By John Odhe, YENAGOA
Stakeholders under the aegis of International Working Group (IWG) on petroleum pollution and just transition in the Niger Delta have intensified advocacy for the implementation of the report of the Bayelsa State Oil and Environmental Commission tagged Environmental Genocide.
The stakeholders were made up of some former members of the commission, civil society organisations such as, Health of Mother Earth Foundation (HOMEF), representatives of the World Health Organisation, ministries of health and environment as well as the academia.
The stakeholders, who converged on Yenagoa, Bayelsa State, focused discussions on the health implications of oil activities on the people and remediation action plan as recommended in the report.
A professor of Environmental and Energy Law, Engobo Emeseh emphasized that the essence of the stakeholders meeting was to keep pushing until the recommendations of the Bayelsa oil and environmental commission report were implemented.
Emeseh, who was a member of the commission, said “we have been doing a lot around the report. This particular meeting is on the health issues. Our report found really devastating implications of oil pollution for the people of Bayelsa. It is why the report was called Environmental Genocide”.
“People are dieing daily. There are strange diseases. There are mental and maternal health issues,” she explained.
Another environmental expert and member of the international working group, Isaac Osuoka, noted that the previous environmental report on Ogoni Land and the recent one on Bayelsa State all revealed alarming levels of toxins in the groundwater and soil that people of the Niger Delta had been feeding from.
Osuoka said “every day, there are alarming cases of cancer that have been reported in the hospitals. Every weekends, there are carnivals of burial because of the consequences of oil pollution.
The participants called on the federal government and the international community to come to the aid of Bayelsans who have been suffering and dieing from the hazards of fossil fuel for decades.
The stakeholders condemned in strong terms, the divestment of operational assets by the International Oil Companies.
They insisted that the IOCs must be held responsible for degrading the Niger Delta environment, adding that the multinationals deliberately treacherously sold the oil companies to themselves in order to avoiy responsibility for the environmental damage they have caused in the Niger Delta region.
The Bayelsa oil and environmental commission was set up in 2019 by then governor, Seriake Dickson.
However, report of the commission was received by the incumbent governor, Senator Douye Diri in 2023 and officially made public and submitted to president Bola Tinubu in 2024.
The commission’s report recommended a 12 billion dollar cleanup cost in Bayelsa State.
