Coalition for a Cleaned Niger Delta, CCND, weekend, called on the Federal Government to salvage communities in Niger Delta from 'environmental genocide'.
CCND made the call in a statement by its Executive Director, Health of Mother Earth Foundation, HOMEF, Nnimmo Bassey, and Founding Executive Director, African Centre for Leadership, Strategy and Development, Centre LSD, Otive Igbuzor.
According to the coalition, the catastrophic condition of the region's environment was globally notorious and too well documented to require further reiteration, therefore, President Bola Tinubu needs to move fast to rescue the situation based on various international reports on the state of the environment in Niger Delta.
Meanwhile, the statement accused the National Oil Spill Detection and Response Agency, NOSDRA, of having limited official records of oil spills that had inundated the region over the years, which obviously omitted the Aiteo blowout at OML 29 that lasted for 38 days in November-December 2021, including omitted gas volumes flared continually for 68 years, and the equally deleterious millions of barrels of toxic effluents/"produce water" discharged untreated into the rivers, swamps and mangroves.
The statement read: "Nigerians rightfully deserve to live in a society that boasts of peace, human security, and prosperity in the conviction that all citizens and public officers have a duty to make every constructive contribution towards truly attaining these goals.
"As part of a wider civil society and environmental leadership movement, we call on our president to uphold his sworn commitment to national renewal by calling for swift action to resolve the ecocide (environmental genocide) in the Niger Delta, that increasingly threatens the continued existence of the entire region, undercuts the full economic potentials of our country, and constantly hangs national security on high risk levels.
"We trust our president is well aware that the ecosystem of the Niger Delta has for about 70 years been plagued by unprecedented perennial pollution from petroleum production activities, enabled or worsened by a highly dysfunctional, conflicted and compromised environmental regulatory system."
