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Coalition demands FG to protect N’Delta villages from environmental genocide
Nnimmo Bassey, the Executive Director of HOMEF, the Health of Mother Earth Foundation, and Otive Igbuzor, the Founding Executive Director of the African Centre for Leadership, Strategy and Development, or Centre LSD, issued a statement on behalf of CCND.
The Federal Government was urged to save Niger Delta communities from “environmental genocide” by the Coalition for a Cleaned Niger Delta (CCND) over the weekend.
Nnimmo Bassey, the Executive Director of HOMEF, the Health of Mother Earth Foundation, and Otive Igbuzor, the Founding Executive Director of the African Centre for Leadership, Strategy and Development, or Centre LSD, issued a statement on behalf of CCND.
Based on numerous international reports on the state of the environment in the Niger Delta, the coalition claims that President Bola Tinubu must act quickly to improve the situation because the region’s environmentally disastrous state is too well-known worldwide and needs no more emphasis.
The National Oil Spill Detection and Response Agency, or NOSDRA, was accused in the statement of having few official records of the oil spills that have flooded the area over time. This includes the Aiteo blowout at OML 29, which occurred during 38 days in November and December 2021 and included gas volumes that were continuously flared for 68 years. It also included the equally harmful millions of barrels of toxic effluents/’produce water’ that were discharged untreated into rivers, swamps and
The statement said as follows: “Nigerians have a right to live in a society that really strives for peace, human security, and prosperity, and all citizens and public servants have a responsibility to contribute constructively to this end.
“As part of a wider civil society and environmental leadership movement, we call on our president to uphold his sworn commitment to national renewal by calling for swift action to resolve the ecocide (environmental genocide) in the Niger Delta, that increasingly threatens the continued existence of the entire region, undercuts the full economic potentials of our country, and constantly hangs national security on high risk levels.
“We trust our president is well aware that the ecosystem of the Niger Delta has for about 70 years been plagued by unprecedented perennial pollution from petroleum production activities, enabled or worsened by a highly dysfunctional, conflicted and compromised environmental regulatory system.”
