ODAHIEKWU OGUNDE, Yenagoa
An environmental rights group, the Health of Mother Earth Foundation (HOMEF), has conducted training for over 60 residents of oil-bearing communities in Bayelsa State on environmental monitoring.
Speaking to the volunteers on Friday during the training in Ikarama community, Yenagoa Local Government Area, the Executive Director, HOMEF, Dr Nnimmo Bassey, said that a safe environment was fundamental to support lives and livelihoods.
Recall that Shell Petroleum Development Company (SPDC) began its operations in Ikarama community in 1964.
Bassey said that there was the need for people, who reside near oil and gas fields, to remain vigilant in conserving the environment.
He urged them to ensure that the economic interests of investors did not threaten the environment, noting that there was the imperative need to raise volunteers who would defend the ecosystem from degradation and pollution.
Bassey said that Ikarama community was the worst hit and most impacted when it came to oil spills in the Niger Delta region.
He said available data indicated that the area records the most frequent oil spills from the operations of Shell and the Nigerian Agip Oil Company (NAOC).
He advised the volunteers to develop their skills and capacity to “listen to the environment” as it responds and speaks by responding to human activities that distort the ecosystem.
Before the training session started, HOMEF took volunteers and concerned residents on an inspection tour of oil spill impacted sites in the area.
Bassey said they discovered that a youth leader from the community wanted to use his farm for fish farming but found out that oil was oozing out from the ground.
He noted: “A community youth invested resources to excavate his farm for a fish farm only to find out that oil was coming out from the ground.
“He did this last year and this year; it is shocking that the exposure of this level of pollution has not driven the polluters to action immediately.
“We heard Shell has come here to take samples and up till now, we have not heard that the result has been released. We want to be sure that the result is released as soon as they are ready.
“The Ministry of the Environment, the NOSDRA and those from the Federal Ministry should be involved too. We are having contamination not just in this location here.
“Therefore, it is very important to test soil across the communities because we are having oil facilities traversing Ikarama community and other Niger Delta communities.”
He recommended clean up of oil impacted areas as the people had been affected badly in oil spill cases in the region.
Also speaking, an environmentalist, Mr Alagoa Morris, said that monitoring the environment demanded factual and evidence-based data collection, recording and reporting.
Morris, who is the Bayelsa State Coordinator of Environmental Right Action and Friends of the Earth Nigeria (ERA/FoEN, called on Shell and other oil companies to be proactive when such happens for the safety of the rural dwellers, and the aquatic lives that the people depend on.
On his part, Mr Benjamin Enebiri, the owner of the fish farm where oil was coming from the ground, expressed sadness over the situation, calling on Shell to remediate his land.
He said he invested over N600,000 to hire an excavator to dig the pond, regretting that all had become a waste of resources for him and his family.
He called on Shell and other oil firms to always consider the needs of the rural people by providing them a standard hospital because the people were dying from various ailments caused by oil exploration.
The interactive segment of the training had the volunteers from the community share experiences on the adverse impacts of oil and gas exploration on their environments.