21 December 2008
Lagos — In another nine days, the deadline for oil companies to stop gas flaring in Nigeria will dawn on the country. However, just like in previous years when the deadline was shifted, will it be another ritual of postponing freedom day from a polluted environment with its attendant health hazards? Godwin Haruna writes
Mr. Jonah Gbemre, a youth activist from the Iwherekan community of Delta State pulled down his eye lids to show his redish eye balls. With a right finger still holding up his eye lid, Gbemre declared: "This is one of the numerous effects of gas flaring, which has been unleashed on our community since I was born. It has turned my eye balls to this red colour because of the heat. Not only this, we are subjected to other health hazards and the worst of all, farm crops do not yield as much as there would have ordinarily yielded. Yet each year, we hear that the deadline for gas flaring has been postponed again."
Gbemre had led his community to sue Shell sometimes ago over the gas flaring that has affected their socio-economic development over a long period of time. In his judgment in the suit over the company's continued flaring of gas in the community, a Federal High Court, which sat in Benin presided by Justice V. C. Nwokorie, had on November 14, 2005, ordered the oil multinational to stop gas flaring in the community. According to the judge, the exercise violated the people's fundamental right to life and dignity of human persons.
The judgment in question had been observed in the breach before the Federal Government set December 31, 2008 as deadline for oil companies operating in Nigeria to stop gas flaring in the country. This has put Gbemre and his community people in a quandary. Nine days thenceforth, the deadline would expire and the question on the lips of many at an environmental summit convened by the Environmental Rights Action/Friends of the Earth Nigeria (ERA/FoEN) last week in Abuja was whether the deadline would be met.
High government officials, who declared open the summit cleverly, dodged the question in their speeches. Attempts by journalists to extract information from them on the issue equally met a stone wall.
In a speech at the opening ceremony, Vice President Goodluck Jonathan spoke about the need to ensure a sustainable environment. Represented by his principal secretary, Chief Mike Ogiadome, he said: "Today, in this distinguished gathering, on this very day that the United Nations has set aside to mark the protection and respect for human rights, what I can observe and feel, is that same concern for the environment which now runs deep. I am confident therefore that speaker after speaker will express concern and go further to proffer solutions as to how best our environment can be rescued from the path of degradation."
He lauded the initiative of ERA for convening the summit and promised to work with other interested stakeholders in preserving the environment. "Let me assure you that in this very mission of protecting the environment through the emerging prisms of the rule of law, you and all other actors that have displayed such zeal of patriotism have a strong ally in government. For this government, we believe that protecting the environment ultimately translates to good governance," Jonathan said
He said the environment could be better protected when the government, the NGOs, the communities and the corporations work together. He recalled that the government had pledged to review a number of laws that have been identified as capable of being obstacles to the rapid economic and developmental ascendancy of the country. He reiterated the process of the constitutional review, which has started would right perceived wrongs.
"As citizens and patriots, who have made the protection of the Nigerian environment your primary concern and constituency, I want to urge you to participate fully in the ongoing constitutional review exercise. To me, this is a generational responsibility that we cannot afford to miss. As lovers of the environment, there is a great opportunity to help close the identified gaps in our environmental laws currently presented by the review exercise. We can only give to ourselves a constitution befitting our country if all citizens participate in the making of a new one through the various processes laid down by our current laws," the vice president stated.
According to him, in rethinking our strategies in the area of the environment and the rule of law, the citizenry must look at what has worked in the past and has sustained human societies in this part of our world. "Our economic and developmental aspiration in the present need not undermine our determination to protect our environment now and the future. A balance must be struck," Jonathan stated.
The vice president noted further: "We are today besieged by an acquisitive mentality which clearly undermines our capacity to regenerate or replenish our livelihood needs. The sacred grooves are under threat so also are the play grounds in many cities and communities across our country! There are too many things we aspire to have that we do not really need. If we are serious about engendering a low carbon economy, our life styles must urgently respond to a sustainability impulse."
