Oil deforestation devastate A’Ibom, C’River coast

Oil spill, gas flare and deforestation continue to pose environmental hazards, as well as worsen economic misfortunes for the people of the Niger Delta region.

It was reported that crude oil and aquatic ecosystems, which form their mainstay, have come under serious threat following continuous unwholesome activities by oil companies and local communities themselves.

In Ibeno local government area of Akwa Ibom State, for instance, fishers have continued to count their losses as oil spills, gas flaring and mangrove degradation deepen without much attention by concerned authorities to address the situation.

Also, in Esierebom, Cross River State, the massive deforestation ongoing has placed them in a precarious situation of losing their forest reserve and timber in no distant time, according to observers.

Speaking with a lady fisher in Upenekang community of Ibeno, Mrs Akpanika Akpan Felix on Thursday during a Stakeholders Dialogue and Roundtable Discussion on Building Community Rights Defenders in the Niger Delta, organized by Peace Point Development Foundation (PPDF) in collaboration with HOMEF, she shared pathetic stories of how fisher folks most times come back home only with nets full of oil stains instead of “fishes.”

She said oil spills and gas flare have made fishes and other aquatic animals to nosedive.

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She regretted that despite the amount of resources invested in securing fishing gear, fishers end up harvesting oil in their nets instead of fish, subjecting them to untold hardship.

“I am a fisher woman. We normally go to the shore to fish, not in the Atlantic Ocean. It used to be a rewarding exercise, we used the proceeds to train our children and take care of ourselves, but things have changed now.

“We usually go to the sea by 5:00am or 5:30am and before the day breaks well, we must have caught a lot of fishes, but it’s no longer like that now because of so much oil spill.

“When you plunge your net inside the river, by the time you bring it out, instead of fish you’ll see oil in the net. The oil will even tear our net.

“We always run at a loss. For instance, you buy a bundle of net at the rate of N35,000, buy rope, iron, floater and give the net to people that will cut it, before you’ll finish everything, you must have spent over N130,000 and it won’t take up-to three months, the net will spoil because of oil. Oil scares away fishes, destroys our net, while gas-flaring kills the fishes. We are already exhausted,” she lamented.

As a first step to seek a solution to the problem, the community was encouraged to document and immediately report incidents of pollution to relevant authorities, including government, Civil Society Organizations, media, oil companies, regulators, among others.

Ekemini Simon, an investigative journalist in Akwa Ibom, while speaking on community-based monitoring of oil pollution and coastal ecosystem, advised participants to always identify pollution “with the appearance of rainbow colour on top of the water, when their nets come out dirty and stained, when they do not see fish at all or when the few ones caught have a sort of smell”.

Simon harped on the need to document pollution incidents using GPS-enabled devices.

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Apart from the activities of oil companies that cause gas flare and oil spill, unscrupulous activities of the local community, according to findings, have caused massive depletion of fishes in the ocean. Some unidentified persons, according to the participants, pour Gamaline20 in the sea thereby killing every fish within the area irrespective of the size.

It was gathered that the dead fishes will float on the water and those persons will pack them up without stress.

Udo Udo Jesse of Obollo in Ibeno local government, lamented that such activity was always carried out at night and called on the government to step in.

Jesse, who fishes in the Atlantic Ocean, expressed frustrations they face currently amid the high cost of fuel and low availability of fish in the ocean, saying that sometimes they even run into heavy debts.

His words, “Considering the scarcity of fish nowadays and high cost of petrol, we are in heavy debts. Sometimes you owe your customers who may give you money to buy fuel (N1800 per litre) to go to the high sea and at the end of the day, you may not get enough fish that will even cover the debt and other expenses.”

Frowning at some of the harmful local practices, such as the use of chemicals and mosquito nets for fishing, Edidiong Dickson, the Energy Extractive and Climate Justice Program Lead at Policy Alert warned that these activities threaten aquatic ecosystems and public health.

Speaking on sustainable fishing and mangrove restoration, Dickson observed that Mangrove in the Niger Delta is also under threat by an invasive specie known as Nipal palm.

He explained, “the roots of the mangrove is where certain species like periwinkle thrive, so the community should try to take out the Nipal palm from the ecosystem because of the damage it’s doing to the indigenous mangrove species.”

He, therefore, called on either the Ministry of Agriculture or the Environment to actively budget for the mangrove restoration project.

On upholding ideal fishing practice, Dickson sought government regulations such that fingerlings should not be harvested.

“There was a time when the authorities were involved to ensure that people were not harvesting fingerlings from the sea, because that’s an unsustainable practice. But it is apparent now that the enforcement mechanism is weak.

“The Navy and other authorities used to stop them and search, but that has not happened in a long time. So we need to go back to that practice where the authorities would have to enforce laws and international conventions around sustainable fishing,” he stated.

Failure to regulate this activity may further deplete fish availability and make some fish to disappear in the future, says Umo Isua- Ikoh, the Executive Director (ED) of PPDF.

The ED said following the peculiar environmental challenges bedeviling the Niger Delta, stakeholders with common interest came together to form the Niger Delta Alternative Convergence (NDAC) and Nigeria Sociological Alternative Convergence (NSAC) Frameworks with the aim of coming up with possible solutions to the problem.

He said, “Environmental issues vary across the Niger Delta; here in Ibeno, Akwa Ibom state, the people suffer more from gas flare and oil spill and we try to build their capacities on how to go about it.

“In Cross River State, the issue of deforestation and mining is very high. When you go to the forest you’ll see a superhighway inside the bush. With this, we may not have trees again.”

He said through sustained collaboration, accountability and informed action, stakeholders can work together to achieve a cleaner, healthier and more sustainable environment.