The president general of the Akwa Ibom Oil Producing Community Development Network (AKIPCON), Dr Ufot Phenson, has expressed worry that unmitigated effects of oil and gas exploration and exploitation by the International Oil Companies (IOCs) and the local firms have heightened tensions in the Niger Delta region.
Speaking in an interview with journalists in Uyo, the Akwa Ibom State capital yesterday, the leader of the environmental rights and justice advocacy group lamented that years of agitations, protests, campaigns, and litigations for the federal and state governments to compel the IOCs and some indigenous oil firms to address the question of compensation and environmental clean up had not yielded tangible results.
He explained that the need to intensify the campaign for socio-economic justice for the affected people of the region informed his decision to co-author a book titled: ‘State Security Management, Hydrocarbon Pollution, Environment and Implications On Human Rights in Nigeria’, which was launched last week in the state.
He recalled that the agitation had been on since AKIPCON came on board in 2006, “after a thoughtful deliberation on ways of maintaining and advocating for security and peace as well as promoting and protecting the environment and fundamental human rights of the people as enshrined in the Nigerian constitution and the African Charter on Human and Peoples Rights, which Nigeria is a signatory.”
He lamented mass degradation of farmlands and ecology/eco-system due to the negligence and unmindful discharge of hydrocarbon through incessant oil spills, toxic waste dumping, gas flaring, photogenic pollution, and others.
“This is occasioned by the harmful oil exploration activities of oil and gas companies operating in the state.
“That is why we’re using AKIPCON as a mechanism through which the victims of the harmful economic activities of international and indigenous oil companies to demand for environmental justice and payment of compensation to alleviate the sufferings of the peasant farmers and fishermen.
“We are also calling for sustainable environment, good health of the people, secured means of livelihood and the protection of their human rights in line with the African Charter on Human and Peoples’ Rights,” he stressed.
Dr. Phenson said that these harmful economic activities have spread life – threatening ailments on the people with attendant destruction of means of people’s livelihood, noting that that “the uncontrolled pollution in oil producing communities has worsen environmental justice, food and job security as many farmers and fishermen have already been forced out of their businesses which are no longer lucrative.”
He, therefore, urged oil and gas companies operating in the state to “do the needful by resettling and compensating fishermen and farmers to enable them recover their past, present losses and go back to their businesses.” He warned that “the period of playing with oil companies in the realization of the people’s rights is over.”
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