger Delta of being complicit in the crime against the people and environment in the region. “It is all over the country really. The character of the state is such that survives through dispensing patronage. So, bribing and corrupting people is what the state does unfortunately.
“In the Niger Delta, oil companies and state functionaries have used some to undermine communities and sometimes working with members of the elite to work against their own people.
“That is the problem and it will take the conscious and organized struggle of the people to address that. We should keep on organizing stakeholders meetings. That is the way forward.”
Morris Alagoa, an environment rights activist said environmental genocide has become the order of the day in the Niger Delta. “It is not even a matter of political will. It is politicians and top persons influencing the oil industry operators even against us,” he said.
“It is very unfortunate. So, we will continue to advocate and push like the UNEP report was pushed on until there was action. The Bayelsa Oil and Environment Commission is another platform that we are standing on like a solid ground covering all the Niger Delta States.”
Allagoa said the story should not only be about cleaning up and remediation, there should be reparation and compensation.
“You go to Nembe and Kalabari areas that are mostly mangrove areas, our Ngbes and Oysters have all gone. Oil spill have wiped them away. So how do you compensate for this besides that this oil induced politics and pollution has also denied us of our cultural heritage and respect?”
He added that oil did not only deal with our physical environment, “it also denied us of our cultural heritage when you talk about respect.”
Ibiba DonPedro, a renowned journalist, advised all to tell the whole world the Niger Delta story. She said stories should be told “that we all have barrels of oil in our bodies. Tell the story of 20 years old girls going into Menopause in the Niger Delta.
“This push is not all about papers. It is all about you, the younger people. Tell your stories backed by solid information. We need to train the younger ones so that the reports will be pushed out using their social media handles. We should push out our reports beyond journalism and make sure we get to that point where there is justice.
“I’m not happy that 25 years later, we are still here. But the people that are tormenting us are not tired so why should we be tired.
Chief Constance Meju, a women’s advocate said the poverty of the Niger Delta is the poverty of the women adding that the women are in charge of the children and also use the land that is now degraded.
She said, “The women of the region are saying that there should be an alternative source of livelihood because the land has been damaged.
“There is a need for us to have other sources of income. The skills acquisition centers should be set up. There should be grants for women and girls. As it is now, it is not only the women that are in trouble but the whole of Niger Delta.
“We need to rehabilitate our young boys. We need to start mini industries. We need health updates in all the Niger Delta States because it has been revealed that we are all highly inflammable.”
Meju called for the expansion of representation provided for by the PIA and for governments to have budgets that emanate from the people.
“There should be a close link with communities to know what they need and how these can be done so that when the budgets are drawn up, communities can follow up.” She said.
She also called for more government investment in education. “We have not worried the governors enough. We need to worry the governors and legislators. Most of them are interested but because there is no collective effort they back down. So we need to push them.”
On the way forward, Celestine Akpobari, another environmentalist urged the participants to go to the communities and raise consciousness among the people. “I challenge each and every one of us to go back and begin to initiate a kind of consciousness and awareness in the communities because all these efforts are worthless if they not domiciled in the communities,” he said.
“For me having participated from Egi Community of Ogbaland, we have stories to tell. PIA is a product of the struggle. And it talks about community trust funds. But that doesn’t end there. How many of us are involved in actually implementing the community trust fund. Even when we have struggled to chase the military out of power, we refused to participate in politics.
“Let us not demonise politics, we should encourage some of us activists to get into the political space to cause change to happen.”
