Bayelsa State Oil and Environmental Commission (BSOEC) has said that the state required $12 billion to repair, remediate and restore the environmental and public health damage caused by oil and gas exploration over the years.
Chairman of the commission’s Expert Working Group, Dr Kathryn Nwajiaku-Dahou, who disclosed this on Tuesday during the launch of the commission’s report at the House of Lords in London, said the document was the product of four years of tireless work put in by researchers, scientists and professionals in different fields, who went round Bayelsa communities gathering samples.
The BSOEC was established in March 2019 by the immediate past administration of Governor Seriake Dickson to look into the years of oil and gas pollution in different communities in the state.
Governor Douye Diri’s spokesman, Mr Daniel Alabrah in a statement on Tuesday, said the commission chaired by a former Anglican Archbishop of York and member of the House of Lords, Dr John Sentamu, alongside the former president of Ghana, John Kufuor and another member of the House of Lords, Baroness Valerie Amos, as honorary commissioners, also sought the assistance of the international community to the plight of the Bayelsa people and Niger Delta at least.
The 211-page report titled: “An Environmental Genocide: Counting the Human Cost of Oil in Bayelsa, Nigeria,” is a detailed documentation of the over 60 years of oil exploration and pollution in the state where oil was first discovered in commercial quantity in Nigeria by Shell.
Sentamu presented the report to the governor.
The statement quoted Nwajiaku-Dahou as saying, “This helped us to bring to light what the commission describes as environment genocide that plagues Bayelsa today.
“The commission’s findings shine a light on the pollution catastrophe engulfing the state and its underlying causes. Chief among them is the systemic failings of international oil company operators with the complicity of Nigeria’s political class and a dysfunctional Nigerian regulatory state.
“The report sets out a proposal to end decades-long cycles of contamination and neglect by the oil and gas industry.”
A member of the House of Lords, Baroness Valerie Amos, in her remarks, said the pollution of Bayelsa by oil multinationals was scandalous and shameful, calling on the international community to take action against polluters of the environment.
Governor Diri, in his response, pledged that his administration would act on the recommendations and seek partners to ensure that the report was implemented.
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