21 December 2008
Lagos — In another nine days, the deadline for oil companies to stop gas flaring in Nigeria will dawn on the country. However, just like in previous years when the deadline was shifted, will it be another ritual of postponing freedom day from a polluted environment with its attendant health hazards? Godwin Haruna writes
Mr. Jonah Gbemre, a youth activist from the Iwherekan community of Delta State pulled down his eye lids to show his redish eye balls. With a right finger still holding up his eye lid, Gbemre declared: "This is one of the numerous effects of gas flaring, which has been unleashed on our community since I was born. It has turned my eye balls to this red colour because of the heat. Not only this, we are subjected to other health hazards and the worst of all, farm crops do not yield as much as there would have ordinarily yielded. Yet each year, we hear that the deadline for gas flaring has been postponed again."
Gbemre had led his community to sue Shell sometimes ago over the gas flaring that has affected their socio-economic development over a long period of time. In his judgment in the suit over the company's continued flaring of gas in the community, a Federal High Court, which sat in Benin presided by Justice V. C. Nwokorie, had on November 14, 2005, ordered the oil multinational to stop gas flaring in the community. According to the judge, the exercise violated the people's fundamental right to life and dignity of human persons.
The judgment in question had been observed in the breach before the Federal Government set December 31, 2008 as deadline for oil companies operating in Nigeria to stop gas flaring in the country. This has put Gbemre and his community people in a quandary. Nine days thenceforth, the deadline would expire and the question on the lips of many at an environmental summit convened by the Environmental Rights Action/Friends of the Earth Nigeria (ERA/FoEN) last week in Abuja was whether the deadline would be met.
High government officials, who declared open the summit cleverly, dodged the question in their speeches. Attempts by journalists to extract information from them on the issue equally met a stone wall.
In a speech at the opening ceremony, Vice President Goodluck Jonathan spoke about the need to ensure a sustainable environment. Represented by his principal secretary, Chief Mike Ogiadome, he said: "Today, in this distinguished gathering, on this very day that the United Nations has set aside to mark the protection and respect for human rights, what I can observe and feel, is that same concern for the environment which now runs deep. I am confident therefore that speaker after speaker will express concern and go further to proffer solutions as to how best our environment can be rescued from the path of degradation."
He lauded the initiative of ERA for convening the summit and promised to work with other interested stakeholders in preserving the environment. "Let me assure you that in this very mission of protecting the environment through the emerging prisms of the rule of law, you and all other actors that have displayed such zeal of patriotism have a strong ally in government. For this government, we believe that protecting the environment ultimately translates to good governance," Jonathan said
He said the environment could be better protected when the government, the NGOs, the communities and the corporations work together. He recalled that the government had pledged to review a number of laws that have been identified as capable of being obstacles to the rapid economic and developmental ascendancy of the country. He reiterated the process of the constitutional review, which has started would right perceived wrongs.
"As citizens and patriots, who have made the protection of the Nigerian environment your primary concern and constituency, I want to urge you to participate fully in the ongoing constitutional review exercise. To me, this is a generational responsibility that we cannot afford to miss. As lovers of the environment, there is a great opportunity to help close the identified gaps in our environmental laws currently presented by the review exercise. We can only give to ourselves a constitution befitting our country if all citizens participate in the making of a new one through the various processes laid down by our current laws," the vice president stated.
According to him, in rethinking our strategies in the area of the environment and the rule of law, the citizenry must look at what has worked in the past and has sustained human societies in this part of our world. "Our economic and developmental aspiration in the present need not undermine our determination to protect our environment now and the future. A balance must be struck," Jonathan stated.
The vice president noted further: "We are today besieged by an acquisitive mentality which clearly undermines our capacity to regenerate or replenish our livelihood needs. The sacred grooves are under threat so also are the play grounds in many cities and communities across our country! There are too many things we aspire to have that we do not really need. If we are serious about engendering a low carbon economy, our life styles must urgently respond to a sustainability impulse."
When the Vice President's address did not touch the issue of the coming deadline on gas flaring, journalists accosted his representative, Ogiadome, but mum was his response. In a matter of seconds, he entered his car and asked his driver to zoom off.
Also, the Minister for Environment, Housing and Urban Development, Chief Chuka Odum, who was represented by a director in the ministry, did not broach the deadline for gas flaring in his address. Odum acknowledged that the forum, which his ministry collaborated with United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) to host, came at a time when environmental degradation and its fallouts have become an identified factor in resource conflicts in every part of the nation.
"Today, Nigeria is bedeviled with a host of environmental challenges including desert encroachment in the north, gulley erosion in the east, coastal erosion in the west and south-south, and the disastrous effects of extractive activities that are carried out without due regard to the environment," the minister said.
He said the myriad of environmental problems besetting the country was enormous that a consultative meeting was needed to resolve the problems. He added that the lack of a comprehensive, strict and unambiguous body of legislation regulating activities that touched on the environment was one of the reasons cited for not treating the Nigerian environment fairly.
"If we must be taken seriously in our strive for an environmentally sustainable society, we must have a comprehensive body of laws regulating the environmental sector. Given the chequered environmental history of Nigeria despite the existence of pieces of legislations guiding the environmental sector, I therefore call on all present here, the National Assembly, experts, NGOs, other ministries and departments with knowledge to come together to work out an acceptable document that can be presented to the National Assembly for adoption as a bill and its quick passage into law," Odum said.
After he delivered the minister's address, the representative also politely declined to respond to questions from the journalists on the issue of gas flaring deadline. He said he had read the speech given to him by his boss and anything outside that was beyond his powers as a civil servant.
However, if the government representatives shied away from speaking on the vexed issue of gas flaring, the keynote speaker, Hon. Uche Onyeagucha, a former member of the House of Representatives, frontally took it on in his address on the Status of Environmental Governance in Nigeria and the Quest for Legislative and Constitutional Reforms. Onyeagucha properly situated the issue in context as that of human rights and quoting the late Fela Anikulapo-Kuti, he said it was Nigerians' inalienable right to enjoy their human rights.
Describing poverty as an absence of a safe and sustainable environment to live, he related the recent happenings in Jos to the obsession of the ruling party to rig all elections in the country aided by Prof. Maurice Iwu. Such riots, he said, have the potential to destroy the environment. "Jos is a dress rehearsal of what may happen should the 2011 election or any other election for that matter be rigged. Jos is a good example of how electoral malpractice can lead to the destruction of the environment The more dubious elections we have in Nigeria, the more we endanger people's lives and our environment," he said
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