Environmentalists: It’s Time for Remediation, Restoration of N’Delta

Olusegun Samuel in Yenagoa

Environmentalists and human rights crusaders yesterday gathered in Yenagoa, Bayelsa State, with a call for action to put an end to what they described as the deliberate and systematic destruction of the Niger Delta ecosystem.

At the 4th Niger Delta Alternatives Convergence (NDAC) summit, the stakeholders agreed that the time for empty talk seminars was over, noting that the political class has failed to resolve the issues.

The Convener, Nnimmo Bassey, in his opening address, lamented that two years after the presentation of the report of the Bayelsa State Oil and Environment Commission (BSOEC), no real action has been seen regarding a real response to the report.

Bassey, who is the Director of Health of Mother Earth Foundation (HOMEF) reminded the participants that genocide is an international crime under the Rome Statutes and is defined as “the deliberate and systemic destruction of a group of people because of their ethnicity, nationality, religion, or race.

He said: “Thirty years after the tragic deaths and the judicial murder of Ken Saro-Wiwa and other Ogoni leaders, there is yet to be a closure on the Ogoni tragedy.

“The complexity of the clean-up exercise has rendered the region a huge laboratory for studies on how to handle such massive ecocide. Amid this open wound, some political forces still only see possibilities of petrodollars and care little about the discounting of lives in the region.

“We must never make the mistake of thinking that environmental degradation in one part of the region is a burden only for the directly affected part.”

Bassey, therefore called for urgent action especially as the oil companies had started a ‘shady’ divestment, as time is running out. “It is indeed time for remediation, restoration and reparations,” he added.

The keynote speaker, Dr. Isaac ‘Asume’ Osuoka, Coordinator, Social Action International, said for over 60 years, the Niger Delta’s land and waters had been ravaged by unrelenting oil pollution.

He stated that this fact was comprehensively documented in two landmark assessments: the 2023 BSOEC report and the 2011 United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) environmental assessment of Ogoniland.

He said: “These reports do not merely present technical data; they serve as indictments of a prolonged and systemic pattern of environmental genocide inflicted on our communities through deliberately reckless oil extraction.”

Speaking on the theme: ”Environmental Genocide and the Struggle for Justice in the Niger Delta: Why Shell’s Divestment Must Be Stopped” Osuoka, identified, politics and other self inflicted factors as reason behind the agonies Niger Deltans oil bearing communities are suffering.

He said: “I will then examine the political obstacles to implementing these recommendations. When I say political, I am not simply referring to the oft-cited lack of political will. Rather, I refer to the very structure of the Nigerian state and the political order established under the 4th Republic.

“This political order, with its foundational 1999 Constitution is part of the problem. A constitution foisted on the people by military decree, without legitimacy or popular consent, cannot produce democratic and responsive environmental governance.

“We must also account for the resurgence of a global neocolonial extractivist regime – typified by the Trump-era ‘drill-baby-drill’ politics – that subordinates environmental integrity to the interests of global capital.”