Category: Alternatives

Ecological Time Bombs in the Niger Delta 

By 1937 the entire territory of Nigeria was considered as one oil bloc and the company that reigned over the area was Shell D’Arcy. This company was a consortium between Royal Dutch Shell and the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company, a precursor of British Petroleum. It was not until 1955 that other international oil companies were granted exploratory licenses within the mammoth nation-wide oil bloc. We should never forget that the oil business in Nigeria began as a colonial enterprise. This laid the foundation for ignoring the people and the environment because colonialism focuses on exploitation for the benefits of the colonizer and not the victims of colonization. Colonialism permits reckless exploitation and the ethic lives on in our neocolonial state.

Regions of reckless extraction are zones sacrificed for profit and the appetite for accumulation of petrodollars. The knowledge that fossil fuels are not renewable, fuel climate change, trigger wars and other socioecological malaise should raise concerns when their extraction is being expanded in our nation or even continent. For example, we should be concerned about the concerted assault on major Deltas and World Heritage zones. Targeted zones include the Saloum Delta in Senegal, the Okavango Delta in Namibia, the Virunga Park in the Democratic Republic of Congo, the Lake Albert region in Uganda and the Niger Delta in Nigeria.

Arguably the most disturbing region is the Niger Delta where almost 70 years of crude oil and gas exploitation has left an expanding legacy of oil pollution with an equivalent of one Exxon Valdez oil spill, or 260,000 barrels of crude oil, spilled every year in the region. This has been happening simply because our regulators allow the polluters to literally get away with murder and are more concerned about the financial returns than the health and security of the people or environment.

This neocolonial bind may seem hopeless but communities and territories where crude oil, gas and coal are being extracted are rising up to demand their right to a safe environment and a general right to self determination. Key examples are the struggles to free the Yasuni ITT in Ecuador and Ogoniland in the Niger Delta of fossil extraction and related pollution. The people of Ecuador resolutely opposed the extraction of oil at Yasuni, a biodiversity hotspot, through a national referendum in 2023 and also voted against an effort to change the country’s 2008 constitution which allows for the Rights of Nature. On their part, the Ogoni people sacked Shell oil company from their territory in 1993 and remain largely resolute against the reopening of those polluting wells. These examples inspire campaigners around the world today to work to Ogonize and Yasunize the world. And journalists are best equipped to be the best allies and promoters of this campaign.

Disasters Foretold

The extreme pollution of the Niger Delta is well researched and documented in major reports over the years. These include the Niger Delta Environmental Survey (NDES) conducted between 1991 and 1997. It was commissioned by Shell Petroleum Development Company (SPDC) but the final results were never released publicly. The report confirmed the role played by oil exploration and extraction activities in massive soil and water contamination, loss of vegetation and biodiversity. It also noted the poverty into which the region sinks while oil activities externalize the environmental costs.

We also have the report of the Environmental Assessment of Ogoniland paid for by the polluters and published by the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) in 2011. One of the key recommendations of the UNEP report is the decommissioning of oil infrastructure as well as environmental risk assessments of abandoned “assets.”

A third milestone report aptly titled An Environmental Genocide — Counting the Human and Environmental Cost of Oil in Bayelsa, Nigeria, was issued by the Bayelsa State Oil and Environment Commission in 2023. This report shows such widespread and reckless destruction of the Bayelsa environment that a state of emergency ought to have been declared immediately the findings were out. The commission has since been dissolved upon completion of their assignment. The next step is the implementation of the recommendations of the report which includes the establishment of a Bayelsa environmental recovery agency and a fund of at least $12billion over a 12 years period.

The report of an assessment of The Impact of Oil Extraction on Women’s Health in the Niger Delta with a focus on the women of Otuabagi was published in 2024 by Kebetkache Women Development and Resource Centre. The report showed the alarming presence of 15 out of 16 petroleum hydrocarbons tested for in the bodies of the participating women. 

A concise report presenting key elements of these reports has just been published by Health of Mother Earth Foundation under the title Disasters Foretold and Retold. It is a useful report that places key findings and recommendations from the researches at your finger tips.

Environmental Timebombs 

There are wellheads, manifolds, flow stations, and pipelines that ought to be decommissioned and removed from communities across the Niger Delta by the IOCs and their domestic partners. Nigerian law and regulation requires proper decommissioning, abandonment and removal of all unused oil facilities to best international standards, these requirements are often ignored.

These derelict facilities constitute threats to ecosystems especially regarding groundwater contamination, soil, and air quality. They are time bombs that are not waiting to explode but have already been exploding. Examples include the blow out in November 2021 of Aiteo’s Nembe/Santa Barbara Well-1 in the Santa Barbara River in OML 29 （Bayelsa State） which raged for 39 days, releasing an official/industry estimate of less than 5,000 barrels whereas independent experts estimated that over 500,000 barrels of hydrocarbon fluids, gas and oil were spilled in the monumental incident. 

Colonial Extraction and Ignored Fires

The Niger Delta is literally a region on fire. We assert that the region is not set on fire accidentally but quite intentionally. Let us give some examples to buttress this assertion. 

