By: Barikui Felix
Some civil society organizations have called for an amendment to the Act creating the Nigeria Oil Spill Detection and Response Agency, or NOSDRA, in order to guarantee that the problem of oil spills is promptly addressed in the Niger Delta and other regions of the nation.
According to the CSOs, the NOSDRA Act’s amendment to increase funding and independence will help the agency become stronger and enable it to purchase equipment to handle logistical challenges that will improve environmental protection.
While leading a group of civil society organizations on a familiarization visit to the NOSDRA Zonal Office in Port Harcourt, Kentebe Ebiaridor, Programs Manager, Environmental Rights Action/Friends of the Earth, made the call.
He maintained that the community and civil society organizations no longer accept a situation in which NOSDRA relies on the polluter to transport them to the spill sites for investigation and other remediation activities. He said that this situation raises questions about the investigation’s credibility because it shows the polluters and NOSDRA working together.
“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
Despite NOSDRA’s repeated demonstrations of independence and community service, “the community feels indifferent because they see NOSDRA in this company’s vehicles and they have a little bit of doubt about how such a visit would be.”
He previously clarified that the civil society organizations’ decision to visit the agency was made in order to reiterate their support for the initiatives and look for opportunities for future cooperation in the pursuit of a better environment for the people of the Niger Delta.
“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.
In response, Mr. Bello Augustine, the Port Harcourt Zonal Head of the NOSDRA Office, thanked the CSOs for their visit and reaffirmed his dedication to collaborating with the CSOs and all other pertinent stakeholders to improve the local environment.
