By Obiabin Onukwugha
Last week an environmental body, Health of Mother Earth Foundation (HOMEF), through its School of Ecology organised a one-day training for Environment Monitors on defending the environment.
The environment monitors drawn from various oil production host communities, civil societies and environmental rights group, were previously trained by the body on how to monitor the environment in terms of pollution and oil spills and reporting same to relevant authorities.
The objective of monitoring is to help communities be able to identify, manage and minimize the impact of the activities of oil multi nationals on the environment, either by pushing for compliance with laws and regulations or to mitigate risks of harmful effects on the natural environment and protect the health and livelihoods of host communities in the Niger Delta region.
However, there is now the need for shifting from just monitoring to defending the environment.
This comes as host communities still record devastating oil spills from equipment failure despite that oil multinationals are divesting their shallow water and offshore assets in the oil rich Niger Delta to indigenous companies. There is also growing concern that the indegenous companies do not have the capacity to inherit and manage the liabilities that come from the devastation and pollution caused by the IOCs over the years.
Last month, an oil leak was reported at the Nembe swamp facility in OML 29, currently operated by Aiteo in Bayelsa. Again, a fortnight ago, there was an oil spill at a Shell facility in Bodo Community Rivers State.
Presenting a Lecture tagged “Resisting Big Oil – Learning From Ogoni and Yasuni”, during the training which held in Port Harcourt, Rivers State, HOMEF, Executive Director, Dr. Nnimmo Bassey, identified knowledge and action, as among key tools required for defending the environment.
Making reference to the foundation laid by other activists like late Ken Saro-Wiwa, he informed participants that there is a growing push for “Yanusising the globe”, after the people of Yanusi voted to “keep the oil in the soil” in 2023.
He regretted that the global north has continued to manipulate African countries through marginalization, indoctrination, coloniality, exclusion, socio-cultural, economic and racist tactics, using petrodollar politics.
“We are not by this event stopping monitoring. There is never an end to monitoring but as you monitor we want to have a situation where people consciously review what they monitored and take steps to influence what happens. We want to see action taken as a result of the monitoring, we want to see people more committed to monitoring, we want to grow a set of people who have knowledge to analyse what they have seen, so when they speak it will be based on very deep analysis, understanding of political basis of event.
“For example, we have always said that pollution in the Niger Delta is not accidental but political. It is a decision made by those who are benefiting from the pollution. The oil company is benefiting from the pollution because they are not doing the cleanup, that is profit for them. The people die, less number of people complaining about the pollution is a gain for the oil company and also for the Nigerian government.
“The government doesn’t care about the people and the environment. So this training is to make people really layout foundational basis on how to follow up with what they see.
“Why is the life expectancy in Nigeria so low, we are talking about the Niger Delta. Nigeria national life expectancy is 46years for women, 53 years for men. It is so because the environment is so polluted: people are living in polluted environment, they are eating contaminated food, we are breathing contaminated air, everything is against people. In the Niger Delta life expectancy is 41 years. Wether you say a word or not, it is going to kill you and is killing our people.
“We are looking at why is this still happening, those who have campaigned in the past, people like Ken Sara-Wiwa, they laid the foundation of what we are still doing today, because if the Ogoni people do not issue the Ogoni Bill of Right, we wouldn’t have the foundational document to ask a question, this was what was demanded in 1990,” Bassey Stated.
He charged the monitors to be resilient in defending the environment, adding that polluting industries spend billions of dollars to deceive the public and intentionally delay action. Quoting from late Martin Luther King Jr., Bassey added “There comes when silence is betrayal. Defend communities, support agroecology, demand ecological debt, stand for resource democracy, stand for the rights of mother earth.”
Also speaking on the topic: Building People’s Environmental Resistance Movement from the Grassroots”, Executive Director of We the People, Ken Henshaw, submitted that monitors must be able to build trust, be open to listening and learning, communicate consistently and sincerely, manage communities expectations honestly, show genuine empathy and identify with the community in order to effectively carry out their roles as defenders.
Henshaw observed that civil society organisations have now taken the place of community voices, where government and companies now see them as middlemen. He said the role of CSOs is to raise resilience among communities to enable them make demands and push for environmental justice.
Henshaw said: “My argument in my presentation is that what happened in the Niger Delta has caused death, has caused destruction, it has killed people and when people are murdered willingly that is crime. My argument is that the Niger Delta is a crime scene and that crime we know who committed it and we know how they committed it, the government must take the side of the Nigerian people and demand accountability for the crime that happened in the Niger Delta region. We are asking the government not to allow these oil companies divest unless they fix their mess.
“It is normal that when you live in somebody’s house and you operate for the length of time that these oil companies have operated in the Nigeria and you are leaving you don’t just get to pack your bags and brush your shoulders and walk away no. You get to sit down and examine what the impact and harm your extraction has done and fix it. That has not been done.”