First, an inferno has been raging at at Ororo-1 oil well, Oil Mining Lease (OML) 95, in shallow waters off the Awoye coast, Ondo State of Nigeria, for over 6 years now following the blowout on 15 May 2020 during development processes.  The oil well was first drilled by Chevron oil company but was shut off in the 1980s with a steel plug due to pressure issues. The well was thereafter awarded as a marginal field to Guarantee Petroleum and its partner Owena Oil & Gas Ltd （an Ondo State company） in 2003 but the award was revoked in 2019 because the company had not developed and brought the field to full production before expiration of an extension period that elapsed in April of that year. At the time of the explosion it was estimated that the inferno could be extinguished within six weeks by drilling a relief well, however six years afterwards nothing has been done with regulatory agency and responsible companies hiding behind a legal fig leaf that does not hide the crime against the people and the planet. The fact that Owena Oil and Gas Ltd or anyone else filed a suit against the Department of Petroleum Resources (DPR), now replaced by agencies including the Nigerian Upstream Petroleum Regulatory Commission (NUPRC), over the revocation of their lease does not obviate the duty of care of the government to secure our environment and peoples. 

Second, an oil well fire has been raging at the Alakiri wellhead at Ofiomina-Ama in Okrika Local Government Area in Rivers State since 2024 and is almost becoming a dubious tourist attraction while exposing the community and the environment to deadly harm. 

Third, Bille, another community in the Niger Delta is living a nightmarish life with subterranean fossil gas bubbling out in water wells, farmlands and rivers. In Bille the expectation of flames breaking out at any spot at any time is the beginning of wisdom. The flames are already erupting in the community.  To blame are poorly maintained oil and gas infrastructure in the riverine community. But no one is being held to account. 

All these are happening in broad daylight and are not by any means hidden. They are real life pictures of hell fire and the government and the oil companies have refused to repent, do the needed penance and change their ways. They illustrate how extractivism is deeply linked to ecological damage and negation of human rights through the fragmentation of biodiversity, destruction of habitats, oil spills, routine gas flares,  and outright pollution through dumping of wastes produce water into the environment.

The violence we see in the world today is predominantly extractivist in nature and relate to the efforts to appropriate, grab and enclose territories with fossil fuels and other minerals by imperial hegemonic designs. Obvious examples include the kidnapping of a country’s sitting president, the struggle over the control of the Strait of Hormuz and the unending conflicts in the battle for critical minerals in the Democratic Republic of Congo. 

Investment in violence for extractivist ends leads to the negation of human rights as well as the rights of nature. More obvious in territories like the Niger Delta in Nigeria is the negation of the right to safe water, the right to food and the right to life. Extractivism is driven by profit for the exploiter and the sacrifice of the exploiters. The operating logic allows this flagrant violation propel forced displacements, loss of dignity cultural and spiritual freedoms. The polycrisis convulsing the world requires clear systemic alternatives that must challenge our imaginaries and actions. We must name the fundamental causative factors and avoid the fixation on false solutions such as those common in thinkings around market environmentalism. 

Let me applaud you for your commitment to not only report the horrors in our environment but also to take up the campaign for a clean up of the Niger Delta. At a time when politicians are busy looking for parties on which platform to contest for offices, we need to demand that they state their stance regarding the situation of the Niger Delta environment.  

Arguably, Nigeria is a one party state, because although they bear somewhat different names, there is little or no fundamental difference in their sketchy foundations or manifestos. In the past we heard of carpet crossing, today they just slide from one to another and can do so on a daily basis simply because the carpet has since been thrown away and the voters are utterly disregarded. It is imperative that Nigerians all join the Nigerian Union of Journalists, Rivers State Council, in demanding urgent environmental and health audits of the entire Niger Delta, as well as a clean up and restoration of lost and damaged biodiversity. We are all connected by the environment and cannot afford to stand aside and look while oil and gas pollution kills our land and people. 

There is no reason an oil well should burn for years without action being taken to stuff out the flames. There is no reason gas should bubble and burst in flames randomly across a community and yet nothing is being done to safeguard the lives of the people. There is no reason pipelines and well heads should blow up, pollute the environment, and attract no actions to halt the mess, and have the contaminated areas remediated and restored.

Reporting in Ecological Battle Fields

The media has the duty and capacity to report the ecocide happening in the Niger Delta factually and in real time. The media is equipped to dispassionately tell the stories and offer space for the victims to tell their stories too.The thing the polluters dread most is having their harmful acts exposed and placed in the public domain. They do everything to ensure environmental crimes are either unreported or are under reported. This happens routinely. It is believed that oil companies spend twice as much on media relations and perception engineering than they do on research and development. They lay emphasis on manipulating public opinion. Notice that they are now referred to as energy corporations rather than as oil companies. This new nomenclature deodorizes the oil company label and shows them as indispensable in the global quest for energy. 

A major win for the oil companies is that many people now get to believe that oil spills and other pollutions in the region are caused by community people rather than failure of poorly maintained equipment. With helicopter flights they could show local and international journalists sites ravaged by kpor fire and over time a mind shift occurred — so that even obvious failures like wellhead blowouts, oil pipelines rupture or gas bubble from underwater pipelines are seen as results of third party interferences even before the crime scenes are examined. 

We have seen incidents where Joint Inspection Visits (JIV) have indicated that oil spills were caused by equipment failure and yet companies and sometimes government officials would claim otherwise. A case in point is the repeated oil spills at Kpean, Ogoni, in the Yorla oilfield. The media must not be gullible to swallow lines from the playbooks of the polluters. Reporters must visit the fields, conduct research, and make factual reports irrespective of who is favoured or disfavoured by their findings.

