Like history which does not satisfy or dissatisfy people but accurately gives account of the past, if there is any recent account that satisfactorily and objectively portrayed the international Oil Companies (IOCs) operating in the Niger Delta region of Nigeria as architects of environmental degradation, pollution and promoters of health challenges in the Niger Delta region, it is the latest report by the Bayelsa State Oil and Environmental Pollution Commission.
The Commission which was set up in March 2019, by the former governor Seriake Dickson led government in the state to investigate the impact of years of oil spillage and environmental pollution in the state, unveiled its final report on the 16th of May, 2023, at the House of Lords in London. That is after four years of work.
Titled, ‘An environmental genocide: Counting the human cost of oil in Bayelsa, Nigeria’, the report aside documenting the over six decades of oil exploration and pollution in the state, indicated that several health studies have documented the connection between gas flaring and a range of chronic diseases including bronchial, rheumatic and eye conditions alongside hypertension, noting that constant inhalation of sulphur dioxide causes nose and throat irritation and shortness of breath, adding that prolonged exposure to flared gas has been associated with cancer and neurological, reproductive and developmental effects.
Going through extract of the report as reported by the media, it is evident that aside from speaking what has been on the minds of Niger Deltans and of course Nigerians as a whole, the latest report in the opinion of this piece remains a broad based piece of work that does not only indicate intellect or genius but manifests series of challenges arising from International Oil Companies non compliance with international best practice in their crude oil exploration and production in the Niger Delta region and how such failure and failings have dovetailed into a burden that presently confronts the people.
Essentially, even as the report is celebrated, there are also evident-based reasons to believe that its scope, content and revelations are neither new to the people of the region nor strange to researchers and development professionals.
Take as an illustration, a peep into a 2022 study report entitled “Exposure to oil pollution and maternal outcomes: The Niger Delta prospective cohort study”, also says something similarly frightening and discouraging.
The account which was produced by Dr Onome B Oghenetega at the Babcock University, Ilishan-Remo in collaboration with Professor Michael Okunlola, Professor Godson R E E Ana, Dr Oludare Morhason-Bello and Professor Oladosu Ojengbede, and reported by the media, among other remarks noted that ‘women residing in areas with high exposure to oil pollution in the Niger Delta are more prone to premature rupture of membranes and severe vaginal bleeding after childbirth as compared to women residing in areas with low exposure’.
The above referenced report which used data collected from interviewer-administered questionnaires and a review of medical records from April 2018 to April 2019, examined the effect of maternal exposure to oil pollution on pregnancy outcomes in 1720 pregnant women aged 18–45 years, has without doubt, made pollution prevention pivotal to achieving maternal death reduction in the region,
For me, it is equally important to underline that in as much as the Niger Delta region going by reports, is currently dotted with about 139 gas flare locations spread across in onshore and offshore oil fields where gas which constitutes about 11 percent of the total gas produced are flared, this ugly narrative/reports shall continue to be a recurring decimal.
As noted in my recent but similar piece, a tour by boat of creeks and coastal communities of Warri South West and Warri North Local Government Areas of Delta state will amply reveal that the much anticipated end in sight of gas flaring is actually not in sight. In the same manner, a journey by road from Warri via Eku-Abraka to Agbor, and another road trip from Warri through Ughelli down to Ogwuashi Ukwu in Aniocha Local Government of the state, shows an environment where people cannot properly breathe as it is littered by gas flaring points.
Separate from the health implication of flared gases on humanity, their adverse impact on the nation’s economy is equally weighty. For instance, a parallel report published a while ago underlined that about 888 million standard cubic feet of gas were flared daily in 2017. The flared gas, it added, was sufficient to light up Africa, or sub-Saharan Africa, generate 2.5 gigawatts (Gw) of power or produce 50 million barrels of oil equivalent (boe) or produce 600,000 metric tonnes of liquefied petroleum gas (LPG) per year, produce 22 million tonnes of carbon dioxide (CO2), feed two-three liquefied natural gas (LNG) trains, generate 300,000 jobs, able to attract $3.5 billion investment into Nigeria and has $350 million carbon credit value’. This is an illustrative pointer as to why the nation economically gropes and stumbles.
As the author of this piece, what troubles me in addition to the above itemized health and economic losses inherent in gas flaring, is the experts belief that the major reason for the flaring of gases is that when crude oil is extracted from onshore and offshore oil wells, it brings with it raw natural gas to the surface and where natural gas transportation, pipelines, and infrastructure are lacking like in the case of Nigeria, this gas is instead burned off or flared as a waste product as this is the easiest option. This has been going on since the 1950s when crude oil was first discovered in commercial quantity in Nigeria.
Also disturbing is the awareness that while Nigeria and Nigerians persist to encounter gas flaring in the country, even so, successive administrations in the country made both feeble and deformed attempts to get it arrested but all to no avail.
Let’s spread out the particulars of this claim.
In 2016, President Muhammadu Buhari-led administration enacted Gas Flare prohibition and punishment), an act that among other things made provisions to prohibit gas flaring in any oil and gas production operation, blocks, fields, onshore or offshore, and gas facility treatment plants in Nigeria.
On Monday September 2, 2018, Dr. Ibe Kachikwu, Minister of State for Petroleum (as he then was) while speaking at the Buyers’ Forum/stakeholders’ Engagement organized by the Gas Aggregation Company of Nigeria in Abuja among other things remarked thus; ‘I have said to the Department of Petroleum Resources, beginning from next year (2019 emphasis added), we are going to get quite frantic about this (ending gas flaring in Nigeria) and companies that cannot meet with extended periods –the issue is not how much you can pay in terms of fines for gas flaring, the issue is that you would not produce. We need to begin to look at the foreclosing of licenses’. That threat has since ended in the frames as the Minister did little or nothing to get the threat actualized.
The administration also launched the now abandoned National Gas Flare Commercialization Programme (NGFCP, a programme, according to the Federal Government aimed at achieving the flares-out agenda/zero routine gas flaring in Nigeria by 2020. Again, like a regular trademark, it failed.
Away from Buhari’s administration, in 1979, the then Federal Government in a similar style came up with the Associated Gas Re-injection Act which summarily prohibited gas flaring and also fixed the flare-out deadline for January 1, 1984. It failed in line with the leadership philosophy in the country.
Similar feeble and deformed attempts were made in 2003, 2006, and 2008.
In the same style and span, precisely on July 2, 2009, the Nigerian Senate passed a Gas Flaring (Prohibition and Punishment) Bill 2009 (SB 126) into Law fixing the flare-out deadline for December 31, 2010- a date that slowly but inevitably failed.
Not stopping at this point, the FG made another attempt in this direction by coming up with the Petroleum Industry Bill which fixed the flare-out deadline for 2012. The same Petroleum Industry Bill (PIB) got protracted till 2021 when it completed its gestation and was subsequently signed into law by President Buhari, as Petroleum Industry Act (PIA).
Despite this vicious movement to save the industry, the environment, and its people, the Niger Delta challenge remains.
So the question that is as important as the piece itself is; if this legion of laws/Acts cannot save the people of the region, who will save the people from the ongoing Environmental Genocide’?
The answer to the above question is in the womb of time.
…Jerome-Mario is the Programme Coordinator (Media and Policy), Social and Economic Justice Advocacy (SEJA), Lagos. He could be reached via jeromeutomi@yahoo. com or 08032725374.
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