The Federal Government of Nigeria has been asked to expressly declare Ogoni land in current Rivers State an ecological disaster zone.
The call by Health of Mother Earth Foundation (HOMEF) is backed by regrets by environmentalists that the government has not done anything towards implementation of the damning report of the assessment of Ogoni environment conducted by the United Nations Environmental Programme (UNEP) three years after.
The report, which was conducted at the request of the Federal Government of Nigeria, had, without ambiguity, confirmed fears and anxiety that Ogoniland was a ticking ecological bomb, a situation HOMEF says is enough for the declaration of environmental emergency in the area.
In a report to coincide with the second anniversary of the UNEP report on Monday, HOMEF also called for the FG to invest resources to tackle the deep environmental disaster in Ogoni.
It also made some demands, including a call for on the government to urgently provide potable drinking water to the people, and to conduct an assessment of the environment of the entire nation
In a reaction to the situation in Ogoniland, HOMEF Director, Nnimmo Bassey, said, “We are deeply shocked that we are marking three years of inaction on a report that clearly showed that our peoples are walking and living in the valley of the shadow of death.”
He said Ogoniland has become a metaphor for unconscionable ecological ruination that petroleum resource extraction has wreaked on the Niger Delta.
“It is regrettable that rather than setting up a process of remediation with full popular participation in setting goals and targets, the best we have are politics of pollution signposts from the government and arguments by Shell over who should warehouse Us$ 1 billion they are allegedly ready to place on the table for the clean up,” said Celestine Akpobari of the Ogoni Solidarity Forum.
“There are no tenable reasons for government and Shell to fold their arms and watch our people wallow in a chronically polluted environment all through their lives. Why should anyone have to drink water containing benzene, a known carcinogen, at levels over 900 times above the World Health Organisation (WHO) guideline and 1000 times above Nigerian drinking water standards?” Bassey asked.
Also, Executive Director of Environmental Rights Action/Friends of the Earth,Nigeria (ERA/FoEN), Dr Godwin Uyi Ojo, has asked for an investment of US$1 billion for the restoration and compensation of Ogoni environment.
Meanwhile HOMEF has recommended that those who have committed crimes against the people and the environment are brought to book and made to pay for their misdeeds, asking also that the government should dialogue with the Ogoni people as to the time-scale and scope of actions to be taken to restore the environment.
It has also ask that the FG orders Shell to urgently dismantle whatever remains of their facilities in Ogoniland along with toxic wastes dump in the territory.
Source: Daily Independent