The media must remain the bridge between the people and policy makers. Through news reports, cartoons, feature stories in electronic and print media, these malfeasances must be exposed. Where best practices are in play such must also be acknowledged. The media could also be active in sharing capacities with citizen reporters in the communities to ensure prompt reporting as well as the quality of such reports. This is an urgent issue considering the prevalence of social media reports.

Time to Act is Now

It is unacceptable that international oil companies can be allowed to avoid taking responsibility for their toxic legacy accumulated over seven decades. If we have a modicum of self respect, the so-called divestment deals should be reexamined and repudiated, because they simply provide the IOCs with basis to attempt to offload their responsibilities onto the already damaged environment and impoverished people. The right things to do, and which I believe the NUJ agrees, include holding the oil companies and the government responsible for the killing of the Niger Delta Environment. For this reason, we echo the demands of the recently held 5th Niger Delta Alternatives Convergence (NDAC):

  1. That every abandoned, leaking, and non decommissioned oil well in the Niger Delta must be treated as a crime scene, given the continuing threats they pose to lives, livelihoods, ecosystems, and public health.
  2. Environmental and health audits of the Niger Delta must be urgently carried out and followed by the immediate cleanup, remediation, and restoration of polluted environments and ecosystems affected by oil extraction and abandoned facilities.
  3. Immediate and transparent audit of all oil wells and petroleum infrastructure in the Niger Delta, alongside the urgent decommissioning and dismantling of derelict facilities, with state governments leading accountability efforts and the Federal Government enforcing compliance.
  4. Liability for decades of environmental, socio-economic and human rights violations, and payment of reparations as liability remains the responsibility of those who caused or are causing the injury. 
  5. Ending of routine gas flaring.
  6. That while we acknowledge landmark reports including the Willinks Commission, NDES (1991-1997), UNEP (2021), and BSOEC (2023) reports, the future of the Niger Delta must no longer be defined by exploitation and ecological sacrifice, but by justice, restoration, environmental integrity, and development shaped by the aspirations and rights of the peoples of the region.
  7.  Immediate declaration of a State of Environmental Emergency in the Niger Delta

With life expectancy at 41 years in the region we cannot over emphasize the urgent need for the government and oil companies to listen to the people and act on these demands. The time to act is now. Bags of rice or such relief materials mean little if our people still live in contaminated and explosive environments. 

Congratulations for taking the lead in demanding the immediate clean up of the Niger Delta. This campaign serves the interest of present and future generations. Your action in this regard is writing the history that future generations will look back to for inspiration. Silence on this matter would be treason, to quote the words of Ken Saro-Wiwa who was murdered for this cause.

An address at the Nigerian Union of Journalists, Rivers State Council’s Correspondents Week on the theme The Imperatives of Comprehensive Cleanup of the Niger Delta Environment, Role of the Media on 18 May 2026.

Halting the Disastrous Exploitation of the Niger Delta

The Niger Delta Alternatives Convergence (NDAC) provides the platform for analyzing the challenges of the region, building an understanding of our shared struggles and outlining an array of actions that must be taken to resolve the crisis. NDAC starts from the premise that there is a solution to every challenge. We also believe that the surest way to get out of a pit is to stop digging further. NDAC also insists that we never forget that oil and gas are not renewable resources and our best interest is to secure the integrity of our environment and the array of gifts of Nature. Oil wells will eventually dry out. The world will either exhaust it or move to another energy source. 

Besides, every oil well has a lifespan usually known during the exploration stages, and before commercial drilling and extraction. This means that the oil companies know the number of years a particular oil well will have a good and economically viable yield. When an oil company enters a field and/or community they already know how much oil and gas is available in that location, how much they would extract and how much petrodollars will flow into their coffers. 

Entry into such a location is primarily governed by the profit they would make from a particular well or field. Oil companies plan when they enter and when to abandon communities and oil wells located there. In other words, they knew that they would abandon Otuabagi in the Oloibiri oil field by the 1970s when they were entering the community in the 1950s. They intensify exploitation within the lifespan of the field, make as much profit as possible within that time including by offloading environmental costs on the people and the environment while at the same time devising ways of managing the expectations of the community by dangling before them carrots that are never accessible and by other devious methods. 

Today, several oil wells are out of service in the Niger Delta, but they haven’t stopped polluting. This reality requires that every oil well in the region should principally be seen and treated as a crime scene. To do otherwise means leaving the wells as ticking time bombs that expose communities to grave dangers as they explode at will. 

It is important to note that oil wells can explode, erupt and spill oil at any stage of exploitation depending on whether they are secured or not, and whether the operators duly exercise requisite duties of care  according to best practices and in line with regulations. We have seen oil wells which had been drilled and plugged erupt and spill massively with attendant socioecological harms as was the case of Shell Petroleum Development Company’s (SPDC) Ibibio 1 well located at Ikot Ada Udo, Ikot Abasi Local Government Area, Akwa Ibom State, in 2007. It is important to note that the oil well had been developed and corked and left for over 50 years while it continued to pose deleterious threats to the environment. 

The first economically viable oil wells in the Oloibiri oil field continue to leak today even though Shell left them in the 1970s and the Nigerian government designated them as part of an oil museum. As we speak they are still leaky and exposing the Otuabagi communities to great environmental and health harms.

