PIA criminalizing Niger Deltans – King Dakolo

… Says $3trn taken out of the region

Omeiza Bilal

The Chairman of the Niger Delta Alternative Conversion (NDAC), King Ebenanaiwe of Ekpetiama Kingdom, Agada IV, Bubaraye Dakolo, has said the Petroleum Industry Act (PIA) is an anti-people’s act aimed at criminalizing people of the Niger-Delta.

This is even as he revealed that over three trillion dollars has been stolen from the region that will never be brought back to the country.

Ndakolo made the allegation while speaking with Journalists at the Third Edition of the Niger Delta Alternatives Convergence which was held in Abuja on Wednesday, with the theme “NIGER DELTA MANIFESTO, FOR SOCIO, ECOLOGICAL JUSTICE”

According to him, “The PIA is an anti-people act, which took 20 years to cook, to mis-cook from what it was before, to a beautiful nonsense that they passed in 2021, which is aimed at criminalizing everyone in the Niger Delta, including me.”

“Because they say what the JTF, the military, the trained military experts or trained security experts in Nigeria could not do, I should be held responsible. Someone like me who did not bring out the hydrocarbon from the ground, who did not put a pipeline there, should be held responsible if there is a stoppage of work if there is abduction of any worker around my kingdom. When somebody can come from as far away as Ghana to come and take somebody away nobody will know.

“Because the truth is with fast boats from my community you can even get to Miami if you have an unsinkable small boat. That is how porous the system”

The traditional ruler said, “The Niger Delta Alternatives Convergence is designed to harvest strategies to engage the federal government and what the oil and gas industry has meted out to the people of the Niger Delta in a way that the Niger Delta people could again live “

“For the last 70 years, the people of the Niger Delta have suffered death by instalments to the point where if you look at the fabrics of our existence in terms of communities, they’ve been destroyed. Our homes have been militarized. Our homes have been polluted. Our sources of livelihood have been completely removed.

“The Niger Delta people have not gotten anything you want to call a reasonable share out of it, so if you go to the Niger Delta what you see is squalor, squalor, squalor, and squalor, noting that what has been happening to them as a people is spilling over to other parts of the country.

“For instance, carbon dioxide, yes, it may be more. The pollutants, the BTECs, and hydrocarbons, maybe more in Barantoro in the Equatorial Mine, in my kingdom. But when you have a flare like the type I have close to my palace, which is about 60 meters up there, it has a capacity of polluting far beyond the state.”

Also speaking, Nnimmo Bassey, Director, Health of Mother Earth Foundation (HOMEF) in his welcome remarks titled: Ending the Sacrifice’ called for concerted international action to generate and invest at least $12 billion over 12 years to repair, remediate and restore the environmental and public health damage caused by oil and gas and to lay the foundations for Bayelsa’s just transition towards renewable energy and opportunities for alternative livelihoods.”

According to Bassey, the call became more urgent today following the findings of the report of the Bayelsa State Oil and Environment Commission ominously, but aptly, titled An Environmental Genocide – Counting the Human and Environmental Cost of Oil in Bayelsa, Nigeria.

He said “The report highlights a per capita oil pollution of 1.5 barrels in the state from thousands of oil spills. It also calls for “concerted international action to generate and invest at least $12 billion over 12 years to repair, remediate and restore the environmental and public health damage caused by oil and gas and to lay the foundations for Bayelsa’s just transition towards renewable energy and opportunities for alternative livelihoods.”

“Generally, environmental issues, and socio-ecological issues are always placed on the back banners. Governments don’t pay much attention to it. Sometimes just when there’s a World Environment Day, they make some statements.

Bassey maintained that the “NDAC does not only highlight the huge socioecological challenges of the region but also proposes very clear pathways out of the quagmire.

Meanwhile, presenting the resolutions and highlights of the Niger Delta Alternative Manifesto, Ken Henshaw, executive director of ‘We The People’ said “While oil has been extracted from our lands and rivers for the last 64 years, our people have become significantly poorer, less developed and more insecure in that period.

He asserted that the communities that have borne the brunt of oil extraction and Nigeria’s oil economy for over six decades deserve urgent and immediate attention “Without doubt, our oil producing communities require urgent attention to address the massive challenges we are confronted with,” he said.