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To ensure speedy detection and management of oil spills in the Niger Delta and other parts of the country, some civil society organisations have demanded an amendment to the Act establishing the Nigeria Oil Spill Detection and Response Agency, NOSDRA.
The organisations said amendment of the NOSDRA Act to provide for more funding and greater independence will strengthen the agency to acquire equipments to address logistics issues that would help them better protect the Environment.
Kentebe Ebiaridor, Programmes Manager, Environmental Rights Action/Friends of the Earth, made the call while leading a group of civil society organisations on a familiarisation visit to the Zonal Office of NOSDRA in Port Harcourt.
He held that a situation whereby NOSDRA depends on the polluter to ferry them to spills sites for investigation and other remediation activities is no longer acceptable to the community people as well as the civil society organisations, as according to him, seeing NOSDRA and the polluters in such harmony casts a bit of doubt on the credibility of the investigation.
“We feel that the act is okay but it’s not sufficient to tackle issues of pollution because there are some areas that’s needs to be strengthened.
“We feel that NOSDRA should be independent enough to have the logistical equipments to engage in oil spill detection whether on land or on the sea. We don’t expect that NOSDRA should be expecting the oil companies to ferry them to go and clamp oil spills or to go on investigation visits.
“If NOSDRA can have the funds, have the logistics to do the work on their own, they would be stronger enough to defend the environment and not rely on the polluter because when the polluter is undertaken this task, it gives us a huge indifference as a civil society people and as a community people to trust the outcome of such investigation,” he said.
Ebiaridor added that although
NOSDRA has proven several times to be standing alone and working for the communities but, “The community feels indifferent because they see NOSDRA in this companies vehicles and they have a little bit of doubt about how the outcome of such visit would be”.
Earlier, he explained that the civil society organisations decided to visit the agency to reaffirm their support for the activities and to seek ways of further collaborations towards a better environment for the Niger Delta people.
“We decided to pay a visit to NOSDRA to reaffirm our commitment to collaborating with them and also to assure them that we are still going to support them in their activities because at the end of the day, we want our environment to be better,” he added.
Also speaking, Idong-Esit Umoh Smart who represented the Executive Director of Kebetkache Women Development Initiative, Dr Emem Okon noted that women are most affected when it comes to pollution of the environment because according her, women interact more with the environment.
She also claimed that many cases of early menopause and infertility in both men and women are linked to the degree of pollution in the environment.
She emphasized the need for environmental issues to be given utmost attention by the agency to safeguard the health of the citizens.
Responding, The Port Harcourt Zonal Head, NOSDRA Office, Mr Bello Augustine appreciated the CSOs for coming and reaffirmed his commitment to working with all relevant stakeholders including the CSOs to better the environment of the region.
Our correspondent reports that civil society organisations such as Lekeh Development Foundation, MAJI, Kebetkache Women Development Initiative were amongst other CSOs that attended the meeting.