The Ororo-1 Oil Well at Oil Mining Lease (OML) 95 located in shallow waters off the coast of Awoye in Ondo State blew up during development processes on 15 May 2020 and the well has been spilling and burning for 6 years now. The oil well was first drilled by Chevron oil company but was shut off in the 1980s with a steel plug due to pressure issues, according to reports. The well was thereafter awarded as a marginal field to Guarantee Petroleum and its partner Owena Oil & Gas Ltd (an Ondo State company) in 2003 but the award was revoked in 2019 because the company had not developed and brought the field to full production before expiration of an extension period that elapsed in April of that year. At the time of the explosion it was estimated that the inferno could be extinguished within six weeks by drilling a relief well. However, six years afterwards nothing has been done with regulatory agency and responsible companies hiding behind a legal fig leaf that does not hide the crime against the people and the planet. The fact that Owena Oil and Gas Ltd or anyone else filed a suit against the Department of Petroleum Resources (DPR), now replaced by agencies including the Nigerian Upstream Petroleum Regulatory Commission (NUPRC), over the revocation of their lease does not obviate the duty of care of the government to secure our environment and peoples. 

While on this, there is another oil well fire raging at the Alakiri, Ofiomina-Ama in Okrika Local Government Area in Rivers State since 2024 and has been on for two years now, almost becoming a dubious tourist attraction and exposing the community and the environment to deadly harm. 

We can cite a disturbing pattern of locations experiencing repeated oil spills and fires without required attention to rectify the situation and restore the environment. Examples abound in Ikarama community in Bayelsa State; Kpean in Ogoni where repeated eruptions in the Yorla oil field remain unattended to and many others.

The extreme oil and gas pollution in the Niger Delta is not isolated or unknown. Gas flares, illegal in Nigeria since 1984, remain as giant furnaces across the region with new ones coming up like the ones recently lit right within Ikot Ebekpo community in Onna LGA of Akwa Ibom State.  

These environmental horrors have been documented in major reports in the Niger Delta over the years, including the Niger Delta Environmental Survey (NDES) commissioned by SPDC and carried out from 1991to 1997, but whose final results were never released publicly. That report confirmed the role played by oil exploration and extraction activities in soil and water contamination, loss of vegetation and biodiversity. It also noted the poverty into which the region sinks while oil activities externalize the wealth.

We also have the report of the Environmental Assessment of Ogoniland paid for by the polluters and published by the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) in 2011. One of the key recommendations of the UNEP report is the decommissioning of oil infrastructure as well as environmental risk assessments of abandoned “assets.”

A third milestone report aptly titled An Environmental Genocide — Counting the Human and Environmental Cost of Oil in Bayelsa, Nigeria, was issued by the Bayelsa State Oil and Environment Commission in 2023. This report showed such widespread and reckless destruction of the Bayelsa environment that a state of emergency ought to have been declared immediately the findings were out. This is yet to happen. Happily, members of the BSOEC and others have not given up and now works as an International Working Group (IWG) to ensure that a recovery plan among other actions are put in place for the  Bayelsa environment and that of the wider Niger Delta. 

The report of an assessment of The Impact of Oil Extraction on Women’s Health in the Niger Delta with a focus on the women of Otuabagi was published in 2024 by Kebetkache Women Development and Resource Centre. The report showed the alarming presence of 15 out of 16 petroleum hydrocarbons tested for in the bodies of the participating women. 

These reports all underscore the extreme harms abandoned or operating oil wells pose to our peoples. This ought not to be so. And this state of neglect, debasement and contamination of our lands and waters are inexorably leading to extermination or expanded environmental genocide unless something is done, and done urgently. This is the core reason we are gathered in this 5th NDAC. The first NDAC held in this same hall five years ago produced a Manifesto whose demands must be fulfilled. We are especially happy that we have in our midst today political leaders who can lead this process and community leaders who will support them to ensure the exploitation of our lands and people without care is halted.

The focus of this fifth NDAC draws our attention to critical gaps in the governance of the petroleum sector in Nigeria. We stress that the end of an oil well is known right from the first moment they spurt. That end may only be extended by technological developments that may increase the viability of extraction from such wells.

The knowledge that oil wells do not produce in perpetuity led to regulations requiring oil well decommissioning at the end of their useful life. Decommissioning is a key regulated process for safely shutting down oil and gas wells by safely plugging them before abandoning the wellbore. This process helps to isolate hydrocarbon zones, and this is then followed by the dismantling of surface infrastructure, remediating the sites and restoring them. 

Decommissioning and abandonment are the final rites required on every oil well when economically viable operations cease. Oil companies know this. NUPRC rules require this. The abandonment doesn’t mean oil companies pack their suitcases and leave, or simply change their names in dubious legal gymnastics to avoid accountability and shirk responsibilities as we are seeing in Nigeria. Abandonment is a technical exercise that happens after the wells are properly and permanently plugged to ensure the integrity of the environment and protect ground water. This process also involves the killing of the wells by controlling pressures at such wells.  Abandonment includes the dismantling and removal of wellheads, production platforms and other surface equipment. 

These are critical regulatory and moral matters which cannot and should never be glossed over. It is time for a clear audit of all oil wells in the Niger Delta. Knowing that it will take more than a lifetime to restore the environment of the Niger Delta it is clear that clean up, remediation and restoration of the region must begin now and this should be the most urgent political action by government. After losing so much we must wake up to insist on a census of all the wells and an enumeration of which is considered viable and which must be decommissioned, dismantled and the environment remediated and restored. 

It is time to replace aged pipelines, remove the well heads that although termed Christmas trees bring no joy but death and destruction.

