Stakeholders Say PIA Inadequate In Addressing Challenges Of Niger Delta Region

The Petroleum Industry Act (PIA) of 2021 has been criticised for failing to address the Niger Delta region’s ecological and environmental challenges.

This was observed by stakeholders at the Third Niger Delta Socio-Ecological Alternatives Convergence (NDAC), which was hosted by the Health of Mother Earth Foundation (HOMEF) in Abuja on Wednesday.

Mr. Ken Henshaw, who highlighted the recently approved Niger Delta alternative manifesto for socio-ecological justice, stated that, even though oil has been extracted from the region for over 64 years, the people in the area have remained poor, underdeveloped, and vulnerable.

He stated that the communities in the area that have borne the brunt of oil extraction and Nigeria’s oil economy for over six decades require urgent and immediate attention.

He regretted, however, that they are forced to pay for offences they did not commit to deny them the right to benefit from the PIA’s 3 per cent.

Henshaw, Executive Director of We The People, stated: “We noted that the PIA is inadequate in addressing our region’s challenges. In particular, the provisions on community responsibility for protecting oil infrastructures, which effectively criminalises our people, the provisions on gas flaring, which effectively allows the practice, and the provisions on establishing host community funds, which prioritise oil companies while failing to capture the interests and concerns of our communities.”

Earlier in his welcome address, HOMEF’s Executive Director, Dr. Nnimmo Bassey, stated that the Niger Delta is an undeniable sacrificial zone whose degraded situation must be reversed for the sake of the people and the environment.

He lamented that the region has been placed on a bloody slab and visited with unrelenting abuse by the forces of extractive, internal colonialism, and dispossession, emphasising that “it has been recklessly exploited right from the time of slavery to the time of colonial monopolies and current realities where it is raped for the sake of keeping a waning petroleum civilization on life support.”

Bassey explained that the programme not only highlights the region’s significant socio-ecological challenges but also proposes very clear paths out of the quagmire.

He stated, “The convergence notes the extremely negative impacts of oil and gas exploitation in the region, as well as massive deforestation and diverse erosion of both land and coastlines.”

“We observe that, despite the region’s complex ecosystem of streams, rivers, creeks, and the sea, potable water is scarce due to frequent oil spills and the dumping of hazardous industrial wastes into both surface and groundwater.”

Speaking further, the HOMEF Executive Director stated that the manifesto ignored the fight against the reckless pattern of crooked divestment schemes perpetrated and allegedly promoted by international oil corporations.

He stated, “The plans by the international oil companies to sell off their onshore fields to domestic oil companies and either leave Nigeria or move into deep offshore locations has been roundly condemned as a ploy to avoid responsibility and accountability for nearly 70 years of unbelievably horrendous pollution of the territory through oil spills, hazardous produced water, toxic wastes, and gas flaring.”

He did, however, urge the National Assembly to take action on the issue of existential consequences for the people and the territory, stating that the communities cannot afford to be left stranded in the toxic brew left by the oil companies.

The stakeholders also demanded the remediation and restoration of all affected territories, as well as the payment of reparations for previous years’ damage.

According to Bassey, “We should point out here that even the first oil wells drilled, exploited in the 1950s, and abandoned in the 1970s, are still polluting the environment because there was no proper abandonment and decommissioning process.”

King Bubaraye Dakolo, chairman of the convergence, emphasised the importance of collective voices in bringing about change in the region. He said, “We must restore our environment. The country has greatly benefited from the resources obtained from the Niger Delta, but the region has not felt the positive effects of the natural resources.”

He described the PIA as an anti-people law enacted against Niger Delta residents. “A law that criminalises the host producing communities; we will ensure that the right thing is done; they must clean and restore the environment before divesting,” Dakolo said.