Environmentalist calls for community participation in energy conferences

Famous Obebi Famous, Port Harcourt

Renowned environmentalist and governance consultant Mr Iniruo Wills has called for community participation in university energy conferences so that “the theories that come out of such summits can have practical effect and be beneficial to the communities.”

Wills who is a lawyer made the remarks Wednesday while speaking at an event tagged Blow out, Hydrocarbons Spills, Fire Disaster Emergencies in the Niger Delta, Mitigation and Strategies organised by the Centre for Disaster Risk Management and Development Studies of the University of Port Harcourt in collaboration with the National Emergency Management Agency.

He stated that it would be more impactful if the communities were also invited as key stakeholders since they constituted the epicenter where the Spills and other forms of disaster occur.

This strategy, which he described as engaging gown and town, will ensure a more proactive response by communities during disasters.

“After wars and pandemics, maybe disasters are the next higher causes of man’s fatality.  So how do we mitigate their impact?”

He emphasized that disasters could be caused by natural factors as well as man-made, pointing out that the biggest disaster in Nigeria was the issue of leadership from which flows all other forms of disasters, including environmental disasters,

“Most of us are familiar with the saying we are lucky that we do not have natural disasters in Nigeria such as Hurricanes, Tornadoes, etc., but our biggest disaster is leadership, which is man-made and once they are man-made, what this means is that man can also be the solution to them,” he said.

He said that it was no news that blow outs and spills and fire disasters occurred in the Niger Delta at an alarming frequency emphasizing that what was news however was that these disasters were continuing daily and have even been normalized by the society.

He said: “We have even socially normalized it. For example, the Port Harcourt soot or in Otuabagi, where commercial oil production started and Shell left the wells fallow after 30 years, but if you go there right now oil is seeping out in Otuabagi.

 A recent scientific study revealed that all 80 women whose blood was taken for analysis have traces of hydrocarbons in their blood, and experts say a cloud of methane is building up in the community, so is that a disaster or not?

“The floods have almost become an annual visitor here. In 1999, when I had my first duty as Commissioner for Information. The 1999 floods came, and in the capital city of Yenagoa, you had to go from one place to the other using canoes.”

He said it was regrettable that despite the fact the floods came again in 2012, 2018 and then in 2022, Nigeria and indeed the state governments still do not have a flood master plan.

“These are the issues that make me wonder if our disasters are not only man-made but whether we have normalized them.

“My thinking is that there are dimensions of disasters that governance and socio-political issues play a role, such as revisiting the purpose of Nigeria. So, if the purpose of Nigeria is just drill baby drill to use the Trumpian language then there’s a big problem,” he added.

Wills observed that the entire Niger Delta is full of landmines and Petrol bombs waiting to explode at the slightest spark: “In Rumuekpe Rivers State if you dig the ground, you will find oil because of the innumerable spill cases that had occurred there over the years.

In Ikarama community in Bayelsa State, after a spill happened and Shell claimed that they had cleaned it up and NOSDRA gave a clean bill of health to Shell, people dug the ground and oil gushed out. In “Brass for over 50 years, the Brass canal has become a dump site for Agip’s toxic effluents while the regulators look on unconcerned.”

He noted that based on the experience of the Niger Delta it was clear that the fiction called Nigeria was unsupportive of the welfare of Nigerians.

He therefore picked holes in the use of the term restructuring as a panacea for the troubles of Nigeria asserting that it should be changed to repurposing Nigeria because according to him, it will appear that the purpose of Nigeria is not known and that’s why the Niger Delta as an integral part of Nigeria is being abused.

Wills drew the attention of policy makers and the government to the fact that although the NOSDRA Act of 2006 made provisions for the establishment of Oil Spill Response, Detection and Control Centers, 20 years later “we still do not have one.

He pointed out that problems do not only have technical sides but an attitudinal side bothering on leadership and good governance, wondering why the NOSDRA headquarters should even be in Lagos, far from the communities where the disasters occur.

Wills decried as wrong and unacceptable the unwholesome burning of confiscated oil vessels by military personnel in the high seas, asserting that it was not only an economic loss but constituted another form of environmental disaster.

“Nigeria is the textbook example of regulatory capture because the regulators are structurally ill equipped, and wondered why whenever there was a spill it was the regulated that provided logistics for the regulators to visit the site.

Wills summed up his remarks by stating that “For us to mitigate blow outs, spills and fire disasters in our communities we must make our country realise that there cannot be a country without communities.”

In his welcome address, the Director of the Centre, Prof. Mbee Daniel Mbee said spills and blow outs  have had a devastating impact on communities and brought about untold hardship to individuals and huge losses to the nation.

He said over 60 per cent of mangroves in the Niger Delta has been wiped out by these incidents.

He said the summit aimed to promote global awareness of the problems and to articulate practical solutions through engagement with key stakeholders.

In his speech, the Director NEMA South South Dr Godwin Tepiko disclosed that a national risk disaster management action plan was being finalized by the agency and that when validated, it would help to reduce some of the problems faced by Nigerians

Some of the major solutions canvassed by various speakers include the deployment of technology and use of GIS remote sensing to detect and predict the impact of spill, capacity building, regulatory reforms, infrastructure investment and collaboration.

The event was graced by an impressive array of experts drawn from the University of Port Harcourt and keynote speakers from the NNPC, NEMA, AMNI International Petroleum Development Company Limited.

Highlight of the event was the award of excellence to three attendees including Wills for his unrelenting efforts to promote the environmental health of the Niger Delta.