Intergenerational justice demands that we wake up and perform our duties for generations yet unborn. It is our duty to see the future, eliminate the perils erected by altars of capital and halt the perpetuation of colonial exploitation that ignores our people and territories. 

We cannot ignore the decades-old neglect and active assault our people and environment have been exposed to. The Willinks Commission report of 1958 laid out the socioeconomic challenges of the region in simple and understandable language. The NDES report, the UNEP report and the BSOEC report all show the unconscionable state of our environment. Remedying this goes beyond the throwing of cash at the problem in the name of development. While development is vital, such must be defined by our peoples, and must start from a complete overhaul of our mindset. It is time to reject exploitation and processes leading to extermination. As we say in Akwa Ibom State, we have to Dakada. We have to Arise! 

The NDAC Manifesto captures it all, says it all, sets out a road map and NDAC 2026 is our space to draw the lines, drive in the pegs and ready ourselves to work to give us a chance to survive. 

It is our time to collectively Arise. Welcome.


Welcome words by Nnimmo Bassey at the 5th Niger Delta Alternatives Convergence held  in Uyo, Akwa Ibom State, Nigeria, on 14 May 2026

Straight from the Strait of Hormuz

No matter the reason for warfare the environment and the innocent end up bearing the brunt of the inevitable destruction. This fact is clearly illustrated by the several ongoing smoldering and open conflicts that have led to this season being described as one of endless conflicts and violence. Many of these conflicts and wars have crude oil footprints, suggesting an underlying connection between energy grabbing and wars. The most glaring examples are the situations with Venezuela and Iran.

In all these situations of conflict the war waged by the USA and Israel on Iran highlights many distinct concerns. First, the shifting explanations as to why the first shots were fired suggest to some observers that crude oil and gas are major motivations. Crude oil, more than a drive for democracy, turned out to be the major reason for the assault on Venezuela. For Iran we are told they must not develop an atomic bomb. Indeed no nation should develop atomic bombs. Reality is that there are already about 13,400 nuclear weapons in the world today and these have a combined explosive yield of more than 360,000 times than the bombs detonated at Hiroshima during the Second World War. 

Second, it is much easier to find funds for destruction than for construction or building of lives. This explains why wars gulp close to $3 trillion a year while the budget for development and for tackling the climate chaos and loss of biodiversity hovers in the range of just billions of dollars. 

At a time when the world should be investing in climate adaptation and mitigation, funds are being gulped by the weapons industry and the oil moguls. At a time when talks should be on how to recover our collective humanity we are hearing moans over a depletion of stocks of missiles, suicide drones and sundry weapons of mass destruction. We are seeing the bombing of civilian infrastructure, chemical factories, hospitals, and schools. We are seeing ecocide planned, executed and bragged about without consequence. 

Unfortunately, one acknowledged common attribute of war mongers is that they know how to start wars but hardly ever how to end them. This may be because they are never in the line of fire, besides those from opinion polls.

The tourniquet introduced by Iran at the Strait of Hormuz should drive a strong message to every nation — that we live in a common ecosystem of interdependences. The Strait gets shut and straightaway the world feels the shock. While the missiles fly and sorrow, blood and tears afflict the innocent, the oil companies smile to the bank alongside the players in the military industrial complex. It is estimated, U.S. oil companies may garner up to $63 billion in excess profits from the price increases this year driven by the Iran war.    Experts also estimate that the U.S. may gain additional federal revenue of approximately $600 million/day from its output of 20 million barrels of crude oil per day. With a war that may end up costing an estimated $200 billion, would oil cushion the impact of deaths and destruction?

The paradoxical situation for Nigeria is that the sharp rise in the price of oil does not suggest more revenue for social services for the population. With a poor capacity in local refining, the nation depends on the importation of refined products and is thus totally exposed to the shocks related to global oil conflicts. Privately owned Dangote Refinery that could have cushioned the shocks is forced to import crude oil due to insufficient receipts of locally extracted crude which stands at less than the nation’s OPEC quota. Moreover, according to reports, 400,000 barrels of the 1.5 million barrels of Nigeria’s daily crude oil production goes to paying debts owed to international oil majors, banks and traders. Thus the pump price of petroleum products is translating to rising costs across board in an unregulated and evidently inefficient economic environment.

Added to the economic quagmire is the reality of the violence inflicted by crude oil extraction and refining on the environment of the Niger Delta. The region experienced an equivalent of one Exxon Valdez oil spill annually for close to 70 years. This level of violence is an undeclared war against the people and the environment.

Back in the Middle East, the explosion of missiles guided by artificial intelligence illustrate the artificiality of warfare fought without conscience and notions of accountability. It is a season of barbarism. Might is not always right. Stealth may sometimes be visible.

The shutting of the Strait of Hormuz (and possibly others) should wake the world from slumber to the essential need to phase out fossil fuels and invest in ecologically sensible alternative energy sources. The release of huge strategic reserves of oil by members of the International Energy Agency may bring a small respite, but the increasing price of oil has not appeared to abate. How much more barrels will be released when the reserves runs dry? Moreover, experts have noted that the current energy instability introduced by the war against Iran will not easily overcome even after the last missile has exploded. Reasons for this include the huge reconstruction that will be needed to restore damaged or obliterated infrastructure and to rebuild confidence in challenged geopolitical alliances and among sectoral players. 

The famous invisible hands of the market has been exposed by the apparent open manipulation of oil prices by statements made, sometimes on social media posts, by political leaders. This underscores the need for energy democracy and an end to dependence on energy resources that plungers the world into conflicts, financial turmoil, social disruptions and unimaginable destruction. The world needs an urgent phase out of fossil fuels, not digging in and fighting over them. This is the lesson straight from the Strait of Hormuz. 

