Nnimmo Bassey, an environmental activist and executive director of the Health of Mother Earth Foundation (HOMEF), has stressed the need for environmental action to restore and preserve the highly devastated Niger Delta environment.
Speaking in his welcome remarks at the School of Ecology, which was held at the Niger Delta University, Amasoma, today, August 2nd, 2024, he lamented the devastation of the Niger Delta as an appropriated privatised zone.
In his words, “The Niger Delta is a privatised zone by the simple reason that the international oil companies have since appropriated it as a wasteland suited only for dumping of toxic wastes, oil spills, gas flares, and produced water.”
“The privatisation of the region began in 1956 when the first commercially viable oil well was drilled and has continued unabated. The privatisation has been so obnoxious because since the creeks, streams, rivers, and swamps became waste dumps, they have been fit for no other purpose than to serve the private needs of the polluting corporations.”.
Bassey informed that the UNEP report (August 2011) on the assessment of the Ogoni environment and the Bayelsa State Oil and Environment Commission (BSOEC) report (May 2023) attest to the fact that the region has been wholly grabbed.
Read also: Environment, Niger Delta ministers in Ogoni over clean up, others
“The total dispossession of our peoples of their environment, disconnection from their roots, and despoliation of what is left is worse than slavery and colonialism. Indeed, the nearest label that can be placed on the situation may be environmental racism. Colonialism could plunder and mete inhuman treatment to its subjects, but environmental racism normalises the treatment of both the people and their environment as non-living, subhuman, and fit for nothing but to be trashed.”
He stated, “One bizarre example of a sacrificed zone is the Awoye community of Ondo State, which has Ororo 1 well at Oil Mining Lease (OML) 95 in its immediate offshore. That oil well blew up in a fiery inferno in May 2020 and has been burning and spilling till date. In other words, Ororo 1 oil well has been burning and spilling crude oil for 4 years non-stop with nothing being done to halt the crime. The ongoing sacrifice has impoverished the people in the coastal communities by decimating their livelihoods—farming and fishing.”
He further alleged that zones of sacrifice are dotted all over the continent, with all having roots in extractivism incubated by colonialism.
“When our territories are sacrificed, it is not just that our land is debased; we are the ones being sacrificed. This becomes clearer to us when we realise that, for a fact, rather than being owners of the land, we are actually the land. To liberate ourselves from this exploitative cul de sac, we must know that environmental action is an investment, not a cost. Every action we take today towards ending the sacrifice of our territories is an investment towards reinventing an environment that does not eat us up.” He added
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