By Odimegwu Onwumere
The Ogoni people are in shadow of the negative impact of crude oil explorations by multinational oil companies in their land. The Shell Petroleum Development Company of Nigeria Plc (SPDC) is at the centre of the environmental degradations that Ogoni is suffering till date.
The company operates in Ogoni without any development or implementation of environmental assessment methodologies. It does not take into account the economic, socio-cultural and conservation values of the environment in Ogoni.
The observation with Environmental Impact Assessment Laws is zero, so also is the implementation of health safety and environmental management systems and quality assurance control, as oil production begins in the Delta in 1956.
While Ogoni Suffer
Nigeria as a colony of the rapacious British Empire, the imperialist gives the SPDC the unlimited right to explore crude oil anywhere in Nigeria. This Right is given in 1937. Scrutiny is that not less than $700 billion profits are made by the FG from results of oil exports to foreign countries since 1960.
An inference is that 2,976 oil spills have been recorded in the Delta between 1976 and 1991. The SPDC does not give a hoot to launch inclusive waste management programmes or put-into-practice a continually update of fully operational oil spill prevention programmes. The Ogoni people suffer environmental risk assessment. They experience ultimate results of accidents as regards to lack of mitigation measures.
There is hardly any design for National oil spill contingency plan for control, containment, and cleanup. Ogoni being the third party among the FG and the SPDC, do not experience a review in practice to effectively address in a timely manner the damage oil explorations are causing the area. Gas flaring is a scourge in Ogoni.
Ogoni voice are heard
Twenty-five years ago, a voice emerges among the sons and daughters of Ogoni; a people in the Niger Delta region with a population of close to 832,000 (according to the 2006 National Census) and covering close to 1,000 square kilometres in Rivers State, southern Nigeria.
A United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) examination characterises Ogoni as the third largest mangrove ecosystem in the world. An internationally acclaimed writer, satirist and environmental activist Ken Saro-Wiwa emerges from this ‘mangrove’ in 1990.
He is peacefully protesting against the oil pollutions and severe environmental degradations in Ogoni, being caused by the oil companies, especially the SPDC. The Movement for the Survival of the Ogoni People (MOSOP) is born and is one organ through which the activist informs the entire world of what the people are suffering in the hands of the oil companies and the Nigerian military government.
In that regard, Ogoni Bill of Rights is created. This is the people’s self-determination manifesto, to streamline the activities of the foreign oil companies in the area; the Bill also helps other ethnicities in the Niger Delta region, to formulate manifestos around the activities of the oil companies in their respective communities.
With MOSOP being led by Saro-Wiwa, over 500,000 people joined in the struggle, in protest against the ruinous activities of the oil companies, especially the SPDC. In 1993, the once untouchable SPDC, which is in collaboration with the FG to taint Ogoni-land in the name of oil explorations, is coerced to stop drilling in Ogoni.
Ogoni intimidated
With Nigeria in the hands of the military, the SPDC lies against Saro-Wiwa and his staunch cabinet members numbering eight, of murder. The Nigerian military government does not give Ken Saro-Wiwa, Saturday Dobee, Nordu Eawo, Daniel Gbooko, Paul Levera, Felix Nuate, Baribor Bera, Barinem Kiobel, and John Kpuine a civil trial, having had them arrested in May 1994.
They are condemned and are executed in 1995, upon international communities’ outcry. Aggrieved by the decadence of their land and preceding several extra-judicial killings in Ogoni conspicuously engineered by the FG, a matter is instituted against the SPDC at the court, which after a lengthy legal battle of 14years, the SPDC succumbs to pay $15.5 million, regarded as remuneration for the families of the deceased persons.
United Nations intervention
Not satisfied with the money paid by the SPDC, Ogoni people are bickering and tinkering that their polluted land must be cleaned up; an issue that the FG is lackadaisical about till the intervention of the UNEP.
It is palpable that with the UNEP in Ogoni, the FG has been on policy to conserve biodiversity in order to sustain the use of forest resources. It is also bent on preserving benefits accruing from soil, water, and wildlife conservation for economic development.
Nigerians express cheerfulness when the country’s priority programmes include the extension of National Parks and Reserves and the compilation of the flora and fauna. The Nigerian Biodiversity Strategy and Action Plan (NBSAP) is on top of these reviews.
