Niger Delta Crisis: Matters Arising

Opinion

While the agitation for the provisions of social amenities, good roads, quality health care, better funding of our educational system among others is no longer news in the Niger Delta, the standard of living continues to deteriorate, because of systemic government failure to regulate the activities of multi-national oil companies. These oil giants are responsible for oil spills, water pollution and environmental degradation, leading to loss of lives, sources of income and endangering the larger communities.

Funny enough, government sees the Niger Delta as the proverbial cow that must continue to produce milk, irrespective of the health of the cow. Recent a survey in my state, Bayelsa, shows that over 85 % of the people are unemployed, because most of them have lost their sources of livelihood to oil pollution.

Interestingly recent survey conducted by the United Nations shows an irrefutable evidence of the devastating impact of oil pollution on people’s lives in the Niger Delta. Once of the most serious findings was the scale of contamination of drinking water, which has exposed the communities to serious health risk. In some cases, water was found to contain a known carcinogen (cancer producing substance) at levels 900 times above World Health Organisation guidelines.

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While UN has recommended a number of measures for an effective clean up that would bring back the already eroded ecosystem, one begins to wonder why government has not taken urgent steps to act on the UN recommendations since receiving the report on 4 August 2011.

We people of the Niger Delta do hope that such a sensitive document (report) should not be left to gather dust as our agitations in the past have always been ignored or criminalised.

— Akhator Gift (Concerned Citizen)

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