Junk Foods and the Politics of Hunger

Food occupies a central place in our culture. It plays a key role in religious/social activities, and is a major marker of the passage of times and seasons. It is a celebration. Food unites people and families and marks one’s acceptance in a home, family,  or community. Food is not just an object thrown into the stomach to quench hunger. 

Not surprisingly, food varieties mark the peculiarity of ethnic nations and cultures. A tour of food varieties in a nation tells tales of the diversity of peoples in such nations. 

Over time and due to cross boundary interactions, certain foods have been adopted across nations. In Nigeria one can find restaurants serving amala,  ofe nsala, banga, afang soup and edikangikong virtually anywhere you go to. Internationally you are likely to find Chinese or Indian curry in most countries. And, the idea of an English breakfast is taken for granted.  The spread of food and the adoption of some have been spurred by commerce, colonialism and other factors.

Food and humanitarian aid were weaponized during the Biafra-Nigerian war and deeply impacted the diet and wellbeing of the people in the then Eastern Nigeria. I recall seeing that after the war, families ate less nutritious foods and those who were lucky ate more of eba made from cassava, the poor man’s crop. That was clearly attributable to displacement, blockages, destruction of livelihoods and other causes of poverty occasioned by the fratricidal war. Distended bellies were not signs of overeating, but often of kwashiokor.

Knowing that food is the anchor on which our culture is built, we must remind ourselves that for our people agriculture is a way of life, not just a business. Any policy or law that prohibits seed sharing is basically aimed at disrupting solidarity in our communities and replacing our communal power structures with ones built on exploitation, profiteering, poverty and hunger.

Food travels. Tastes are cultivated. Taste buds adjust to what is fashionable. This has birthed the fast or junk food and the related junk culture.  Fast foods caught on quickly because humans have become addicted to instant gratification. We want freshly made food but cannot wait for it for 30 minutes at the restaurant. So we all make a quick dash for the “food is ready” shop. To ensure the food is attractive the fast food outlets are brightly coloured, brightly lit and totally surrounded by music so loud your wrist watch warns that staying there for extended periods will lead to permanent hearing impairment. To keep you from pondering the food set before you, there are big screens in every direction offering you soccer, wrestling, music, violent news and war movies. Distracted and deafened we gulp the foods, enjoy the colours and sounds and go  away with a load of heavy metals, colourings and other loads in our guts.

When top politicians make a show of eating junk foods, and gulp litres of sugary beverages, they send a powerful but wrong message that obviously deviant junk culture is hip. 

Our worries do not end with fast foods. We are equally assailed by the rush of Frankenstein foods produced through genetic engineering. Many of such products are imported without queries into Nigeria. Some of the genetically modified (GM) crops are already in our farms, markets and dining tables. Those approving them swear they are safe for human consumption. We are served doses of insecticide as the GMOs are fabricated to kill certain pests. If junk foods birth junk culture, certainly genetically modified foods will produce transgenic cultures.

The biggest factor pushing these food cultures around the world is geopolitical in nature. Hegemonic control of cultural products go beyond movies and sink their claws into our food systems. Poverty, wars, debt, cultural manipulations open the way for food colonialism to take root. It is a power play arena and requires conscious efforts to halt, overcome and reverse. 

Decolonizing our food systems requires that we liberate our tongues and taste buds. It requires that we recover lost varieties. It requires that we reject GMOs. It requires that we preserve and share indigenous seeds and celebrate our foods. It requires that we expose the underlying market forces driving and influencing food system governance solely to their benefit and to the detriment of small holder farmers who feed the world and the attendant environmental and socio-cultural impacts.

We must critically examine the root causes or main drivers of hunger in Nigeria/Africa and resist its weaponisation to entrench a culture that does little or nothing to improve food systems but instead maximise profit for a handful of enterprises.

Who benefits from Hunger? Is hunger solely a question of productivity? Does hunger persist because farmers are not producing enough, even though in climes like Nigeria almost half of food produced goes to waste? How do global market relations and policies affect the rights of local food producers or their power to compete? These are pertinent questions that require deliberate attention and responses if our governments are serious about addressing hunger or food insecurity.

This session of our Sustain-Ability Academy brings to fore these questions amongst others and recommends critical recalibration of our food systems to ensure fairness and justice, resilience and sustain-ability.

Remarks at the Sustain-Ability Academy on Food, Power and the Politics of Hunger hosted by Health of Mother Earth Foundation and the Centre of Politics, University of Port Harcourt on 19 March 2026.

Crimes of Colonialism

The African Union (AU) has “Justice for Africans and People of African Descent Through Reparations” as its theme of the year 2025. This theme arose from the Accra 2023 Reparations Conference. In line with the theme, the government of Algeria and the African Union co-hosted a conference on Crimes of Colonialism: Towards Redressing Historical Injustices through the Criminalisation of Colonialism in Algiers on 30th November and 1st December 2025.

