Rehabilitating the Niger Delta area, particularly Ogoniland, would be one of the world most tasking, wide-ranging and long term oil clean up exercise ever recorded across the globe, President Goodluck Jonathan was told yesterday.
This was the content of a report on the environmental assessment of Ogoniland presented to President Goodluck Jonathan by the United Nations Environment Programme at the presidential villa yesterday.
The UN agency said that the exercise must be undertaken “if contaminated drinking water, land, creeks and important ecosystems such as mangroves are to be brought back to full productive health”.
Accordingly, the report said that full environmental restoration in the region last up to about 30 years if an initial $1 billion fund recommended was earmarked to kick-start the clean-up exercise.
Alarmed by the said report, President Jonathan said that environmental challenges in the area were severe because pollutants could migrate to other places not expected. He enjoined the UNEP that, in addition to helping the country to conduct this study, it should assist in tackling the problem.
Meanwhile, Amnesty International yesterday gave a nod to the United Nations report that the people of Niger Delta Region, particularly the Ogoni People in Rivers State, have long suffered from wide spread and severe oil contamination caused by the disastrous activities of Shell Oil company.
In a statement signed by its Global Issues Director, Audrey Gaughran and made available to LEADERSHIP, the report from the United Nations Environment Programme which is the first of its kind in Nigeria and based on two years of in-depth scientific research revealed that the human rights of the Niger Deltans have been infringed upon for decades.
According to him, the report proved beyond doubt that the activities of Shell, have had a terrible impact in Nigeria.
They further explained that the report which was conducted at the request of the Nigerian government and paid for by Shell, exposed the evidence of the devastating impact of oil pollution on people’s lives in the region.
The statement further said that the research which examined the damage to agriculture and fisheries that has destroyed livelihoods and food sources, brought to limelight the scale of contamination of drinking water which in turn exposed end ushers to serious health risks.
The statement reads in part, “we found water in the region to contain a known carcinogen at levels 900 times above World Health Organisation guidelines.”
The report also revealed Shell’s systemic failure to address oil spills going back many years. UNEP described how sites that Shell claimed were cleaned up were found by experts to be still polluted.
“Shell must put its hands up, and face the fact that it has to deal with the damage it has caused. Trying to hide behind the actions of others, when Shell is the most powerful actor on the scene, simply won’t wash,” said Audrey Gaughran.
“There is no solution to the oil pollution in Niger Delta as long as Shell continues to focus on protecting its corporate image at the expense of the truth, and at the expense of justice”.
The report’s findings also exposed the serious failure of the Nigerian government to regulate and control companies like Shell.
UNEP found that Nigeria’s regulators were weak and Nigeria’s oil spill investigation agency was often totally reliant on the oil companies to do its work.
The Nigerian government, the oil companies, and the home governments of these companies, such as the UK and Netherlands, have all benefited from oil extraction in the Niger Delta and should now support a social and environmental rehabilitation process, said Amnesty International.
“This report should also be a wake-up call to institutional investors. In the past they’ve allowed Shell’s Public Relations machine to pull the wool over their eyes, but they will now want to see the company cleaning up its act in the Niger Delta – that means putting real pressure on Shell to avoid spillages, compensate those already affected and disclose more accurate information on their impacts,” said Audrey.
Gaughran.
The UN report noted that there were other, relatively new, sources of pollution in Ogoniland, such as illegal refining but it is clear that Shell’s poor practice stretching back decades was a major factor in the contamination of Ogoniland.