Five-point environmental proposal

The chairman of the Niger Delta Environmental Survey, Gamaliel Onosode, told a conference on ‘Oil pollution and environmental management’ that oil companies, authorities and communities needed to set up a five-point programme to protect Nigeria’s ecosystem and improve oil companies’ activities, ‘Vanguard’ daily reported.

Speaking on Tuesday in the capital, Abuja, Onosode said the plan must include: the review and strengthening of operations regulations to prevent health hazards, the mandatory use of modern technologies in oil operations, the establishment of local guidelines and standards for effluents, and the need to establish baseline information necessary for determining the quantity and quality of effluent or waste discharge tolerable to host communities.

Relations between oil companies and host communities in southeast Nigeria have been very rocky as the region has suffered numerous oil spills which, locals say, the multinationals have been slow in cleaning up. They also accuse them of being unwilling to pay compensation, of committing environmental neglect and of not contributing to the area’s development.