Working towards fair reparations for harms and the exploitation suffered by Africans and peoples of African decent over the past four centuries has been a key concern for the AU and the Organization for African Unity (OAU) before it.  The first Pan African conference on reparations held in Abuja, Nigeria, in April 1993 resulted in the first collective position of African political leadership as captured in the Abuja Proclamation on Reparations. That declaration stated that “the issue of reparations is an important question requiring the united action of Africa and its Diaspora…” being “fully persuaded that the damage sustained by the African peoples is not a ‘thing of the past’ but is painfully manifest in the damaged lives of contemporary Africans from Harlem to Harare, in the damaged economies of the Black World from Guinea to Guyana, from Somalia to Surinam.” The Abuja Proclamation called “upon the international community to recognize that there is a unique and unprecedented moral debt owed to the African peoples which has yet to be paid – the debt of compensation to the Africans as the most humiliated and exploited people of the last four centuries of modern history.”

A number of conferences have since been held on reparations and on racism as well. The Algiers conference on the Crime of Colonialism can be said to have stood on the shoulders of those earlier endeavours. I participated on a panel that focused on the Environmental Impacts of Colonialism at this conference. Delegates included ambassadors, ministers of foreign affairs, and experts drawn from across Africa and the diaspora.

Algeria was praised for hosting the historic and strategic conference aimed at seeking a recognition of the crime of colonialism and seeking reparations as the basis for sustained peace and healing.  The conference advanced Africa’s position on crimes of colonialism as systemic violence and exploitation that, alongside slavery, qualify as crimes against humanity. A call was made for a declaration of an African Day for the remembrance of the victims of transatlantic enslavement and colonialism. It was also noted that colonialism has not ended and that there are still 20 colonies in the Caribbean besides those in Africa and elsewhere. 

My notes from the event included the fact that colonialism was not a civilising process but one of wanton extraction, exploitation, humiliation and abuse of rights. It embodied the great crimes against humanity including those perpetrated in Congo, Cameroon, Namibia, Angola, Mozambique, Madagascar, and other places. References were frequently made to the nuclear tests that the French carried out in Algeria during the colonial days. The contributions of Frantz Fanon, author of “The Wretched of the Earth”, an internationalist African anti-colonial activist and revolutionary were acknowledged. The impacts of colonialism on education, economy and other spheres of life were stressed and disruption of African or Africa’s? culture was highlighted as the destruction of the glue that holds African peoples together. 

The high-level ministerial panel on the topic From Recognition to Codification: Criminalising Colonialism in International Law showed that colonialism is a system and not an event and cannot be successfully fought without strategic plans. Such plans and actions must include ways of bringing back African systems of governance through education. Discussions around the human and generational impacts of colonialism underscored the health and genetic effects of nuclear tests as well as intentional spread of disease, displacements and other acts of violence. 

Permit me to share some points I put across on the panel on Environmental Impacts of Colonialism. The first point was that colonialism and neocolonialism will not end except coloniality is erased. The persistence of colonialty of power and knowledge reinforces the continuation of colonialism in new forms. These produce extreme and destructive exploitation. And we must not forget, as Kwame Nkrumah stated in his book on Neocolonialism, that the worst form of imperialism is exploitation without responsibility. This mode of rapacious exploitation persists on the continent.

Another key point is that colonialism was birthed and nourished by extractivism. It was all about controlling the colonies or sacrifice zones to the benefit of the colonizers’ home territories which were considered sacred and untouchable.  Colonialism extracts nearly anything: labour, data, cultures, minerals, finance and is virtually insatiable. Colonialism’s emphasis on land dispossession, resource extraction, and cultural destruction frequently resulted in ecocidal practices as they were extensive, intentional, persistent and often irreversible. The fact that the environmental crimes are continuous and persistent can be seen in the ongoing degradation of the Niger Delta where oil and gas has been destructively extracted from colonial times to the present. Other examples include extraction of gold in Obuasi in Ghana, coal in Whitbank in South Africa, oil in the Sudd, South Sudan, gas in Cabo Delgado, Mozambique, colonial extraction of so-called critical minerals in DR Congo and the notorious extraction of uranium in Niger Republic. 

The environmental impacts of colonialism also appear through carbon colonialism which is also manifesting as a continent-scale land grab. The time has come for the halting of colonial extraction in all ramifications and a recognition of the ecological/climate debt being owed Africa, as part of the needed reparations. In other words, climate finance should be approached from the platform of ecological and climate debt.

To get off the rut, the AU should produce a model law on Rights of Nature to be adopted by all African nations. Secondly, the AU should promote the codification and utilisation of African environmentalism built on African philosophies, culture and cosmology. The AU should also recognize and promote grassroots initiatives for halting expansion of fossil fuels sacrifice zones and towards resource democracy using the Ogoni example in Nigeria and the Yasuni experience in Ecuador as examples. Finally, the map of Africa requires urgent review with the abolition and erasure of divisive, thoughtless, colonial boundaries, as those were mere demarcations of zones of ownership, control and exploitation by the colonialists. 

Coming away from the conference I kept ruminating on a strong advice offered by Eric Phillips, Vice Chair, CARICOM Slavery Reparation Commission. He said, “We must not be prisoners of our past, but architects of our future.” It was a call for action for all, but the tasks rest especially on African political leaders. Will they rise to the occasion and show leadership?

Ogonize and Yasunize!

(A raging Battle of Words)

We have always been concerned about words. Words are powerful. They help us communicate events that unfold around us. They are building blocks for action. They aid mobilisation. They can be tools for organizing, control, or even of colonization and exploitation. Negotiations at local, national and global levels often enter quagmires due to disputes over words and their meanings. A word can have multiple meanings and with a little inflection a benign word can turn into an insult and ignite a wildfire.

