By Douglas Blessing
A group, We The People (WTP) has insisted that before divestment offshore International Oil Companies (IOCs) must ensure the complete remediation and restoration of the Niger Delta environment, as well as reviving the destructed livelihood of the people for the region.
WTP Executive Director, Ken Henshaw made the demand on Wednesday, in Port Harcourt, the Rivers State capital, while speaking at a one-day multi- stakeholders conference on oil company divestments in the Niger Delta organised by the group.
Henshaw urged the government to mandate the IOCs on commencement of the remediation of impacted places, restoration of the human and ecological damages caused by extraction activities, and reparations for the irreversible losses and damages the people suffered for the last 64 years.
He said: “I think what the oil companies have done to the Niger Delta, the environmental pollution they have caused, the livelihood loss they have caused, the destruction of the environment they have engendered, the well known and we’ll documented health risks that they oil companies have created, are enough grounds to take them to Court.
“We think the oil companies can be found wanting and accounting on the basis of the fact that they have for 64 years of o extraction, destroyed the traditional livelihood of the people.
“The oil that has spilled into the land, into the creeks and rivers of the Niger Delta region, has reduced the life expectancy in the Niger Delta region. Life expectancy in Nigeria is 54 years but life expectancy in Niger Delta is between 41 and 45 years.”
The group also noted that the Petroleum Industry Act (PIA) offered access to the IOCs to criminally divest offshore without remediating and restoring the already damaged environment of the region.
Tijah Akpan, Executive Director of Policy Alert noted that the PIA gives the IOCs right to divest criminally without tidying up and investing in the communities that have been hosting them over the years.
Akpan who was a participant at the stakeholders conference, said the PIA should provide a bridge between the current era of dependence on fossil fuels, connecting the era with a future that is going to be low carbon future without so much investment in dirty carbon forms of energy.
He stressed “What we saw in the PIA was a huge disappointment. We did not see any provision in the PIA that takes some of the money from the oil and gas currently and invest it in a fund to cleanup the environment or to invest in renewable energy that are cleaner.
“Secondary, the PIA gives a very lean provision for decommissioning and abandonment. And that is the only way we can tidy up the messed up environment of the Niger Delta that these IOCs have created over the years. Without a strong decommissioning and abandonment provision in the PIA, then you are actually excusing the IOCs from their legacy damages to the communities and the environment.
The PIA should have created a lost and damage fund, just the same way climate vulnerable communities across the world have been calling during COP27 for loss and damage. What loss and damage can be greater than the pollution in the Niger Delta environment over the last 65 years”, Akpan added.
In his remarks during the event, national publicity secretary of the Pan Niger Delta Forum (PANDEF), Ken Robinson, said communities in the Niger Delta region are no longer host communities but occupied communities.
Robinson said: “On the issue of divestment, we, the people of Niger Delta need to ask ourselves the question; what do we do? Niger Delta communities are occupied communities and not host communities as it were.
“They have occupied our communities and plundered our resources and they are leaving. With all the mess, the Nigerian government is behaving like a spectator, an unconcerned spectator, watching”.
