The National Oil Spill Detection and Response Agency (NOSDRA) has said that 1,086 oil spills were recorded in Bayelsa State alone from 2015 to February 2022.
The Director-General, NOSDRA, Idris Musa, said this known when delegations from Connected Development (CODE) and OXFAM paid an advocacy visit to his office in Abuja on Wednesday.
According to him, out of the 1,086 oil spill incidents recorded in Bayelsa, 917 were as a result of sabotage in the form of third-party breakage of pipelines with hacksaw or outright blowing up of the pipelines.
While lamenting that Nigeria loses billions of naira because of the oil spillage experienced on a daily basis, he said communities in the area must protect oil installations and tackle such vandals, as their silence was causing harm to their environment.
“We cannot keep running away, we recorded 1, 086 oil spill in Bayelsa from 2015 to February 2022, that is 84.4 per cent; that means we need to do something. It is not about experts.”
“If I came from a community for instance, and then an expert will come and aid me to break a pipeline in my community that will spill oil into my water, will I then drink it and do other domestic chores?
“We need to speak to these issues, we have done that consistently with evidence; what we call Disaster Risk Reduction programme for communities, telling them why they do not need to vandalise oil facilities.
“So CSOs also have to wake up and interface with these communities, let everybody check his own part and do the right thing, that is what I will advocate, the blame is not just on oil companies,” Musa said.
The delegation also visited the National Environmental Standards and Regulations Enforcement Agency (NESREA), where they were assured of partnership and others efforts to protect the environment, especially on pollution, oil spillage and gas flaring.
The Director General of NESREA, Prof. Aliyu Jauro, who received the visitors, said that the oil spillage and gas flaring in the Niger Delta region is a serious issue, and that there is no way to stop these environmental problems without addressing the issues of inequality which is linked to poverty.
“Sensitization and environmental education is part of our key mandate so we are open to collaboration. The national action on the Guiding Principles are captured and issues of the environment is a human right issue. Inequality in West Africa is very high and there is a need to have a certain level of equality,” he said.
Speaking on climate change, he said the Agency has a lot of regulations tailored to address climate change, such as the Regulation on the Control of Emission from petrol and diesel engines, Air Quality Regulations, and Sanitation and Waste Control, noting also that they are working to develop an Agricultural Sector Regulation.
On his part, the Chief Executive Officer of CODE, Mallam Hamzat Lawal, said the organisation, through its Follow the Money initiative, tracks the utilisation of public funds to ensure its judicious utilisation in the interest of communities.
He said that CODE in collaboration with Oxfam have been working in the Niger Delta region through its Conflict and Fragility project and that the visit was to discuss some challenges witnessed in oil-producing communities.
He added that they were working on a new project and sought for collaboration with NOSDRA.
Mr Lawal said the CODE partnership with OXFAM and the advocacy visit to NOSDRA was also to domesticate the National Action Plan on Business and Human Rights in Nigeria at federal and state levels.
The Project Coordinator, Fiscal Accountability for Inequality Reduction, OXFAM, Mr. Henry Ushie, said that OXFAM Nigeria works to reduce poverty, which was caused by inequality.
“It is not that there are no resources, but those resources do not go round, because a few people have hijacked most of the resources to themselves. So, we try to reduce poverty by also ending inequality in all its forms, whether social, political or gender inequality, we just make an effort to end those forms of inequalities,” Ushie said.
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