Three years after the United Nations Environmental Programme (UNEP) released its report on the criminal degradation of Ogoniland by Shell Petroleum Development Company and the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC), the President Goodluck Jonathan administration is still talking about speeding up environmental restoration works in the affected area. The UNEP report, which was presented to the federal government on August 4, 2011, confirmed the assertions of the Ogoni people and the late Ken Saro-Wiwa – he lost his life to the struggle for the protection of Ogoni environment in 1995 — that the negligent environmental pollution laws and sub-standard inspection techniques of the relevant federal authorities had led to the dreadful conditions of the Ogoni environment.
The report also established that the water bodies in Ogoni, without exemption, were truly contaminated by the activities of oil companies Shell and NNPC. It revealed that some of what the Ogoni people drink as potable water had carcinogens, such as benzene, up to 900 times above acceptable World Health Organisation levels. The world body also found that, in some places in Ogoniland, the soil is polluted with hydrocarbons to a depth of 5 metres and that the Ogoni homeland had indeed been turned into an “ecological disaster”.
For many people, the findings of UNEP are not new. They only confirmed the claims of Ogoni people and indeed the Niger Delta all along. The late Saro-Wiwa-led Ogoni group had, in the late 1980s, begun to raise the alarm over the extensive criminal devastation of their environment. The alarm was followed by several cautious but extensive peaceful protests. And, with the Ogoni Bill of Rights of 1990, the Saro-Wiwa-led group catalogued their demands for environmental, socio-economic and political justice. It is sad that nothing has been done to remedy the situation up until now.
We wish to remind the Jonathan administration that the UNEP report made recommendations that most right-thinking people would see as a huge opportunity which the federal government could easily have grabbed to assuage the suffering and pains of the people and immediately start the process of restoration. Indeed, the clear inaction of the federal government is not a positive development index.
We agree with the minister of petroleum resources, Mrs Diezani Alison-Madueke, who recently stated that the time has come to bring in fresh urgency into the process of implementation of the UNEP report and address all its recommendations.
Source: Leadership
