ODAHIEKWU OGUNDE, Yenagoa
Coastal communities across the eight local government areas of Bayelsa State have lamented the pollution of rivers and destruction of aquatic lives through the activities of international oil companies (IOCs) in their areas.
The lamentation came as fishermen and fisherwomen underwent capacity building training on Coastal Environmental Monitoring and Advocacy over the weekend.
The fisher-folks claimed that oil spillages had crippled their main sources of livelihoods — fishing and farming.
At the programme organised by a Niger Delta environmental advocacy group, Health of Mother Earth Foundation (HOMEF), the fisher-folks said when they went fishing, they usually found fishes floating dead on the waters and in the mangroves.
They called on the relevant authorities to come to their aid by carrying out remediation and clean up of the polluted rivers and seas to enable them to bounce back to the business sustaining them and their families.
The training is coming amidst ongoing oil and gas leaks at Aiteo’s oilfields in Nembe and Conoil’s oil blockage at Sangana in neighbouring Brass LGA.
Speaking to participants, comprising fishermen, fisherwomen and those working in the fish processing value chain, Lead, Fossil Politics, HOMEF, Mr Cadmus Ateke-Enade, noted that pollution from oil leaks poses great danger to public health.
He explained that the environmental rights group aimed to strengthen the knowledge base of participants to engage in evidence-based monitoring of the environment by collecting data in an empirical way.
He said that beyond health factors, the pollution from oil and gas was a threat to the traditional fishing occupation of coastal communities in the Niger Delta region.
Ateke-Enade, who spoke on the overview and sources of pollution, urged the participants to share experiences with participants from other communities to safeguard the environment.
Also speaking, a resource person and foremost environmentalist, Mr. Alagoa Morris, who spoke of monitoring techniques, urged the participants to harness the potential on their smartphones which are embedded with valuable features.
He noted that smartphones and other inexpensive devices have inbuilt capacity to indicate the precise location and coordinates of pollution incident sites which were required to give credibility to the report.
Morris explained that the ongoing leak at Aiteo’s Oil Mining Lease (OML) 29 was made public by a video footage shot by a fisherman who shared the incident on social media.
He commended HOMEF for its advocacy for the environment by conducting the second training within the year in Bayelsa in addition to similar campaigns in other states of the Niger Delta region.
He noted that the training was timely as it coincided with two ongoing pollution incidents in two adjoining local governments in Bayelsa.
A participant from Koluama 1 in Southern Ijaw LGA, Chief Arthur Frank, while sharing his experiences, noted that the Funiwa fields where the rig blow-out of 2012 occurred was still releasing gas bubbles intermittently.
Also Mr Ikonikumo Noel, Chairman, United Fishing Union of Sangana, lamented that the ongoing gas leak at Conoil’s facility near Sangana had crippled fishing with oil workers evacuated from the plattform.
“The leakage and pollution have poisoned the waters and made the environment too toxic for fishes to survive and we were forced to leave the waters. Meanwhile, the company evacuated oil workers and left the community to grapple with the situation,” he said.