Govt culpable in N’Delta pollution—Soyinka

Posted by admin Headlines, Niger Delta, Wole Soyinka Saturday, June 30th, 2012

June 30, 2012 by Chukwudi Akasike, Port Harcourt

Professor Wole Soyinka
| credits: File copy

Nobel laureate, Prof. Wole Soyinka, has said that oil companies collaborate with corrupt governments in the past to inflict pains of environmental degradation on the Niger Delta people.

Soyinka explained that the Niger Delta was systematically poisoned and degraded through an act of exclusion of the people that produced the wealth of the country.

He spoke on Friday at the annual town hall meeting organised by the National Association of Seadogs in conjunction with the South Bank University, United Kingdom.

He expressed sadness that the people of the Niger Delta were treated as if they lacked the culture of ensuring their means of existence.

Soyinka, who was the chairman of occasion, recalled that the late environmentalist, Ken Saro-Wiwa, sought structural guarantees based on ecological respect that would preserve his people’s culture.

“The crime against the people of the Delta was made possible only through a pattern of collaboration that took place over the heads of the indigenous peoples, a collaboration between exploiting petroleum companies, backed by corrupt regimes that held sway at the critical point of intersection between exploitation and resource environment.

“It was a simple policy of a collaboration of mutual interests, born of both external and internal cultures of alienation. The environment became systematically poisoned and degraded through an act of exclusion of the peoples, who actually produce the wealth of the nation,” he said.

Represented by Dr. Kombo Braide, the Nobel laureate called on the Federal Government to implement the United Nations Environment Programme report on oil pollution in Ogoniland without further delay.

Also, Chairman, National Human Rights Commission, Prof. Chidi Odinkalu, observed that environmental pollution in Ogoniland had resulted in cases of cancer among the natives.

Odinkalu stated the need to form a forum consisting of community leaders from Ogoni and members of the NHRC with a view to ensuring that the FG implemented the UNEP report.

The immediate past president of the Movement for the Survival of Ogoni People, Mr. Ledum Mitee, lamented that the people of Ogoni were dying gradually as a result of poisoned water and the pollution of their environment

-Punch.wp_posts