$150 Billion Needed For The Remediation Of Niger Delta

 

Stakeholders including host community leaders, environmentalists, civil society and community based organisations, the academia have declared that about $150 billion will be needed for remediation and restoration efforts in the region over the first 5 years. 

Speaking on the theme: "Environmental Genocide: Time for Remediation, Restoration," at the Fourth Niger Delta Alternatives Convergence, NDAC, in Yenagoa.yesterday Lead Convener, Nnimmo Bassey, said besides remediation and restoration, more than that estimated amount would be needed annually as reparations for human and ecological loses occasioned by the clearly deliberate and systemic destruction of the Niger Delta environment. 

On behalf of the stakeholders, he declared November 10 as Niger Delta National Day, and urged host communities in the region to mark it annually to raise awareness.

His words: "NDAC aims to ensure that mindless ecological assault does not continue. The key demands made in the Niger Delta Manifesto for Socio-ecological 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. 

"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. 

"Environmental and health audits of the entire Niger Delta are urgently needed considering the environmental genocide and the brevity of life in the region. The Bayelsa State Oil and Environmental Commission, BSOEC, called for a restoration fund of $12 billion over 12 years for Bayelsa State.

"For the entire region about $150 billion will be needed for remediation and restoration efforts over the first 5 years. Besides remediation and restoration, more than that estimated amount would be needed annually as reparations for human and ecological loses occasioned by the clearly deliberate and systemic destruction of the Niger Delta environment. 

"This is a tiny amount when we consider that BP paid a bill BP of $61 billion for the 2010 Deepwater Horizon oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico. In fact they further set up a settlement of $20.8 billion with the US Department of Justice in 2015 and also set up a compensation fund of $20 billion for other claimants.

"That was for just one oil spill. We have a situation where spills occur daily, abandoned oil wells continue to drip oil for decades and where a well blowout would be deliberately left burning and spilling for over five years.

"Time is running out and delay is a luxury we cannot afford considering the heavy injuries being inflicted on our peoples and environment on a daily basis. It is indeed time for remediation, restoration and reparations."

In his remarks, the Chairman of Bayelsa State Traditional Rulers Council, HRM King Bubaraye Dakolo, Agada IV, described the Petroleum Industry Act, PIA, as "a deliberate anti- people document enacted against the Niger Delta compared to the Solid Minerals Act," and blamed the members of the national assembly from the region for not resisting the passage of the bill.

In his Keynote Presentation, Coordinator, Social Action International, Dr. Isaac  Asume Osuoka, in a paper titled "Environmental Genocide and the Struggle for Justice in the Niger Delta: Why Shell’s Divestment Must Be Stopped," said: "This pro-oil company posture has emboldened Global South leaders, including Nigeria’s President Bola Ahmed Tinubu, who is calling for the resumption of oil extraction in Ogoniland -  despite the fact that UNEP’s recommendations for cleanup have barely been implemented.

"Tinubu’s government has displayed shocking disregard for the health, environment, and dignity of Niger Delta communities. Indeed, this administration may be the most openly contemptuous of Niger Delta peoples in recent memory - perhaps even surpassing the authoritarianism of the Abacha era in its disdain for environmental justice."