Civil Society Organisation Group Expresses Fear over Consequences of Pollution in Niger Delta

By Fatima Saka

The Civil Society Organisation Group has shown dissatisfaction and fear of deadly consequences on the people of the Niger Delta over the level of pollution bedeviling ithe region.

The organization on Tuesday in Port Harcourt held a-one-day workshop on “Poetry as a Tool for Advocacy,” which was organized by the group for young people.

The Director of Health Mother Earth Foundation, Nnimmo Bassey, said that after about six decades of exploitation and exploration of oil and gas in the area, resulting in serious degradation of the environment, the people are abandoned to their fate.

He noted that because of the degraded environment, life expectancy in Niger Delta has reduced to 41 years, and called for urgent attention on the remediation and restoration of the region’s environment.

He said: “Life expectancy in the Niger Delta is one of the lowest in the world. Nigeria has one of the lowest among the nations, 56 for men, 54 years for women.

“Niger Delta having 41 years as life expectancy limit is not surprising, but surprise that anybody can live beyond that because the environment is absolutely polluted, people are born in pollution, live, die and buried in pollution.

“The gas flare, oil spill we live with causes cancer, all kinds of breathing difficulties, and skin diseases. People are drinking polluted water because they have no alternative and so it is really a miracle that people are alive at all. If nothing is done urgently, it could drive the people to extinction.”

The director further explained that “this is just to encourage young people to continue in the tradition and to be much more attentive to what is going on around them and to articulate and write them down for posterity.

“We know our people are very creative. If you look at poetry in Nigeria, you found out most of the ecologically environmentally sensitive poets in this country are mostly from the Niger Delta and that is because our environment has been devastated.

“So, having young people pay attention to the environment, to learn and to share, to help propagate their ideas that poetry can be used for social change, it is definitely going to be useful. One of the young people who took part said he is going to be using it for his activism.”

Also, Oluwasola Ikuomola, participant and a student at University of Port Harcourt, said the training is a wakeup call for her to use her social media handle to send her message across Nigeria and other countries through poems.

According to Ikumola, “I never knew I could write to pass a message of what is happening within my environment using poetry until I attended training.”