The Chairman of the Niger Delta Alternative Conversion (NDAC), Bubaraye Dakolo, King Ebenanaiwe of Ekpetiama Kingdom, Agada IV has said the Petroleum Industry Act (PIA) is an anti-people’s act aimed at criminalizing everyone in the Niger-Delta.
Ndakolo made the allegation while speaking with Journalists at the Third Edition of The Niger Delta Alternatives Convergence which was held in Abuja today, with the theme “NIGER DELTA MANIFESTO, FOR SOCIO ECOLOGICAL JUSTICE”
According to him” The PIA is an anti-people act, which took 20 years to cook, to miscook from what it was before, to a beautiful nonsense that they passed in 2021, which is aimed at criminalizing everyone in the Niger Delta, including me.”
“Because they say what the JTF, what the military, the trained military experts or trained security experts in Nigeria could not do, I should be held responsible. Someone like me who did not bring out the hydrocarbon from the ground, who did not put a pipeline there, should be held responsible if there is a stoppage of work if there is abduction of any worker around my kingdom. When somebody can come from as far away as Ghana to come and take somebody away nobody will know.
“Because the truth is with fast boats from in front of my community, you can get to even Miami if you have an unsinkable small boat. That is how porous the system”
The traditional ruler informed that “The Niger Delta Alternatives Convergence is designed to harvest strategies to engage the federal government and what the oil and gas industry has meted out to the people of the Niger Delta in a way that the Niger Delta people could again live “
“For the last 70 years, the people of the Niger Delta have suffered debt by instalments to the point where if you look at the fabrics of our existence in terms of communities, they’ve been destroyed. Our homes have been militarized. Our homes have been polluted. Our sources of livelihood have been completely removed. And then, of course, these huge sums ranging well above three trillion U.S. dollars from the oil and gas industry, out of which one trillion has been completely stolen that never were brought back to Nigeria” he said
He said “The Niger Delta people have not gotten anything you want to call a reasonable share out of it, so if you go to the Niger Delta what you see is squalor, squalor, squalor, and squalor, noting that what has been happening to them as a people is spilling over to other parts of the country.
“For instance, carbon dioxide, yes, it may be more. The pollutants, the BTECs, and hydrocarbons, maybe more in Barantoro in the Equatorial Mine, in my kingdom. But when you have a flare like the type I have close to my palace, which is about 60 meters up there, it can pollute far beyond the state.
He noted that once evil is allowed to fester, it snowballs and gets out to reach everyone.” For every Nigerian that has kept quiet on this Niger Delta issue, for every Nigerian that has fed fat on this Niger Delta issue, for every Nigerian that has pretended not to know about the Niger Delta issue, about oil and gas, is an accomplice in a way. And I believe that you will not be numbered amongst those accomplices.
Also speaking, Nnimmo Bassey, Director, Health of Mother Earth Foundation (HOMEF) in his welcome remarks titled: Ending the Sacrifice’ called for concerted international action to generate and invest at least US $12 billion over 12 years to repair, remediate and restore the environmental and public health damage caused by oil and gas and to lay the foundations for Bayelsa’s just transition towards renewable energy and opportunities for alternative livelihoods.”
According to Bassey, the call became more urgent today following the findings of the report of the Bayelsa State Oil and Environment Commission ominously, but aptly, titled An Environmental Genocide – Counting the Human and Environmental Cost of Oil in Bayelsa, Nigeria.
He said “The report highlights a per capita oil pollution of 1.5 barrels in the state from thousands of oil spills. It also calls for “concerted international action to generate and invest at least US $12 billion over 12 years to repair, remediate and restore the environmental and public health damage caused by oil and gas and to lay the foundations for Bayelsa’s just transition towards renewable energy and opportunities for alternative livelihoods.”
“Generally, environmental issues and socio-ecological issues are always placed on the back banners. Governments don’t pay much attention to it. Sometimes just when there’s a World Environment Day, they make some statements.
Nnimmo recalled that at the very first meeting in 2022, the NDAC had issued the Niger Delta Alternatives Manifesto, which they believed that policymakers would take up and look at the top, the major demands in that manifesto, which includes some of the things that everybody’s talking about today. Divestment issues, where we’ve always been saying there should be a very clear policy.
Bassey informed that the NDAC manifesto also calls for the remediation and restoration of all impacted territories and payment of reparations for the damage suffered.
He pointed out that “Even the first oil wells drilled, exploited from the 1950s and abandoned in the 1970s, are still polluting the environment because there has not been a proper abandonment and decommissioning process. The Niger Delta is indeed a short-fused time bomb. The oil well fires at Ororo-1 that have raged for over 4 years and the one at Alakiri-9 which has been on for 5 months, epitomize the fact that the time bombs are already exploding.
Bassey maintained that the “NDAC does not only highlight the huge socioecological challenges of the region but also proposes very clear pathways out of the quagmire.
“The Convergence notes the extreme negative impacts of oil and gas exploitation in the region as well as the massive deforestation and diverse erosion of both the land and the coastlines. We note that while the region is made up of a complex ecosystem of streams, rivers, creeks and the sea, potable water is a rarity due to incessant oil spills and the dumping of hazardous industrial wastes into both surface and groundwater.
“Other core demands of the NDAC, he said include a call for immediate comprehensive environmental and health audits of the entire region Niger Delta with particular alignment to livelihoods, social and economic impacts of crude oil and gas extraction.
Meanwhile, presenting the resolutions and highlights of the Niger Delta Alternative Manifesto, Ken Henshaw, executive director of ‘We The People’ said “While oil has been extracted from our lands and rivers for the last 64 years, our people have become significantly poorer, less developed and more insecure in that period.
He asserted that the communities that have borne the brunt of oil extraction and Nigeria’s oil economy for over six decades deserve urgent and immediate attention “Without doubt, our oil producing communities require urgent attention to address the massive challenges we are confronted with”
Henshaw while presenting the 8 points demands of the NDAC said “Following scientific examinations of the soil and water in parts of Ogoni land, which revealed widespread contamination and destruction of the devastation caused by extraction, the NDAC is demanding an immediate and comprehensive audit of entire Niger Delta region. He added that the audit be immediately followed by a remediation of impacted places, restoration of the human and ecological damages caused by extraction activities and reparations got the irreversible damages our people have had to endure for the last 64 years.
He also called on the federal government to immediately produce a framework and guide for how oil companies disengage from areas where they have operated, which must contain a post-hydrocarbon impact assessment report that examines the ecological and livelihoods impacts of oil extraction, a health audit of people located near extraction as well as a detailed plan costing for remediating the ecological livelihood and health impacts of extraction”
The NDAC which also called for a review of the PIA by the National Assembly also demanded that the NASS provide a definite deadline for gas flaring, remove the power to permit gas flaring by the commission and vest it on the National Assembly and eliminate the section of the PIA that places the responsibility to protect oil installation on host communities among seve
