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Monitor, Protect Your Environment, HOMEF Charges N’Delta Communities
Nnimmo Bassey, Director, Health of Mother Earth Foundation (HOMEF) has stressed the need to protect the environment.
He gave the charge in his address to the members of K-Dere, Kpor, Goi and Mogho communities, Gokana Local Government Area of Rivers State, during a learning and sharing session on the usefulness of community monitoring, organizing and advocacy, organised by HOMEF.
He stated that although oil has not been drilled in Ogoniland since 1993, oil still passes through the territory and it still remains one of the most polluted areas in the Niger Delta.
He further stressed the need for solidarity and need to rebuild their livelihoods.
“The Niger Delta region has been bastardized, yet these companies are attempting to divest and sell off their assets to indigenous companies without cleaning and remediating the environment and compensating the people for decades of rapacious exploitation.
READ ALSO: World Environment Day: HOMEF Wants Ecosystems More Secured, Warns Against Reckless Exploitation
“This learning session aims to empower community members to be ready to hold environmental destroyers accountable for the damages done, “ he said.
He said HOMEF works with communities to help them seek environmental justice with the power of knowledge.
On his part, Stephen Oduware, a Project Lead on Networking and Alliances, HOMEF, charged members the communities to task political leaders who approach them for votes to begin to take issues of environmental pollution serious.
“We should learn to hold them accountable when things are not going the right way and demand that they should come up with policies that will elevate the sufferings of the people.” He further tasked the people to regularly monitor the environment and note the changes that occur” he charged them.
A 62-year-old Julia Gaage, a farmer from K-Dere who shared his experience lamented the damages on the land from pollution.
“We are forced to plant yams using fertiliser because of the damage done to our land by oil pollution. We know that fertiliser is not so good for our soul, but it is the only way we can make things grow in our circumstances. Before now we did not use fertiliser but today if you do not add these things you will not have a good yield and there will be nothing to live or feed on,” he lamented.
Chief Godwin from Goi also told stories of how favourable the environment to them in the past.
He narrated: “I saw my parents harvesting tubers of yam that required the help of three people to pull out of the ground, but now, you can’t even find grasses anymore. Oil has taken away our livelihoods. We cannot fish or farm successfully anymore.. You cannot find crabs or small fishes anymore. The air in Goi community is even hostile to the people. No hospital, road or even clean water. We are scared for our lives.”
Participants at the learning exercise thanked HOMEF for enhancing their capacity to identify and report on environmental, social-economic challenges that affect their wellbeing. Units of FishNet Alliance – a continental network of fishers against harmful activities – were inaugurated during the gathering.
INFO DAILY reports that K-Dere community with about 54 oil wells had a major oil spill which occurred on the 12th of April 2009 when the fire from the Bomu Manifold burned and spread to the neighbouring Goi and Mogho communities, causing damages that destroyed people’s livelihoods.
READ ALSO:Environmental Activist, Nnimmo Bassey, Harps On Benefits Of Renewable Energy
Between 2007 and 2014, it was reported that 352,000 barrels of crude oil were spilled from the Bomu Manifold, a Shell facility.
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