By
Nnimmo Bassey
Two whole years after the United
Nations Environment Programme released a damning assessment of the Ogoni
environment, the Ogoni people are forced to continue wallowing in the toxic
broth that their land and waters have been made to become.
Ogoniland was once a land that
supported productive farming, fishing and related activities. That was so
up till the moment the oil rigs began to puncture holes in the land and crude
oil began to be spilled on land, forests and rivers. The air was clean but that
changed when gas flares belched like dragons out for the kill.
Today, 20 years after Shell got
excommunicated from Ogoniland, thick hydrocarbon fumes from sundry pollutions
hang in the air.
From the late 1980s, the Ogoni people
raised the alarm over the wholesale destruction of their environment.
With the Ogoni Bill of Rights of 1990,
they catalogued their demands for environmental, socio-economic and political
justice. Although the Bill of Rights was presented to the Nigerian government,
till date there has not been a whisper by way of response to, or engagement
with, the document.
The Bill of Rights became an organising
document for the Ogoni people and also eventually inspired other ethnic
nationalities in the Niger Delta to produce similar charters as a peaceful way
of prodding the government into dialogue and action.
The Bill noted that although crude oil
had been extracted from Ogoniland from 1958, they had received NOTHING in
return. We reproduce articles 15-18 of the Bill to illustrate some of the
complaints of the people:
15. That the search for oil has caused
severe land and food shortages in Ogoni – one of the most densely populated
areas of Africa (average: 1,500 per square mile; national average: 300 per
square mile.)
16. That neglectful environmental
pollution laws and sub-standard inspection techniques of the federal
authorities have led to the complete degradation of the Ogoni environment,
turning our homeland into an ecological disaster.
17. That the Ogoni people lack
education, health and other social facilities.
18. That it is intolerable that one of
the richest areas of Nigeria should wallow in abject poverty and destitution.
This Bill of Rights was the precursor
to the Kaiama Declaration of the Ijaw, lkwerre Rescue Charter, Aklaka
Declaration for the Egi, the Urhobo Economic Summit Resolution, Oron Bill of
Rights and other demands of people’s organisations in the Niger Delta.
The UNEP report presented to the
President of the Federal Republic of Nigeria on August 4, 2011 completely
confirmed the claims of the Ogoni people, “That neglectful environmental
pollution laws and sub-standard inspection techniques of the federal
authorities have led to the complete degradation of the Ogoni environment,
turning our homeland into an ecological disaster.”
The report found that, without
exception, all the water bodies in Ogoni were polluted by the activities of oil
companies — Shell Petroleum Development Company and the Nigerian National
Petroleum Corporation. Indeed, the report stated that some of what the people took
as potable water had carcinogens, like benzene, up to 900 times above
the World Health Organisation standards. The report also revealed that at some
places in Ogoniland, the soil is polluted with hydrocarbons to a depth of five
metres.
It revealed that the Ogoni homeland had
indeed been turned into an “ecological disaster,” as the Bill of Rights
asserted. We remind ourselves that the UNEP report made recommendations that
most of us saw as low hanging fruits that government could easily have
responded to assuage the pains of the people and commence a process of
restoring the territory to an acceptable state. The apparent inaction is
nothing but a squandering of opportunities to rescue a people and for impactful
political action.
A total clean up of Ogoniland will take
a lifetime or about 30 years at the least. That is the length of time the UNEP
estimates it would require to clean up the water bodies in the territory. And
it would require an additional five years to clean up the land. How is that a
lifetime? Well, life expectancy in the Niger Delta stands at approximately 41
years.
At the eve of the first anniversary of
the presentation of the report, the Federal Government hurriedly cobbled up an
outfit incongruously named Hydrocarbons Pollution Restoration Project. The
project was set up basically to hoodwink the Ogoni people into thinking that
action was being taken to implement the UNEP report.
A year after the setting
up of HYPREP under the Ministry of Petroleum Resources – a major polluter of
Ogoniland — the only visible act of implementation of the report has been the
planting of sign posts at some places informing the people that their
environment is contaminated and that they should keep off.
You could almost
laugh, but this is sad and serious. Keep off your environment! No options
given. The people still drink the polluted waters and farm the polluted land.
Seafood is still being scrounged from the polluted waters and community people
still process their foods in the crude-coated creeks.
Two years after, we believe that it is
not too late for the government to act. President Goodluck Jonathan can:
• Declare Ogoniland an ecological
disaster zone and invest resources to tackle the deep environmental disaster
here.
• Urgently provide potable water
across Ogoniland
• Commission an assessment of the
entire Niger Delta environment. An assessment or audit of the environment of
the entire nation should also be on the cards urgently.
• Those found guilty of crimes
against the people and the environment should be brought to book and made to
pay for their misdeeds. Blame for oil thefts must go beyond the diversionary
focus on the miniscule volumes taken up by bush refiners.
• The major crude oil stealing
mafias must be uncovered. Crude oil and gas volumes must also be metered as
demanded by groups such as the Environmental Rights Action.
• Engage in dialogue with the
Ogoni people as to the time-scale and scope of actions to be taken to restore the
environment. Issues raised in the Ogoni Bill of Rights and the UNEP report
provide good bases for dialogue. Extend this all over the Niger Delta.
• Ensure that the actions to
tackle the ecological disaster that the Niger Delta has become are not seen as
an opportunity for patronage or jobs for the boys.
• The UNEP should play a key
oversight role, to ensure quality and to build confidence in the process.
• The body to tackle the problem
should be domiciled in the Ministry of Environment and should not by any means
be under the polluting Petroleum Resources Ministry.
• Shell should be ordered to urgently
dismantle whatever remains of their facilities in Ogoniland along with toxic
waste they dumped in the territory.
• Shell should also be required to replace
the Trans Niger Delta pipeline that carries crude oil from other parts of the
region across Ogoni territory.
• Clean up the polluted land and
waters.
These are just some of the steps that
must be taken urgently. The UNEP report gives a good list of several things
that need to be done. The time has come to halt the ostrich posture and to face
the national environmental challenges squarely. Two years is long enough. Our
people have patiently lined up to fall into early graves.
Twenty-three years ago, several Ogoni
people were sacrificed because they dared to speak up concerning the state of
their homeland.
A stanza of the National Anthem urges,
“The labours of our heroes past shall never be in vain.” We cannot continue to
sing those lines mindlessly while the ecological disaster in Ogoniland persists
and our heroes groan in their graves.
•Nnimmo, an environmentalist, is chair
of Friends of the Earth International and Director of Health of Mother Earth
Foundation (HOMEF).
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