THE Federal Government has been urged to fully integrate human rights into environmental policies and laws in order to reduce youth restiveness and militancy in the country.
A coalition of Civil Society Organisations under the auspices of Publish What You Pay (PWYP), made the call in Abuja after it undertook research into environmental issues across the country.
North Central Coordinator of the coalition, Mr Taiwo Otitolaye and Barrister Chima Williams, the project consultant raised concerns about weak governance and regulation in mineral exploration in Nigeria.
While calling for the maintreaming of the human rights into the Nigerian laws on environment, the coalition said it has paid advocacy visits to the Mnistry of Environment and National Human Rights Commission and other relevant stakeholders on the urgent need to review the nation’s laws in this respect.
Otitolaye, said findings by Publish What You Pay, revealed that women and children suffer the adverse consequences the most of the natural resources exploration that go on unchecked in the country.
He said most of the agitations, youth restiveness, kidnapping and other vices that continued to threaten national security had their root causes from the hazards of environmental mismanagement and degradation as a result of extractive activities.
He added that the operators in the extractive industry sector were biggest destroyers of the environment and ecosystem that continued to put the lives of those in such communities in jeopardy without remediation.
Barrister Williams, the project consultant said the Publish What You Pay and their partners in this project was working on how to address issues of environmental degredation, polution, and deforestation among others through observance and protection of citizens rights both women, environmental, social and health.
He noted that in the course of the research they looked at the positions in the extant laws and discovered loopholes in the protection of citizens in terms of their rights abuse by the operators in the extractive industry.
Williams said the major challenge was that the 1999 Constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria as amended which provided for environment under Section 20 CAP 2, is not enforceable.
He added that Section 44 (3) of the Constitution which removed the ownership right to natural resources including oil and gas and minerals from the hands of citizens and put it in the hand of the Federal government also failed to provide mitigation for the people.
He said this lacuna encouraged those in the extractive industry to pay less attention to the environmental degradation and protection of the people in communities where such activities were carried out.
According to him, most of the crises that had erupted in various parts of Nigeria were traceable to mismanagement of the nation’s environment.
He noted for instance that the militancy in the Niger Delta region of the country would not have happened if the waters were not polluted and environment degraded as a result of oil and gas exploration.
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