NIGERIA OIL SPILLS Are WORSE! -Do We Care?
-by John Vidal, The Guardian.
Nigeria's agony dwarfs the Gulf oil spill. The US and Europe ignore
it. The Deepwater Horizon disaster caused headlines around the
world, yet the people who live in the Niger delta have had to live
with environmental catastrophes for decades...
In fact, more oil is spilled from the delta's network of terminals,
pipes, pumping stations and oil platforms every year than has
been lost in the Gulf of Mexico...
On 1 May this year a ruptured ExxonMobil pipeline in the state
of Akwa Ibom spilled more than a million gallons into the delta
over seven days before the leak was stopped. Local people
demonstrated against the company but say they were attacked
by security guards. Community leaders are now demanding $1bn
in compensation for the illness and loss of livelihood they suffered.
Few expect they will succeed. In the meantime, thick balls of tar
are being washed up along the coast... "We are faced with
incessant oil spills from rusty pipes, some of which are 40 years
old," said Bonny Otavie, a Bayelsa MP.
This point was backed by Williams Mkpa, a community leader in
Ibeno: "Oil companies do not value our life; they want us to all die.
In the past two years, we have experienced 10 oil spills and
fishermen can no longer sustain their families. It is not tolerable."
With 606 oilfields, the Niger delta supplies 40% of all the crude
the United States imports and is the world capital of oil pollution.
Life expectancy in its rural communities, half of which have no
access to clean water, has fallen to little more than 40 years over
the past two generations. Locals blame the oil that pollutes their
land and can scarcely believe the contrast with the steps taken
by BP and the US government to try to stop the Gulf oil leak and
to protect the Louisiana shoreline from pollution.
"If this Gulf accident had happened in Nigeria, neither the government
nor the company would have paid much attention," said the writer
Ben Ikari, a member of the Ogoni people. "This kind of spill happens
all the time in the delta."
"The oil companies just ignore it. The lawmakers do not care and
people must live with pollution daily. The situation is now worse
than it was 30 years ago. Nothing is changing. When I see the
efforts that are being made in the US I feel a great sense of sadness
at the double standards. What they do in the US or in Europe is
very different."