Home of Mother Earth Foundation (HOMEF) has urged all stakeholders, including government at all levels, representatives of the people, Ministries Agencies and Departments (MDAs), as well as the people of Niger Delta to join hands and insist on the remediation of the environment of the area to make it livable.
The Foundation explained that the reason for the call was because of the urgency required to correct all the harms that had been done to the Niger Delta environment in the nearly six decades of mineral extraction from the area.
Executive Director of the Foundation, Nnimo Bassey made the call in Port Harcourt, the Rivers state capital during the second edition of the Niger Delta Alternatives Convergence (NDAC), organised by HOMEF.
He said: “The challenges of the Niger Delta are being replicated in other countries and sometimes the problems that are being generated here affect other people. Researchers have found that 90 percent of pollution’s found in the Gulf of Guinea emanate from crimes of the industries operating in the Niger Delta.
“We’ve also seen pollutions coming through the columns of other countries close to our national borders.
“And so we are concerned that we have to do all we need to do to secure our environment and to ensure that it is livable.”.
He expressed hope that the Niger Delta Alternatives Convergence, which is an assemblage of the stakeholders from the region to brainstorm and arrive at workable solutions to the challenges of the people, would be expanded into a national and even regional scope.
“We are hopeful it will not end here, that eventually, this will become a national and even a regional event”, Bassey stated, adding that the target of the convergence was not to “draw up a catalogue of woes of all that we have suffered although we will never forget the harm that we are suffering.
“We are seeing this event as an agenda setting gathering so that those who are representing us in government whether rightly or by any other means must begin to account for whatever they promised us, what the constitution requires and what we expect from them.
“This is our opportunity before May 29, when there will be a lot of swearing-in across the nation, to put on the table that these are what we expect and we will insist that the things that we agreed are critical to whatever plans they have for the time and their days in office.
“We are not going to list the catalogue of our woes because these had been recorded since 1958 Willink’s report which shows that things have not changed, nothing has been done. The things that are listed in that report which you can find online are still as valid as today as they were 65 years ago.
“Isn’t that a shame? Now we’ve also had agencies of government like that Niger Delta Development Board of 1960, the Oil Mineral Producing Areas Development Commission, OMPADEC of 1992, the NDDC of 2000 and of course the Ministry of Niger Delta Affairs. You will agree with me that these agencies, they might have tried but they have not addressed our issues.”
He also made reference to the launch in 2022 of the Niger Delta Manifesto at Uyo which was endorsed by hundreds of leaders and people stressing that the demands in the manifesto were still valid and the programme was an opportunity to re-echo them.
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