When the Vice President's address did not touch the issue of the coming deadline on gas flaring, journalists accosted his representative, Ogiadome, but mum was his response. In a matter of seconds, he entered his car and asked his driver to zoom off.
Also, the Minister for Environment, Housing and Urban Development, Chief Chuka Odum, who was represented by a director in the ministry, did not broach the deadline for gas flaring in his address. Odum acknowledged that the forum, which his ministry collaborated with United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) to host, came at a time when environmental degradation and its fallouts have become an identified factor in resource conflicts in every part of the nation.
"Today, Nigeria is bedeviled with a host of environmental challenges including desert encroachment in the north, gulley erosion in the east, coastal erosion in the west and south-south, and the disastrous effects of extractive activities that are carried out without due regard to the environment," the minister said.
He said the myriad of environmental problems besetting the country was enormous that a consultative meeting was needed to resolve the problems. He added that the lack of a comprehensive, strict and unambiguous body of legislation regulating activities that touched on the environment was one of the reasons cited for not treating the Nigerian environment fairly.
"If we must be taken seriously in our strive for an environmentally sustainable society, we must have a comprehensive body of laws regulating the environmental sector. Given the chequered environmental history of Nigeria despite the existence of pieces of legislations guiding the environmental sector, I therefore call on all present here, the National Assembly, experts, NGOs, other ministries and departments with knowledge to come together to work out an acceptable document that can be presented to the National Assembly for adoption as a bill and its quick passage into law," Odum said.
After he delivered the minister's address, the representative also politely declined to respond to questions from the journalists on the issue of gas flaring deadline. He said he had read the speech given to him by his boss and anything outside that was beyond his powers as a civil servant.
However, if the government representatives shied away from speaking on the vexed issue of gas flaring, the keynote speaker, Hon. Uche Onyeagucha, a former member of the House of Representatives, frontally took it on in his address on the Status of Environmental Governance in Nigeria and the Quest for Legislative and Constitutional Reforms. Onyeagucha properly situated the issue in context as that of human rights and quoting the late Fela Anikulapo-Kuti, he said it was Nigerians' inalienable right to enjoy their human rights.
Describing poverty as an absence of a safe and sustainable environment to live, he related the recent happenings in Jos to the obsession of the ruling party to rig all elections in the country aided by Prof. Maurice Iwu. Such riots, he said, have the potential to destroy the environment. "Jos is a dress rehearsal of what may happen should the 2011 election or any other election for that matter be rigged. Jos is a good example of how electoral malpractice can lead to the destruction of the environment The more dubious elections we have in Nigeria, the more we endanger people's lives and our environment," he said
Onyeagucha postulated that the greatest threat to environmental governance in Nigeria was dubious elections which Iwu represented. He called for the sack of Iwu because it was only in an atmosphere of a free and fair election that the issue of environmental governance could be broached.
"Politics and a sustainable environment are intertwined. Every single upward increase in the price of kerosene adversely affects the forestation nay food production in future," he stated.
He said environmental governance was determined by the extent of laws directing the citizens' activities as it relates to the environment. He added that most of the laws governing the environment were reacting to events and lacked a forward looking approach. He said this was because most of the laws were made during the military era.
"The legislative and constitutional reform in Nigeria provides another opportunity for us to make the necessary positive inputs for environmental governance in the country. First, we should carry out an audit of what still exists to be able to determine the direction to take. So much has already been destroyed and lost and much more is on the verge of extinction," Onyeagucha said.
He said based on constitutional agenda, the nation should move on from the environmental objectives to make environmental rights and other socio-cultural rights as enforceable pieces of legislation. He said civil society organisations must take advantage of the existing legislation while working to enthrone a new regime.
