By Obiabin Onukwugha
An Environmental body, Health of Mother Earth Foundation (HOMEF), has held a sensitisation town hall meeting with farmers in Rivers State.
The town hall meeting, which targeted 25 farmers from Eteo community in Eleme local government area of the state, was to sensitise participants on the dangers of pollution and land grabbing.
Eteo community recently suffered oil spill from a facility operated by the Nigeria Petroleum Development Company Limited (NPDCL), where most of their crops and farmlands were affected.
Speaking at the event, which held in Eteo Community, Project Lead, Fossil Politics for HOMEF, Stephen Oduware, said the aim of the program was to have an in-depth knowledge of farmers’ perception on land grabbing and extractive activities, as well as sensitise them on the immediate and remote impacts of oil extraction on their sources of livelihoods.
Oduware, who led a team of other Civil Society Organisations (CSOs) to the community during the event, charged the farmers to hold international oil companies accountable for the pollution of their farmlands and water bodies. He also advised the farmers to demand the restoration of their polluted environment as well as their health.
He said: “We are here to meet with you and discuss in detail, the overviews of pollution and land grabbing.
“Our aim is to understand what you are passing through and to expose the hidden impacts and costs of oil extraction and pollution on your sources of livelihood.”
Also addressing the farmers, Executive Director, We the People, Ken Henshaw, expressed worry that the era of oil extraction was soon coming to an end, but the devastating effects were going to be left behind by the international oil companies.
He said: “For over 60 years now, oil and gas has been extracted from this place and if you look around there is nothing to show for it and oil extraction is coming to an end, whether on account of the divestments of oil companies or on account of climate change, it is coming to an end, what will we say two, three years from now, that the thel Eteo people got from oil.
“That is why it is important for them to come together, synergise and make two core demands; you must restore our environment back to how you found it and secondly, you must restore the health and livelihoods of the people. If we can’t gain from crude oil, let us gain from what we already have, you need to purge our systems of the poison you have exposed us to for the last 60 years.
“That’s not a demand that any NGO can make, that’s a demand that the people of Eteo themselves need to make for themselves and that is why we have come here to build their capacities and their skills to tell the oil companies and the Federal Government what they need.”
On her part, Executive Director, Kebetkache Women Development and Resource Centre, Emem Okon, who also addressed the farmers, charged them to engage the oil companies and demand compensation for the destruction of their environment.
“To address issues of pollution there is need to resist further pollution and further grabbing of our land and to begin to make demands for restoration of the land especially now that the companies are diivesting to offshore, there is need to hold them accountable to restore the land, address issues of pollution before they leave.
“The reason is that the destruction is there, the peoples livelihood had been destroyed and there is a campaign, leave the oil in the soil, the reason is if they can not extract the oil based on international standards, then they should leave and not to continue destroying the land because the people have realised that all the promises about development, employment and what is development, there definition of development does not match with the expectations of the people about development.
“So issues of development has to be resolved, what kind of development, what do the people want and if the corporations cannot meet the expectations and the demands of the people and cannot restore the land to what it was, there is need for communities to push back, resisting further destruction and demanding for restoration for the lands that have been polluted”, she stated.