The coalition of Ijaw interest organisations and other significant environmental stakeholders have called on President Bola Tinubu and Senator Douye Diri, the governor of Bayelsa State, to enact a Niger Delta-wide Environmental Remediation Programme.
The Bayelsa State Government, the Federal Government, the Ministers of Petroleum and the Environment, and the regulators (NOSDRA in particular) that have disregarded and overlooked this hazardous and destructive pollution that is slowly displacing residents and defiling the ecosystem now have a fundamental duty and responsibility to put an end to it right away.
They also advocated for severe penalties, such as termination of land leases and rights of way over operational sites of flagrant environmental violations.
‘’In the four years of waiting for the Commission’s Report, the state government appears to have done little or nothing in combating the scourge which kept occurring not only routinely as usual but also in outrageous dimensions on several occasions. Agip’s facilities drenched Lasukugbene and its surroundings with crude oil for weeks in 2021. Conoil callously spewed oil and gas repeatedly for extended periods in the Akassa axis in the same year. Shell has not only soaked Ikarama Community in spills during the period but has had NOSDRA issue clean up certificates for sites that still contain ponds of spilled oil. And the Aiteo Group that took over some oilfields and facilities in allegedly hazardous states from Shell was host of the catastrophic Santa Barbara Oilfield blowout that lasted for 5-6 weeks in 2021. The lack of any serious signal or action by the state government on any of these disasters or at the launch of the BSOEC Report is quite disappointing’’.
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In a statement released in Lagos, the leaders urged the Bayelsa State government to immediately take corrective action rather than just talking endlessly without taking any meaningful steps or adopting any policies that would have an immediate and significant impact on polluters, affected communities, and the entire network of regional and international stakeholders.
‘’This is no time for tepid speeches, platitudes and promises but a time for action by the state government. The Bayelsa people and communities will be served well if the government can immediately demonstrate to the international environmental community government’s commitment to immediately take remedial action, rather than mere endless talk without actions and policies of consequence that will be instantly and critically felt by pollution culprits, devastated communities and the entire chain of local and global stakeholders’’.
The leaders specifically encouraged the home governments of significant Nigerian oil companies to look into their environmental damage and to take appropriate action against them.
‘’Formally institute a strong call or global campaign on shareholders of Shell, ENI/Agip, Chevron and other operators and/or their parent companies listed on the London, New York and European Stock Exchanges to demand for verifiable comprehensive reports on their environmental pollution footprint in the Niger Delta and remedial measures taken, including the environmental status of their oilfields at the time of divesting them to Nigerian private operators. Failing that, shareholders should be systematically persuaded to divest shares in these companies, as their over 60-year track record in Nigeria renders their shareholders partakers in the business of blood oil. Their home governments should as well be officially engaged to trigger investigations and sanctions on these corporations’’.
The declaration was signed by the Secretary of the Ijaw Elders Forum (IEF) in Lagos, Mr. Efiye Bribena; the Moderator of the Ijaw Nation Forum, Mr. Ben Okoro; the BOT Chairperson of the Ijaw Women Connect (IWC), Ms. Annkio Briggs; the President of the Ijaw Professionals Association (IPA) in Lagos, Mr. Pattison Boleigha; the President of the Homeland Chapter of the Ijaw
‘’Pending consummation of ongoing efforts at an international convention on ecocide, file a formal complaint with the Office of the Prosecutor in the International Criminal Court to investigate the unprecedented ecocide in Bayelsa State as environmental genocide or a continual crime against humanity. This is urgent because successive Nigerian Presidents and Ministers of Petroleum and Environment, along with the regulatory agencies under their supervision, including most incumbents in those offices, are deeply complicit by commission or omission in the fossil fuel industry’s ecocide in the Niger Delta. They have been conditioned by the Nigerian system to never feel any incentive to act’’
The leaders tasked the governor with designating and making appropriate arrangements for an Honorary/Grand Patron or Goodwill Ambassador of the Environment who will use their connections to other countries, their access to social capital on a global scale, and their knowledge of related organisations to actualize a “Environmental Marshall Plan” for the State, and specifically the Niger Delta region.
‘’ While the oil companies and their complicit or inept regulators are directly culpable, the Bayelsa State Government has the primary sacred duty to resist the toxic impacts. We encourage and challenge the state government to slay this monster of petroleum genocide once and for all’’.
They urged the federal government to adequately fund, stabilise, and sanitise the Hydrocarbon Pollution Remediation Project and Niger Delta Development Commission, which are endowed with statutory mandates for the environmental sustainability and remediation of the Niger Delta, or, in the case of HYPREP, the Ogoni area of the region.
‘’Both bodies have been trailed for years by reports and scandals of entrenched corruption, vested external interests/interferences, substandard execution of projects, ghost contracts and subverted tendering/procurement processes, budgetary abnormalities, plus series of arbitrary cum illegal appointments and removal of their executives. The new federal administration should beam a searchlight on these important organizations, to arrest the recurrent travesties and reposition them in accordance with their enabling laws for full delivery of their objectives, including the ecological mandate of NDDC. The functional failure or unabated drift of either or both would create huge setbacks for any expectations of satisfactory environmental remediation and social recovery in the region and throw the region into a tailspin. That spectre and its implications for Nigeria should be a cause for concern to all, home and abroad’’.
