How Nigeria kills its own

Nigeria keeps underestimating the environmental pollution ongoing in the Niger Delta, while its attendant effect on the overall well-being of the approximately 30 million people who call the wetland home has been understudied.

Today makes it exactly twenty-two years since Paul Levura, Saturday Dobee, Nordu Eawo, Baribor Bera, Daniel Gbooko, Ken Saro-Wiwa, Felix Nuate, Barinem Kiobel and John Kpuine, all from Ogoni in the Niger Delta, were sentenced to death by hanging for their roles in the deaths of four Ogoni chiefs. I will not like to dwell on the very sad events that led to the murder of the Ogoni 4 by a mob or the resultant murder of nine extra Ogoni’s by the Abacha government, to, finally put an end to the agitations of the Ogoni people, and the Niger Delta people in general. That such a plan has backfired is not news. News is that twenty-two years after the murder of the Ogoni 9, and fifty-one years after Isaac Boro declared a Niger Delta Republic that was eventually suppressed in 12 days, the Niger Delta story has become scarier and our children are now casualties in an environmental war our own government is fighting against us.

“Using geo-referenced data from the Nigerian Oil Spill Monitor and the Nigeria DHS 2013, and relying on sibling comparisons, we have established that nearby onshore oil spills prior to conception increase neonatal mortality in nearby locations. We have also found indicative evidence that oil spills impair the health of surviving children, manifested in an increase in wasting in infants. “ This is an excerpt from the recently published research undertaken by Roland Hodler and Anna Bruederle of the University of Gallen, on The Effect of Oil Spills on Infant Mortality: Evidence from Nigeria.

Early this year, Nicholas Ibekwe, an investigative journalist, did a report on the delayed Ogoniland cleanup. In it, he mentioned cases where parents complained of their previously healthy children waking up with asthma. His investigation was carried out in Ogoni alone, which accounts for about 10% of the entire Niger Delta population, leaving the numerous stories from other parts of the Niger Delta who are currently battling same or worst forms of environmental pollution. The health implications of oil mining and the resultant oil spills in the Niger Delta and on Niger Deltans, though rarely studied, always does paint a grim picture. The United Nations Environmental Programme (UNEP), in its 242 page report released in 2011, stated that in Nisisioken Ogale, indigenes drank groundwater polluted with benzene 900 times above Word Health Organisation (WHO) guidelines. It will be worthy to note that according to the America Cancer Society, Benzene is a cancer causing agent. Not done, the report also went on to note that neutralizing the effect of the spills in Ogoni will take 25 to 30 years to complete, and this is without any new spill being recorded. . In all of these, hospitals and health facilities in Ogoni and the Niger Delta at large are few and where they eventually exist, are mere chemists, without the drugs of course.

Government after government have glazed the Nigerian landscape and the response seems to be uniform; pay violent agitators, detain and kill peaceful agitators, blame the states, and then blame the people. Ultimately, none of these measures have been really helpful in assuaging the many pains and inconveniences the Niger Delta and its people have had to endure to support the entire country. The implementation of the UNEP report on
Ogoniland comes into play once more here, despite being a process that will take decades to complete, and by so doing is prone to the usual excuse of “it takes time,” one can see beyond that excuse and say the most important parts and the emergency measures recommended by the UNEP report are yet to be implemented. Sources of drinking water is yet to be provided for severely affected communities, while the emergency health measures are yet to be put in place. Government is rather interested in spill technology demonstrations, which are more picturable and media friendly, at the detriment of the many inhabitants of Ogoni communities who need clean portable water to drink first.

Irrespective of the sensitivity of issues of oil exploration and the cleanup to Ogoni people, the Federal Government somehow found it appropriate to hand out operating license for OML 11, which covers the Ogoni axis, without properly consulting with the people. As the Movement for the Survival of Ogoni People (MOSOP) stated in a release in October, a move like that is very much capable of causing a crisis which would be best to avoid, but the government is tone deaf once more as the rumours of pipe laying filters through Ogoniland.

The devastation of the Niger Delta goes way beyond the environment, and that can be seen in the concluding part of the research mentioned earlier:“To get an impression of the scale of the problem, we conduct a back-of-the-envelope calculation: The World Health Organization reports 5,281,386 live births in Nigeria in 2012. The Nigeria DHS 2013 suggests that 8.05 percent of the infants born in 2012 were born in a cluster located within 10 km from a recorded oil spill that occurred prior to conception. Further, our causal estimates show that an oil spill less than 10 km away prior to conception increases neonatal mortality by around 38 deaths per 1,000 live births. Taken together, these numbers suggest that oil spills prior to conception killed around 16,000 infants within the first month of their life in 2012. Our estimates further suggest that 70 percent of them, i.e., around 11,000 infants, would have survived their first year in the absence of oil spills.” Today is a historic day in Nigeria, because 9 Nigerians from Ogoni were murdered by the government for partaking in and protesting against the devastation of their environment and livelihoods. In essence, every day should be a memorable one, because despite being responsible for billions of dollars in foreign exchange earnings yearly, by December this year, based on research figures, at least 15,000 children born in the Niger Delta would have died just because the Nigerian government places accessing natural resources over the lives of its own people.

Saatah Nubari is a Data Analyst from the Niger Delta and a social commentator. His publications and contributions have been featured widely in national and international mediums.