Group Wants FG To Strengthen Environmental Laws

The Federal Government has been urged to stringently enforce the nation’s laws against environmental degradation and devastation of the coastal ecosystem of oil-producing areas in the Niger-Delta region.

The Executive Director, Foundation for Environmental Rights, Advocacy and Development, Mr Nelson Nwafor, a non-governmental organisation, made the call in an interview with the our correspondent.

He said in Aba on  that government needed to further strengthen the National Oil Spill Detection and Response Agency (NOSDRA), established in 2006, to co-ordinate oil spill management.

Nwafor said that NOSDRA was not doing enough to punish “willful“ offenders against Nigeria’s National Oil Spill Contingency Plan (NOSCP).

He said: “we supposedly have an agency essentially mandated to play the lead role in ensuring timely, effective and appropriate response to all oil spillage.

“As well as protect threatened environment and ensure clean up of all impacted sites to the best practical extent.

“But NOSDRA has been found wanting in effectively achieving its stated objectives.

“No thanks to seeming limitations to its operations ostensibly due to the lack of an enabling law that empowers it to prosecute oil companies against spillage and other environmental pollution.“

Nwafor urged the National Assembly to expedite action to give NOSDRA the power to prosecute oil companies that continually pollute the environment.

He said that 50 per cent of oil spillage in the country was due to corrosion of oil infrastructure, including pipelines that are over 50 years old.

According to him, negligence plays a major role in crude oil spills in Nigeria.

He said that the oil spills was causing the Nigeria Delta people much hardship, saying that their means of livelihood and longevity were under threat.