Dr Nnimmo Bassey, Director of Health of Mother Earth Foundation (HOMEF),
on Monday advocated environmental and health audits of pollution indexes in the oil-rich Niger Delta region.
Bassey, a renowned environmentalist who holds a national honours of Membership of the Order of Federal Republic (MFR) made the call in his welcome remarks at Niger Delta Alternatives Convergence (NDAC) at the Banquet Hall, Government House, Yenagoa.
He called for stopping the deliberate and systemic destruction of the Niger Delta
The call is sequel to the report of the Bayelsa State Oil and Environment Commission (BSOEC) titled, “An Environmental Genocide: Counting the Human and Environmental Cost of Oil in Bayelsa, Nigeria.”
He noted that while the use of environmental genocide as the title of the report is unarguably weighty, and demands that the matter should not be treated with levity.
“As much as we are unhappy about the silence that has engulfed the report, we must applaud the government of Bayelsa for taking the steps, assembling a top-notch team of experts to drive the commission and to produce such an important report.
“Other states in the Niger Delta should toe the path set by Bayelsa. There is no time to dither on this,” Bassey noted
The BSOEC report was published in May 2023 and formally unveiled by the state government in Yenagoa, the state capital, on October 28, 2024. The report was thereafter presented nationally at Abuja on October 30, 2024.
Governor Douye Diri of Bayelsa presented the report to President Bola Tinubu at the Presidential Villa, Abujaon Nov. 5, 2024
The report was widely applauded and endorsed by stakeholders, and it elicited the hope that action will quickly commence towards the implementation of its recommendations.
Six months after the flurry of activities, Bassey says not a word, not a perceptible step, has been seen regarding a real response to the report.
“This is very concerning. The importance of the BSOEC report to the understanding of the dire situation of the entire Niger Delta cannot be overemphasised.
“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.”
The ecological crusader reminded 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.”
Bassey noted that the NDAC Manifesto clearly states that the Niger Delta region is one of the most sensitive ecosystems in the world, and that “adverse activity in one place immediately results in impacts across the entire ecosystem.”
Bassey said: “When we speak of environmental genocide in Bayelsa, we are inevitably speaking of environmental genocide in the entire Niger Delta. We must not forget that genocide is a deliberate and systemic crime. It does not happen by accident. No, it does not happen by chance.
“It is deliberate and deeply systemic. The single word for this crime is ecocide. Stop Ecocide International has defined this crime as “unlawful acts committed with knowledge that there is a substantial likelihood of severe and either widespread or long-term damage to the environment being caused by those acts.”
The lived experience of everyone in the Niger Delta, according to him, “is one of being trapped in an environment that has been severely damaged in a deliberate, irresponsible and persistent manner.
“Deliberate because the gas flaring, the oil spills and the discharge of produced water into the environment are intentional. Irresponsible because those committing the crimes know they would scarcely be held to account.
“Persistent because there is an equivalent of one Exxon Valdez oil spill into the environment annually right from when the first oil wells came into operation. When we add the other polluting activities such as dumping of hazardous wastes into the environment it becomes incontrovertible that environmental genocide or ecocide is the reality of the Niger Delta.”
The Bayelsa event , the fourth NDAC gathering having had earlier sessions in Uyo, Akwa Ibom State, Port Harcourt, Rivers State, and Abuja.
The latest edition is in Bayelsa because it is the epicentre of ecocide in the oil region, though all parts of the region are dastardly impacted.
The outcome of the Assessment of the Ogoni Environment as conducted by the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) shows clearly the extreme degradation of Ogoniland by hydrocarbons pollution years after active extraction was forced to stop in 1993.
For Bassey, 30 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.”
NDAC is aiming to ensure that mindless ecological assault does not continue. The key demands made in the Niger Delta Manifesto for Socioecological 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.
It is ensuring redress for the decades of unmitigated exploitation, expropriation and human rights abuses requires payment of direct reparations by oil companies before their attempts to divest are considered.