Environmentalist Urges Politicians to Fight Corrupt Practices in Society

Blessing Ibunge in Port Harcourt

A renowned environmentalist, Che Ibegwura, has berated Nigerian politicians for watching while corrupt practices in the Nigerian society increase.

The nonagenarian, who has been in the forefront of activism for over three scores, regretted that corruption has eaten deeply into the fabrics of the society.

Ibegwura made the assertion yesterday when the Executive Director of Health of Mother Earth Foundation (HOMEF), Nnimmo Bassey, led a coalition of civil society groups to his residence in Erema, Ogba/Egbema/Ndoni Local Government Area of Rivers State.

In an interview with THISDAY, the activist noted that the system would have been better if corruption was not structured in the administration of the civil service.

He exonerated President Muhamnadu Buhari from promoting corruption, stressing that the president was working on established corrupt system.

Ibegwura said: “Corruption is an abuse of justice. Corruption is entrenched in the civil service and that is why every government that comes in still operates on that.

“It is the ruling class that controls the country because they are the political actors. They prepare all the documents, and any politician that comes in sits at the top and starts looting the treasury.

“Unless we change the system of education, which will also change the system of our thinking, there can never be any change. The problem we are having is not President Buhari, APC, PDP or not, but the ruling elites, the political class that changed the good educational system.

“You cannot come out openly to stop corruption or you will be corrupted. I have been in trade union for so many years, the only way we would have put all these exploiters under control would have been to use experienced and conscious workers who wouldn’t sabotage the productive force or vandalize it.”

On the degradation of the Niger Delta environment, Ibegwura lamented that the system is the way it is because of the power government took away from the indigenes in the usage of their lands.

“The environment is our life, but because of the exploitation of natural resources, they started to stampede the earth. Companies and individuals terrorise the land.

“Most of the companies that are exploiting the resources and polluting the environment employed the indigenes. A lot of damage has been done and our people have already assimilated the foreign powers in the system, and this Land Use Decree has deprived us of the power of thinking of our land,” Ibegwura lamented.

Earlier, Bassey noted that environmental issue is complex, describing Ibegwura as a bundle of knowledge who has fought selflessly for a clean and conducive environment in the Niger Delta and Nigeria at large.