The President of the Ijaw National Congress (INC), Prof. Benjamin Okaba has called for urgent measures from the government, the global community and regulatory agencies to address environmental degradation in Ijaw land.
Okaba said this in his remarks at a strategic meeting with Exco of the Europe Chapter in London. In the speech obtained by the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN), Abuja, Okaba also drew attention to the dilapidated oil facilities in Ijaw land and the Niger Delta.
The INC president who catalogued the human and environmental woes that have plagued the ljaw people, since the discovery of oil in the region, noted that oil to the ljaws, was now a curse and not a blessing.
He noted that as part of the internationalisation of the INC’s advocacy for environmental justice and true federalism, deliberate measures should and must be taken by ljaws all over the world to condemn the increasing spate and scope of underdevelopment.
“Human and environmental degradations suffered by the ljaw people despite being among the four largest and major oil and gas producing ethnic groups in Nigeria must also be condemned,” he said.
The INC president also referenced the sordid state of ljaw land as copiously captured in a commissioned document. According to him, the document is titled Environmental Genocide: Counting the Humanitarian and Environmental Cost of Oil and Gas Production in Bayelsa”.
He appealed for speedy intervention and rescue by well-meaning international human rights institutions in the world before the situation got out of hand. “As we speak, the ljaw people are at high risk of instalment deaths, arising from the unmitigated and nefarious oil exploratory activities in the land.
“I, therefore, appeal to international organisations to help the ljaw people from the slow deaths they are daily subjected to. This situation may be far more than the deaths in conventional wars, known to humanity,” he said.
The president also described the present 13 per cent and three per cent Federal allocation to oil producing States and the Host Communities as meagre and grossly inadequate in addressing the colossal damages inflicted on the ljaw people
