Renowned environmental activist and Executive Director of Health of Mother Earth Foundation (HOMEF), Mr. Nnimmo Bassey, on Monday accused the Nigerian government and the Nigerian National Petroleum Company Limited (NNPCL) of enabling decades of ecological destruction in the Niger Delta through weak regulation and failure to hold oil companies accountable.
Bassey made the accusation while delivering the keynote address at the 2026 Correspondents’ Week of the Correspondents’ Chapel of the Nigeria Union of Journalists (NUJ) in Port Harcourt.
The event, themed “The Imperatives of Comprehensive Clean-Up of the Niger Delta Environment: Role of the Media,” was supported by Renaissance Africa Energy Company Limited, Nigeria LNG and Kebetkache Women Development and Resource Centre.
The environmentalist described the Niger Delta as one of the most polluted regions in the world, saying nearly 70 years of oil and gas exploitation had devastated the environment and livelihoods of local communities.
“Almost 70 years of crude oil and gas exploitation has left an expanding legacy of oil pollution with an equivalent of one Exxon Valdez oil spill, or 260,000 barrels of crude oil, spilled every year in the region,” Bassey said.
“This has been happening simply because our regulators allow the polluters to literally get away with murder and are more concerned about the financial returns than the health and security of the people or environment.”
Bassey alleged that Nigeria’s oil industry was built on a colonial extractive structure that prioritised profits over human lives and environmental protection.
“We should never forget that the oil business in Nigeria began as a colonial enterprise. This laid the foundation for ignoring the people and the environment because colonialism focuses on exploitation for the benefits of the colonizer and not the victims of colonization,” he stated.
He criticised the continued failure of oil companies to decommission obsolete facilities across the Niger Delta, despite laws requiring safe abandonment and remediation of unused infrastructure.
“There are wellheads, manifolds, flow stations and pipelines that ought to be decommissioned and removed from communities across the Niger Delta by the IOCs and their domestic partners,” he said.
According to him, abandoned facilities and ageing pipelines had become ecological hazards threatening groundwater, soil, air quality and public health.
“These derelict facilities constitute threats to ecosystems especially regarding groundwater contamination, soil and air quality. They are time bombs that are not waiting to explode but have already been exploding,” he added.
Bassey cited the 2021 Santa Barbara Well blowout in Nembe, Bayelsa State, as evidence of systemic negligence in the oil industry, noting that while official estimates claimed fewer than 5,000 barrels were spilled, independent experts estimated that more than 500,000 barrels of hydrocarbons were discharged into the environment.
He also accused oil companies and regulators of routinely attributing oil spills to sabotage and vandalism in order to avoid responsibility and compensation.
“When you see rotten pipelines, pipelines put in such exposed places, not protected, not replaced when they are meant to be replaced, then it sounds silly to blame every spill on vandalism,” he said.
“Your pipelines laid over 50 years ago are obsolete, expired and ought to be replaced.”
The activist condemned the persistence of gas flaring in the region despite court rulings declaring the practice illegal and unconstitutional.
“What we need to do is to stop gas-flaring. Stop gas-flaring because it’s an iniquity and it’s against the right to life,” he said.
Bassey further declared that Nigeria was economically and socially better before crude oil became the country’s dominant source of revenue.
“Nigeria was better off without oil,” he said.
“Before oil was discovered, we had vibrant education, good infrastructure and agriculture. Nigeria was the main exporter of food before oil became a major revenue earner.”
He warned that Nigeria risked abandoning the Niger Delta to permanent ecological devastation if urgent cleanup was not carried out before the global transition away from fossil fuels.
“If the Niger Delta is not cleaned now, when people are still buying oil, then we are doomed,” he warned.
The environmentalist also alleged that multinational oil companies were restructuring and divesting from onshore assets to evade liabilities for environmental damage.
“They are divesting to evade responsibilities. Now they’re changing strategy and calling themselves energy companies instead of oil companies,” he said.
Bassey charged journalists to intensify investigative reporting on environmental degradation in the Niger Delta.
“The media has the duty and capacity to report the ecocide happening in the Niger Delta factually and in real time,” he stated.
Earlier, Chairman of the opening ceremony, His Majesty King Felix Otuwarikpo, Eze Igbo Upata III of Upata Kingdom, called for a review of the Petroleum Industry Act (PIA), saying the law unfairly places responsibility for oil theft and pipeline vandalism on host communities.
The monarch noted that while Section 437 of the PIA provides that part of host communities’ funds be used to repair damaged oil assets in cases of sabotage, oil companies still rely mainly on security agencies to protect pipelines rather than involving communities.
“Most of the pipeline leakages are deliberate,” the traditional ruler alleged, accusing insiders in the oil industry of sponsoring vandalism and crude oil theft.
He also accused the Federal Government of neglecting the environmental challenges facing oil-bearing communities.
“The environment is very key and attention is usually not given to the environment because most of the consequences we suffer at the community level do not happen at the GRA,” he said.
In his welcome address, Chairman of the Correspondents’ Chapel, Mr. Amaechi Okonkwo, described the event as a call to conscience over the continued degradation of the Niger Delta environment.
“Our land, rivers, creeks and forests have suffered extensive pollution arising from oil exploration and exploitation activities, illegal refining, pipeline vandalism, gas flaring and years of environmental neglect,” Okonkwo said.
He stressed the need for the media to sustain advocacy for environmental justice and hold governments and oil companies accountable for the restoration of the Niger Delta ecosystem.
In his goodwill message, the National Vice President, Zone F, of the Nigeria Union of Journalists, Mr. Opaka Dokubo decried that mangroves that provided livelihoods for local communities have been converted to tank farms, thereby fuelling poverty and hunger.
“Our mangroves have now been converted to tank farms. The mangroves that put food on the tables of the Niger Delta and trained most of their children through schools have now been converted to tank farms,” he stated.
He thanked the chapel for sustaining the yearly event.
On her part, an environmental activist, Chief Constance Meju, tasked journalists to humanise their environment stories, stating that the situation of the Niger Delta has been underreported. “Crime has continued to increase in the region because we have lost our sources of livelihoods,” she stated.
