Nigeria, 94 Others Pass Law On Environment

Nigeria and 94 other
countries have passed a new law exipulating  exigent punishments for crimes against the environment by transnational corporations, especially those involved in oil and mineral exploration.
This will put an end to the where multinational oil and other companies in the extractive industry pollute the environment where they work without taking responsibility by cleaning up the mess, but rather prefer to engage in divide-and-rule as a strategy of evading justice, as seen in Nigerian’s Niger Delta area.
The new law is coming on the heels of a resolution by the United Nations Humans Rights Council sitting in Geneva June 26, against Transnational Corporations, TNC voluntary mechanisms, which voted overwhelmingly in favour of an international legal mechanism to regulate the activities of TNCs relating to the protection of human rights.
The resolution was supported by over 610 organisations, 400 individuals, and 95  countries while 13 states abstained.
Dr. Godwin Uyi Ojo, Executive Director of Environmental Rights Action/Friends of the Earth Nigeria, ERA/FOEN, who was at the meeting, gave insight on the resolution shortly upon arrival in the country, saying modalities were being worked out to domesticate the treaty in Nigeria.
He said this victory ushered in a period to play up ecocide as a crime that should go with a minimum life jail term for perpetrators.
“While we celebrate this victory, we call on the United Nations to recognise the crime of ecocide being perpetrated at the sites of extraction on a global scale,” Ojo said while speaking in Lagos.
Should ecocide become enbedded in Nigeria’s law, he said, “TNCs and their Chief Executive Officers, CEOs, who repeatedly and fragrantly take operational and managerial decisions that have repeatedly resulted in ecological destructions, loss of lives and livelihoods are guilty of ecocide or crime against humanity that must be punished.”
Ojo said a uniform binding mechanism would ensure that “environmental racism as practiced by TNCs, Shell and other oil companies in Nigeria would come to an end because the same standards deployed in Europe and America to be applied in Nigeria and elsewhere”.

Robinson Nkiruka