IJAW
leader and a delegate at the ongoing national conference, Chief Edwin
Clark, has raised the alarm over possible extinction of the Niger Delta
region if something urgent is not done to address the environmental
degradation of the region.
He spoke in Abuja during the debate on the report of the committee on environment on Monday.
This
is even as a Federal Government’s delegate to the national conference,
Annkio Briggs, said the clean-up of the Niger-Delta region would require
$1trillion.
Chief
Clark had spoken strongly about the untold hardship of the people
living along the coastal lines, while he further warned that something
holistic was needed in order to minimise the biting effects of
environmental degradation in the region.
He
took delegates through the memory lane and concluding that there was
nothing new in the report of the conference committee on environment.
He
said the United Nations had, in 2011, submitted a report to the Federal
Government, where it stated that it would take 30 years to clean up the
oil spills in the Niger Delta.
Clark
said the report recommended that $20 billion was needed to clean up the
mess, lamenting that it took the Federal Government two years to set up
a committee to consider the report.
The
elder-statesman said it was not enough to come up with reports, adding
that political will power was needed in order to implement their
outcomes.
Clark further warned that soon, the region might cease to exist.
He
told delegates to look beyond what the country got from the region, but
to examine the effect the degradation oil exploration had caused in the
region.
“Our
environment has been polluted. We sit on top of water in the Niger
Delta, yet we do not have water. When I was small, we used to put a
calabash outside and fishes would jump in. Now, my people eat ice fish.
There are no more farmlands, no fruits. We have lost everything in the
Niger Delta,” he said.
Briggs,
in her contribution, called on the Federal Government to commence the
process of clean-up of the Niger-Delta with initial budget of $1
trillion.
She
noted that what was happening in Niger Delta was destruction caused by
environmental pollution and degradation as a result of gas flaring and
oil spillage.
Chairman
of the conference, Idris Kutigi, however, diffused the controversy that
would have cropped up over comments on resource control as contained in
the report.
Following
remarks by Briggs that she supported the recommendation for resource
control, a delegate from the North, Haruna Yerima, raised a point of
order for Kutigi to allow the chairman of the committee on environment
define what the committee meant by resource democracy.
But
Kutigi, sensing that the discussion would generate trouble, asked
Haruna Yerima to meet the committee chairman after the plenary for more
explanation.
A
delegate from Benue State, Dr Magdalene Dura, supported the
recommendation for the creation of Environmental Restoration Agency to
take care of the serious impact of environmental degradation in the
country.
Meanwhile,
the national conference has set July 7 to 10 for the consideration of
the draft report, according to the modified work-plan of the
conference.
This followed the approval by the Federal Government for an extension of the ongoing national conference by four weeks.
The
work-plan made available to delegates on Monday and obtained by the
Nigerian Tribune, indicated that the conference would be winded up on
July 17.
Accordingly, the drafting of the report would be done in one week from June 27 to July 4.
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