"We must act urgently if we must succeed in protecting what is left of our environment. We must bring legislation to bear on our culture of environmental governance. We must raise the awareness and consciousness of the citizens to the collective danger which we all face. Our school curriculum need be revised to accommodate a new environmental governance regime. The practice of rule of law requires that we stop further degradation of our environment. No law gives any corporation, individual or government the powers to destroy the environment. Gas flaring is flagrant violation of the spirit of rule of law which this government has been professing. It is impunity that drives environmental degradation and this should not be tolerated in the new environment governance regime, which we advocate," Onyeagucha said.
He concluded that the way out of the mounting poverty in the country, the future of our democracy and the solution to our escalating socio-economic crises lies in a sustainable and safe environment.
Earlier in his welcome address, Mr. Nnimmo Bassey, executive director, ERA, and chair Friends of the Earth International said the theme of the summit was carefully chosen to test the waters of the Nigerian environment through a major filter propounded by the Federal Government.
"We believe that the rule of law is not measured merely by the technicalities of judicial rulings or mechanistic implementation of regulations. We do agree that a reasonable assurance of finding justice at the court of law is a good indication that the rule of law is in place. We are wary of a vacuous use of the phrase as we have seen in recent international relations where might has been elevated as unquestionably right," Bassey noted.
He said his group was worried by lack of clarity and coherence between official actors in the petroleum sector with regard to a set date to end gas flaring in the country. He added the apparent lack of attention to a court ruling on November 14, 2005, which outlawed gas flaring in the country.
The second strand of their worry is the separate announcements of policy thrusts by the ministers of agriculture and that of science that they have a blueprint and are ready to release genetically engineered crops and products into the Nigerian environment. He said such pronouncements were in complete negligence of the rule of law as there were clear steps that must be taken before such crops and products could be introduced into the country.
Later in a presentation titled; "Gas Flaring: Assaulting Communities, Jeopardising the World", Bassey noted that from records available to him oil corporations have been engaged in the action for at least, half a century by now. He said the 50 years old script of pacification by underhand play requires urgent critical political, environmental and socio-economic examination and replacement.
"From research, 168 million cubic metres of natural gas is flared yearly worldwide. It is equivalent to 25 per cent of gas consumption in the USA and 30 per cent of EU gas consumption. The flares pump 400 million tons of CO2 annually into the atmosphere. 13 per cent of the gas flared in the world comes from Nigeria alone and stands at about 23 cubic metres per year. This quantity is enough to meet Nigeria's energy needs and leave a healthy balance for export," he stated.
He added that there are over 100 flare sites still emitting a toxic cocktail of chemicals into the atmosphere in the Niger Delta. According to him, the country has lost about $72 billion in revenues for the period 1970-2006 or about $2.5 billion annually.
He said despite this huge loss, the politics of gas flaring has seen the dates for ending gas flares being shifted as it suits the corporations and the government, adding: "They are the players and as well as the umpires and can freely shift the goalposts as they please."
He said the last deadline was announced by President Umaru Yar'Adua at an International Gas Stakeholders Forum held in Abuja in November 2007, about a month to the end of a subsisting deadline. The shift was to December, 2008 from the subsisting January 2008 despite the clamour by a majority of Nigerians to stick to that deadline and hold oil corporations liable thereafter.
"People generally conceive of a gas flare as a huge orange flame at the top of a high stack. In the Niger Delta, this picture is not always so. Some of the flares are at ground level, and some are not only at ground level, they point menacingly at communities belching heat and smoke from their inefficient infernos. These horizontal flares constitute peculiar hazards as their heat and toxins are more or less at ground level. There spare neither the vegetation nor any life form in their path including humans," Bassey stressed.
He stated that the colonial government could not defend gas flaring just as today's government could not defend it. He advised the government to review the joint venture agreements entered into in the oil sector to make for a fairer deal for Nigeria and clear allocation of responsibilities.
Experts, academics and other professionals presented papers at the two-day Summit and every one of them called for a quick end to gas flaring in the country. They also called for a legal framework to checkmate violators in order to have a friendly environment.
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