Some stakeholders have called for amendment of the Petroleum Industry Act (PIA), to abolish section 257 which criminalised an entire community, should oil facility be tampered with by any hoodlum within the area.
The stakeholders which include leaders of host communities, Civil Society Organisations (CSOs) legal and environmental activists made the call at the third edition of the Niger Delta Socio-Ecological Alternatives Convergence (NDAC) in Abuja on Wednesday.
The conference which was organised by the Health of Mother Earth Foundation (HOMEF) also demanded justice for people of the region for the many years of environmental degradation by oil companies.
They also called for the restoration of the Niger Delta environment before the global transition to clean energy is concluded.
In his remarks, Prof. Lucky Worika, the Director, Center for Advanced Law Research, River State University, said that section 257 should be deleted.
He decried the clause, saying the PIA which took 20 years before it was passed into law should not have had such a clause in the first place.
“Section 257 that deals with the fact that if there is sabotage or alleged sabotage in communities, that they cannot benefit from the Host Community Trust Fund.
“That is basically criminalising an entire community for the offense of one or a few; it is not done anywhere.
“The is the most anachronistic section in that legislation that I think needs to be deleted immediately because the communities are not happy.
“They have suffered enough then if some miscreants in the communities now go and tamper with installations you now hold the entire community, who does that?,” he said.
Worika said there had been almost 70 years of oil and gas exploration and development in the Niger Delta, resulting in ecological, environmental damages including destitution for the people.
He said there were many government interventions to salvage the situation but all failed as a result of political interference.
Also speaking, the Chairman of Bayelsa Traditional Rulers Council, King Bubaraye Dakolo, described PIA as “anti people Act.”
According to him, the section of the Act serves the purposes of the oil companies as against that of the host communities.
He said since 1998 to date, the Federal Government had deployed excerpts and security agencies to address sabotage in the area but had not succeeded.
“So 25 years of Joint Task Force (JTF) did not bring about any oil thief being incarcerated anywhere.
“You are a journalist so go to Kuje prison, go to Kogi presently, go to Kiri Kiri prison and check the roll call from 1998.
“But today in my kingdom, if there is oil pipeline vandalism in my kingdom, I and my people, my subjects will be held responsible.
“You are passed a job to the traditional ruler that professionals military professionals could not do, security professionals, Department of State Securty (DSS) professionals and other professionals in this country put together could not do.
“You put it on a youth that has not gone to school to do, you put it on a pregnant woman to do and that if they fail to do it, they will be no benefit from that three per cent that comes from the trust fund, they won’t get it,” he said.
The Director of HOMEF, Mr Nnimmo Bassey, said the degraded situation of the Niger Delta region must be realigned for the wellbeing of the people and the environment.
He said the region had been placed on a bloody slab and visited with unrelenting abuse by the forces of extractivism, internal colonialism and dispossession.
“It has been recklessly exploited right from the time of slavery to the time of colonial monopolies and current realities where it is raped for the sake of keeping a waning petroleum civilisation on life support.
“The convergence continues to demand urgent responses to climate change impacts, including setting up mechanisms for emergency response to floods, shoreline protection, restoration of mangrove forests and halting of deforestation.
“We demand for proper urban and rural planning and rejection of false solutions such as geoengineering, Blue Carbon and other carbon upsetting offsets which are tools for carbon slavery and colonialism.
“The convergence is about people and planet, with the world shifting away from dirty energy, it is of utmost urgency that the Niger Delta region is rid of the scars of that regime and the destitution it has forced on the people.
“It is time to demand a demilitarised region with offshore oil platforms converted to wind farms for renewable energy,” he said.
