Thursday, March 28, 2024

Pollution: Edo community demands N11.736bn from NPDC

The people of Ikara community in Ikpoba/Okha Local Government Area of Edo State have dragged the Nigerian Petroleum Development Company before the House of Representatives demanding N11.736billion compensation for the pollution and environmental degradation allegedly caused in its swampland and waterways by the company’s operations.
The people, in a petition by their consultant, Eyitemi Brown-Dibofun, to the House of Representatives Committee on Public Petitions lamented that the community was gradually being turned into another Ogoniland if nothing urgent was done to check the pollution and degradation of its environment by the operations of the NPDC prospecting for crude oil in the area.
According to a copy of the petition obtained by our correspondent in Benin, the community appealed to the House to compel NPDC to replace its old and corroded network of crude oil-bearing pipelines in the area, which had become prone to leakage with new ones.
The petition partly reads, “We act for Ikara community in Ikpoba-Okha LGA of Edo State and their group of fishermen/women, farmers and individuals impacted by the crude oil spills from the NPDC failed pipeline in their locality on November 15  2013, January 5, February 18, 2014 and the fire outbreak on March 27, 2014, and another crude oil spill on April 23, 2014.”
The community pleaded with the House Committee to compel NPDC to prepare a comprehensive scope of work, which should include all crude oil polluted and degraded sites in Ikara community, and thereafter, mobilise a competent contractor to commence the required thorough clean-up, remediation and restoration work of the oil-impacted and degraded sites in the community.
The people of Ikara also called on the House committee to compel the NPDC to restore the polluted and degraded Ikara community waterway (Ogba River) and swamplands to its pristine condition through aquaculture regeneration and reforestation so that the Ikara people could return to their natural occupation of fishing, farming, lumbering and hunting, which had been brought to total ruin by years of NPDC’s crude oil pollution and its attendant environmental degradation.
“That the NPDC should be compelled to replace its old and corroded network of crude oil-bearing pipelines, which are prone to leakage in the locality with new pipelines.”

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