PANDEF, Others Carpet FG Over Niger Delta Environment

PAN Niger Delta Forum (PANDEF) and a group, “We The People (WTP),” have decried alleged Federal Government‘s lack of commitment to the Niger Delta environmental situation, despite International Oil Companies…
PAN Niger Delta Forum (PANDEF) and a group, We The People (WTP), have decried alleged Federal Government‘s lack of commitment to the Niger Delta environmental situation, despite International Oil Companies (IOCs), which messed up the region, are leaving the area.
They  vowed to sue the IOCs for the destruction of the environment and livelihood of the people in the course of oil exploration and exploitation.
The Executive Director of WTP, Ken Henshaw, while speaking, y in Port Harcourt, in a one-day multi-stakeholders conference on oil company divestment in the Niger Delta, said the damage done by oil companies was enough to take them to court.
Henshaw said: “I think what the oil companies have done to the Niger Delta, the environmental pollution they have caused, the livelihood lost, the destruction of the environment they engendered are well known and we’ll document health risks the companies have created. They are enough grounds to take them to court.
“We think the oil companies can be found wanting on the basis of the fact that they have, for 64 years of extraction, destroyed the traditional livelihood of the people.”
“The oil that has spilled onto the land, into the creeks and rivers of the Niger Delta region, has reduced the life expectancy in the Niger Delta region. Life expectancy in Nigeria is 54 years but life expectancy in Niger Delta is between 41 and 45 years.”
National Publicity Secretary of PANDEF, Ken Robinson, said: “On the issue of divestment, we, the people of Niger Delta need to ask ourselves the question; what do we do? Niger Delta communities are occupied communities and not host communities as it were.