What the FG is doing
The activities of the Nigerian government in the area of protecting the atmosphere include wiping away the utilisation of ozone depleting substances (ODS), monitoring background atmospheric pollution and the total column ozone, data bank automation, a greenhouse gas inventory, climate change research and training, promotion of environmentally friendly energy practice, and participation in the Global Environment Monitoring Systems (GEMS), since the United Nations Conference on Environment and Development (UNCED).
The UN is hammering against the sources of gaseous emissions, a situation the FG promised on Friday, 25 March 2011, that it has set agenda for ending gas flaring and unveiled what is regarded as “ambitious $10bn gas revolution” and to create 500,000 direct and indirect jobs.
The FG made this disclosure during the formal launching of the Gas Revolution in the country. Then President Goodluck Jonathan, says: “Today’s event marks the beginning of what I believe will be a fulfilling journey towards the restoration of Nigeria to the league of nations which have successfully leveraged on the advantage derivable from the abundance of natural gas, to positively impact on the lives of present and future generations of their citizens.”
Warning to Nigeria
The UN, however, benchmarks 2010 for compliance to end gaseous emissions. Reviews on emissions that include those of vehicles, generating sets, and aircraft are fad. The UN through its agency such as UNEP, is creating awareness campaigns at all levels that Nigeria should make use of adequate effective technology, ensuring efficient energy use, maintain effective databases on industries and their compliance status, maintain a register of technologies, vehicles, generating sets, aircrafts, introduce and enforce emission control certificates for vehicles, generating sets, and aircraft by 1999, eliminate ODS consuming processes, enforce laws relating to the siting of new industries, install a minimum of primary treatment for all new industries, build secondary central treatment facilities in all major industrial estates in cities such as Lagos, Kano, Kaduna, Port-Harcourt, Warri, Ibadan, and Enugu by 2005.
The Sustainable Development Knowledge Platform – an arm of the United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs – continues in the above to ensure that in Nigeria, there is 100% waste segregation, recycling and re-use by 1999. The platform also enlightens Nigeria to promote research in Best Available Technology Effective for Local Adoption (BATELA), make eco-labelling compulsory for all products by the year 2000, promote commercialization of sanitary landfill and incineration as appropriate, encourage citizen empowerment in pollution control, introduce green technologies and promote Environmental Management Systems (EMS) in all industrial facilities, create an environment fund for soft loans as economic incentives for environmentally friendly industries, and promote tax rebates for industries installing pollution abatement facilities.
UNEP report on Ogoni
Ogoni people are in a bid for a second round of their struggle, but UNEP shows commitment in making sure that the environmental degradations caused by the multinational oil companies in Ogoni is resolved.
It is a request by the FG that the UN agency investigates the extent of pollution in the region. The UNEP report, on presentation to then President Jonathan, is adjudged the most detailed scientific study on any area in the Niger Delta.
The presentation of the report is made to President Jonathan on August 4, 2011. The UNEP criticises the SPDC and the Nigerian government for contributing to 50 years of pollution in Ogoni-land. The report of UNEP details that 10 out of the 15 examined sites which SPDC has said it has wholly remediated, still has pollution above the SPDC and government remediation charges.
UNEP report finds out that, what the people takes as potable water has carcinogens, such as benzene, up to 900 times above World Health Organisation (WHO) standards. The report also reveals that at some places in Ogoni-land, the soil is polluted with hydrocarbons to a depth of five (5) metres.
The report further confirms that the neglect of environmental pollution laws and sub-standard inspection techniques of the federal authorities have led to the complete degradation of the Ogoni environment, turning the environment into an ecological disaster. Therefore, UNEP holds that one billion dollars should be spent to clean-up Ogoni.
UN innovation
The intervention of the UNEP saves the Ogoni from the damning neglect it is suffering over forty years and brings the attention of the world to the area. The report confronts the FG and the oil multinationals with the perils the Ogoni people are suffering, because of their nefarious activities in the land.
The report makes the world to truly understand that the once supported productive farm lands the people enjoyed, fishing and related activities, are all damaged by the incessant pollutions that are being experienced in the area, which compels the people to gumboot SPDC out of the place 25 years ago.
Odimegwu Onwumere is a Poet/Writer; he writes from Rivers State.
Tel: +2348057778358
Email: apoet_25@yahoo.com