Some environment activists have introduced a dimension to the return of oil operations in Ogoni areas of Rivers State, saying clean up would no longer be the reason for peace. One of the groups particularly said there would be no oil operations for life in Ogoni.
They said at the weekend that only the granting of the Ogoni Bill of Rights that led to death of prominent Ogoni people would solve the problem. The Bill wants autonomy for Ogoni, among other demands.
The environmental rights activists operating across the Niger Delta region said oil exploration would not commence even the implementation of the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP).
The groups with this view include Oil Watch Africa, Health of Mother Earth Foundation (HOMEF) and Social Development Integrated Centre (Social Action) which came together to facilitate a one-day training for Ogoni ecological defenders within the ambit of the UNEP implementation for the Ogoni Oil bearing communities in pollution.
HOMEF, the major organiser of the community monitoring training tagged, “Fish, Not Oil: Let the Ogoni clean-up begin on 26th July 2016,” brought together about 50 youths drawn from four local government areas in Ogoni towns such as Eleme, Tai, Gokana and Khana at converged in Ogale, Nchia Eleme for the training.
The Director of HOMEF, Nnimmo Bassey, in his welcome address, said, “The aim of the training is to train Niger Delta community youths as monitors to build a strong defence for their fragile and heavily degraded environments just as we are doing now in Ogoni to ensure an endorsed success of the UNEP implementation.”
Bassey noted that Ogale was chosen as location for the training because the community ground was found to have an 8cm layer of refined petroleum products floating on it, and that UNEP found out that its inhabitants drink underground water polluted with benzene, a known carcinogen, at a level 900 times above World Health Organizations Standard.
Not taking the Eleme underground and air polluted case as an isolation, Bassey lamented that the other Ogoni communities were breeding life less than their expected life span, caused by oil spills, gas flares and toxic dumps, which informed the HOMEF task of monitoring to ensure that, the tide of despoliation is halted.
To achieve this, “It requires physical observation and social engineering by training these youths to monitor the UNEP process of environmental remediation of their communities and the wider Niger Delta environmental,” Bassey said.
Also, the coordinator, oil watch Africa, Ebiaridor Kentebe, who told BusinessDay that the need to train youths from the Ogoni oil polluted communities was to monitor and evaluate the Ogoni UNEP Implementation, pointed out that even over $100 billion dollars cannot equate the socio-economic loss in Ogoni.
“Our Oil Watch Africa is in support of this Ogoni Community Monitoring Training Programme, and that is why am here. We have confidence in the implementation of the UNEP task by the Federal Government, but we want to make sure that the implementation is transparent devoid of political interference”, Ketebe sounded.
Kentebe also agreed with the view of the other activists, that, “in life time, there would be no oil operations in Ogoni by any oil company during and after the clean-up until the Ogoni Bill of Rights is met”. He said this is in order to prevent further socio-economic rape of the people as it has been for the past 40 years caused by oil majors.”
