Pauline Onyibe 
The Niger Delta region has never been the same since 1956 when crude oil (Black gold) was first discovered in large quantity in Otuabagi, Bayelsa State.
It has brought joy, sorrows, pains and in most disheartening cases fracas, economic and environmental degradations. A number of the problems have over the years defied solutions except for the occasional crumbs that come their way from the government.
Other than that the people have been left to their fate while their environment continues to deteriorate as a result of the effects of exploration and exploitation.
The people have not ceased in crying out through their different groups and other stakeholders who have taken interest in finding solutions to the myriad of problems that the region and its people are contending with.
The latest of such moves was the recently Environmental Summit by concerned environmentalists and other stakeholders in Yenagoa, the state capital of oil rich Bayelsa to deliberate on how best to bring succour to the people, against the background of the divestment of one of the oil companies, Internal Oil, operating in the environment.
At the Environmental Summit organized by Nnimmo Bassey of Health of Mother Earth Foundation, the consensus by the stakeholders was the projection of about $150 billion budget for remediation and restoration.
At the summit, with the theme; Environmental Genocide: Time for Remediation, Restoration, the summit, and which saw the Fourth Niger Delta Alternatives Convergence, Bassey noted that besides the remediation and restoration budget, more than that will be needed to attend to issues of reparations for human and ecological loses occasioned by the deliberate and systemic destruction of the Niger Delta environment.
National Day
To further attract both national and global attention to the plight of the region, Bassey declared November 10 yearly as Niger Delta National Day, beginning from this year.
This is as he urged host communities in the region to mark it annually to raise awareness. According to him, “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, exploration and human rights abuses requires payment of direct reparations by oil companies before their attempt 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 five years.
Besides remediation and restoration, more than that estimated amount would be needed annually as reparation for human and ecological loses occasioned by the clearly deliberate and systemic destruction of the Niger Delta environment.’’
Lamentation
This is as he further lamented; “This is a tiny amount when we consider that BP paid a bill of $61 billion for the 2010 Deep-water 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 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 that we cannot afford considering the heavy injuries being inflicted on our people and environment on a daily basis. It is indeed time for remediation, restoration and reparations.”
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.”
He said that the exploitation of the Niger Delta region has been one of the problems, “we have been facing for so long now. “That is the main example of the artificial nature of Nigeria as a state created by the British colonialists.
Creating majority ethnic groups that undermine the minorities.’’ To address this anomalies, he advocated for a new constitutional order, noting, “We need to have a constitutional order that will guarantee the rights of all ethnicities and communities for survival.
‘‘The issue of resources control shouldn’t be a subject for debate really because if you have a federation as Nigeria claims to be, then the federating units should manage some of those extractions.
‘‘You don’t expect in a central system for the federal government to have everything as we have in Nigeria. That is not obtainable in other federation.
Talking about artisanal refinery, the issue that we should be talking about is asses to energy and the right to energy. Everybody in the world needs asses to energy.
You cannot have any development without energy. “I think that there has to be a wide range of options in providing energy to the people of the Niger Delta.
Other parts of renewable energy whether it is solar and other options that we must consider but included in that list should be modular refinery.
“We have a system that has made members of the elite in all our communities very complicit in the crimes against the people and this is not something that is unique to the Niger Delta.
Concerns
While Morris Alagoa in his contribution called out the political class and operators in the oil and gas industry for ganging up in oppressing the region and its people through their systemic denials of the rights of the people.
According to him, “Environmental genocide is becoming like a broken record being replayed again and again. It is not even a matter of political will. It is politicians and top persons influencing the oil industry operators even against us.
“What they ought to do, it is our own people that are even saying, don’t do or we should leave them otherwise the Chevron Gas explosion on the 16th of January 2012 off Koluama fish Town, how impactful it was and we were expecting something good instead the federal government under Goodluck then said from Amnesty,, we will give them some slots.
“Goodluck said I will give you something from my pocket and Chevron escaped because they didn’t follow up with the immediate JIIV Dickson then said that his government was going to set up two committees legal and environmental of experts to determine the pollutants and spread.
“That his administration was not going to play with environmental terrorists. Referring to the oil companies and I was happy that something was going to happen even though, he warned our people that are into kpo fire that he was not going to tolerate them too.
But they just set up the two committees and it didn’t see the light of day. “The Bayelsa Oil and Environment Commission that is set up came as he was about leaving government and that was because oil spill happened in his wife’s community, Agoro.
I think so. If Dickson had started from the entrance into his government and gone ahead in dealing with environmental terrorists, things would have been far better. “It is very unfortunate.
So what we are doing here is like a carpenter driving in the nail until it goes in. So we will continue to advocate and push like the UNEP report was pushed on until there was action.
The Bayelsa Oil and Environment Commission is another platform that we are standing on like a solid ground covering all the Niger Delta states.
“We have scientific evidence and framework to continue demanding that the entire Niger Delta should not be only cleanup and remediated but reparation or compensation made.’’
Ibiba DonPredo, a renowned environmental and human rights journalist want the story of how badly the people and region have been treated and the ill-health that the people suffer, noting that every person from the region carries barrel of oil in his or her belly, a metaphor for how bad the situation has become for the region and its people.
“This push is not all about papers, it is all about you the younger people. Tell you stories backed by solid information. We need to train the younger ones so that the reports will be pushed out using their social media handles.
We should push out our reports beyond journalism and make sure we get to that point where there is justice. “I’m not happy that 25 years later we are still here. But the people that are tormenting us are not tired, so why should we be tired.’’
On her part, Constance Meju, women’s advocate said the poverty of the Niger Delta is the poverty of the women, adding that the women are in charge of the children and also use the land that is now degraded.
According to her, ‘‘the women of the region are saying that there should be an alternative source of livelihood because the land has been damaged.
“There is a need for us to have other sources of income. Skills acquisition centres should be set up, there should be grants for women and girls. As it is now, it is not only the women that are in trouble but the whole of Niger Delta.
“We need to rehabilitate our young boys. We need to start miniindustries. We need health update in all the Niger Delta states because it has been revealed that we are all highly inflammable.
