Issue Executive Order for Clean up of Niger Delta – Coalition Tells President Tinubu
By Ekemini Simon
Coalition for a Cleaned Niger Delta (CCND) has called on President Ahmed Tinubu to issue an Executive Order for the clean up of the Niger Delta against hydrocarbon pollution as one of the sustainable measures aimed at halting the ecological genocide ongoing in the region.
The Coalition said this should be done by creating a Niger Delta Environmental Remediation Programme and Trust Fund which can be either independent of or domiciled in the extant Hydrocarbon Pollution Remediation Project (HYPREP) currently overseeing the cleanup of Ogoni Land.
In a joint press conference held on Friday by the Executive Director of Health of Mother Earth Foundation, Nnimmo Bassey and Founding Executive Director, African Centre for Leadership, Strategy & Development (Centre LSD), Otive Igbuzor, the coalition said remediation programme should be with a separate Trust Fund from the Ogoni Trust Fund with an expanded Governing Council and an unimpeachable management system designed to avoid the contradictions that have historically bedeviled HYPREP and the debatable progress of the Ogoni Cleanup.
The group said the tasks of the Programme would include a definitive health audit besides the standard environmental audit of impacted areas.
The Coalition noted that according to official records of Nigeria’s spill detection body (National Oil Spill Detection and Response Agency – NOSDRA), there were 16,263 oil spills within the 17-year period of 2006 to 2023 which accounted for about 823,483 barrels of oil spilt, equivalent to 4,103 tanker trucks or 130,933,797 litres of crude oil.
The group pointed out that these figures are a fractional slice of the reality, as they exclude 5,456 spills for which the spiller companies did not provide NOSDRA with estimates of spilled quantities coupled with omission of data for some mega spills, like the Aiteo blowout at OML 29 that lasted for 38 days in November-December 2021.
Besides the call for the clean up, the Coalition called for the adoption of the National Principles on Divestment and Decommissioning in the Nigerian Oil Industry in line with the one recently compiled by a wide coalition of
community, civil society and international organisations, following extensive field missions and engagements in the Niger Delta.
As a solution to oil theft and asset vandalization, the group said to avoid or minimize re-pollution, optimize production and abate associated insecurity, the Federal Government must enact a carefully
articulated approach through a broad and indepth stakeholder consultations, which the group said they are prepared to be part of if required).
The Coalition added “The new strategy should be preventive, proactive, inclusive, accountable, and look beyond current official reliance on state and non-state military methods that can often be tragically counterproductive, as results have
shown intermittently.”
On funding sources to resolve what they tagged as environmental genocide in the Niger Delta, the Coalition said the primary funding should be from the operators and Joint Venture partners in oil/petroleum leases, based on credible costings for remediation within their respective acreages and in line with the universal Polluter Pays Principle (PPP).
They said additional funding sources could include the Environmental Remediation Fund created but yet to be operationalized under the Petroleum Industry Act, gas flare penalties paid by operators, part of the existing Ecological Fund, at
least to cover immediate region wide impact and cost assessments, and a portion of the statutory funds of the Niger Delta Development Commission, whose statutory mission expressly includes an ecological/pollution resolution mandate.
Others recommended are the decommissioning liabilities and restoring funds in oil mining agreements and international environmental, climate and impact funds/resources that can be leveraged through appropriate strategies and channels.