Bassey proposes three solutions to environmental degradation in Niger Delta

An environmental activist, Nnimmo Bassey of Health of Mother Earth Foundation (HOMEF) has proposed three actions that must be taken to salvage the Niger Delta from environmental degradation it has faced for well over 60 years.

Speaking on the theme: “Building a Resilient Future: Climate Action & Community Empowerment” at the third Niger Delta Climate Conference held at Port Harcourt, Bassey in his keynote address stated that the Niger Delta is a deeply polluted environment, a deeply degraded territory, one of the worst polluted places on the planet.

“Researches have confirmed this sad reality. The Environmental Assessment of Ogoni land issued by United Nations Environment Program in 2021 clearly shows the desperate pollution of Ogoni land — the land, the water, and the air.

“In some places, hydrocarbons have penetrated the soil up to 5 meters. By the time the cleanup started, pollution had sunk as deep as 10 metres.

He added, “the Niger Delta is a territory that the inhabitants are literally the living dead due to horrific environmental degradation. Consider Bayelsa State that has 40 percent of mangrove forests gone and there is a 1.5 barrels of crude oil spilled per capita. Imagine that about 14 million cubic meters of natural gas is flared every day at 17 facilities in Bayelsa State alone releasing toxic elements into the air and causing cancers, breathing illnesses and acid rain. Oil related contaminants such as chromium are present in groundwater at a level 1000 times beyond the World Health Organisation limit, and then shockingly, total petroleum hydrocarbons exceed safe levels by a factor of one million.”

He advocated three solutions: “If we want to do real community empowerment, we must take real climate action to avert a continuation of the sacrifice of the zone.

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“Number one, there has to be a clear environmental audit across the entire Niger Delta, what has gone wrong? Who is responsible, and how can people live in that kind of society?

“Number two, health audit. What has been killing our people? How come we don’t have adults? Children have become adults and we don’t have elderly people. “Number three, remediation, we’re not only going to audit the environment, or did the health. There must be a cleanup of the entire Niger Delta. There must be reparations. There must be payment for the damage that has been done to lives and to the environment.”