Global actions can be forever delayed due to manipulation of perceptions that make emergencies appear to be less so. An example is the framing of the climate crisis as global warming. If the crisis had been labelled global heating or climate chaos, it would probably have garnered serious attention. Warming can be a nice thing because most people love keeping warm.

For years, climate campaigners have demanded a fossil fuels phase out. Rather than do that, COP26 came up with the idea of a phase down of unabated coal power and phasing out of inefficient fossil fuel subsidies, not phasing out of fossil fuels. A phase down should have pulled someone’s face down in shame. After kicking and screaming, COP28 in the United Arab Emirates ended up with an agreement to move away from fossil fuels in energy systems with the objective of achieving net-zero emissions by 2050. This was the agreement that the UNFCCC characterised as a pointer to the “Beginning of the End” of the Fossil Fuel Era.

With that sort of wordsmithing negotiators and some campaigners came off celebrating that the word ‘fossil’ was mentioned, not caring whether it would be phased down or phase out. To avoid dumping coal, we were told we can have clean coal. Cutting carbon emission at source was suddenly considered an uneconomic way of thinking and the preferred path became carbon offsetting. So, polluters are permitted to carry on polluting provided they can show that an equivalent of their emissions is compensated for by those who pollute less or by mechanisms that can capture or bury such pollutions. Another sleight of hand was played by pushing a concept of net zero down gullible throats even though everyone knows that net zero is not zero.

At another level we have seen how colours have been used to lull the world to sleep while escalating the exploitation and marketisation of Nature. The green economy was quickly followed by the blue economy. There are blue, green, grey, turquoise, and other colours of hydrogen. All these are plied to show that a choice of colour can clear your conscience and allow a particular action to be acceptable or to attain certain degrees of acceptability.

It was in recognition of the potency of words that Oil Companies turned to calling themselves Energy Companies. If oil tends to soil anyone’s hand, certainly what energy does is to strengthen you. So, Energy Corporations swagger into the communities and continue their polluting activities with reckless abandon.

Polluters have not only adopted colours and words to hide their crimes, sometimes they simply subvert the meaning of words that previously provided moorings for a drifting world. A key word in this bracket is sustainability. Truth be told, the meaning of the word is now thrown into the air. The United Nations Brundtland Commission in 1987 defined sustainability as “meeting the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs.” That original definition ought to stick to our memories and keep us on guard so that subverted definitions do not become acceptable and thus aid dysfunctions to become normalized. An example is when an oil company issues an annual “sustainability report” while mindlessly engaging in persistent ecological destruction or ecocide. This led Health of Mother Earth Foundation to adopt a hyphenated Sustain-Ability so that we emphasise that anything that does not sustain the ability cannot be termed sustainability. Another hyphenated word is re-source which eliminates the consideration of the gifts of nature as mere commodities but require that we recognize the sources, return to the sources and see them as what they are both tangibly or otherwise.

How about when a military establishment announces that they would carry out an environment-friendly warfare?

The climate arena births many words, besides the ones already mentioned, that we must be wary of. Such words include decarbonisation as a process of moving in a low carbon economy. The wedlock to carbon is so strongly welded by capital that there appears to be no life beyond carbon. This is why the possibility of defossilization appears anathema to carbon moguls.

Most people agree that an energy transition is vitally essential if we are to avoid catastrophic climate change. That transition basically refers to a shift from fossil fuels to renewable energy sources. There is however plenty of acrobatics over what constitutes green or renewable energy resources. There are pundits who argue that nuclear power is renewable, ignoring its hazardous life cycle — from cradle to its dubious grave. Someone may even argue that hydroelectric energy, hydrogen, nuclear or thermonuclear energy are clean energy modes.

The necessity of a shift from dirty to renewable energy has triggered a rush for the minerals required for the process. The extractivist mindset that drives capitalism, and violence threw up a powerful word to numb the sensibilities and permit destructive mining of the minerals. That word is “critical”. The key resources needed for renewable energy components are thus termed critical minerals. The connotation is that if you stop or slow down the extraction of these minerals you can be accused of being against the transition to renewable energy. This subtle label permits violence, displacement and environmental genocide in many nations and territories, but especially in the Democratic Republic of Congo. Nothing is clean or “renewable” if it reproduces patterns of territorial exploitation and degradation epitomized by fossil fuels extraction.

The power in the use of words and the subversive twist of meanings requires epistemic challenges, including the creation of new words and phrases. New words are birthed so regularly that older people sometimes have difficulties understanding the language of youths. In Nigeria words creep into common vocabulary through music, movies and street yarns. Such new words include japa and kpai. To japa means to emigrate out of one’s country, while kpai means to die, and to kpai something means to kill that thing.

The call for epistemic reclamation of the true meaning of certain words is an anti-colonial enterprise. We also see this in the concept of thingification as espoused by Aimé Césaire in his  “Discourse on Colonialism,” where he characterized thingification as a situation where a colonized subject is reduced to a thing, objectified along with the land and resources, and used as a commodity. Our reading here is that we can forfeit our very being when words are used to invisibilize us or our territories.

In our struggle to have community-centered just energy transition we believe that the primary focus must be to keep fossils in the ground. To do this requires bold actions and a robust challenge on our imaginaries. One approach is to learn from the David and Goliath battles that communities and territories have successfully waged against corporate giants and their allied political structures. We propose a learning from the Ogoni people of the Niger Delta, Nigeria and the Waraoni people in the Yasuni territory of Ecuador. With due deference to their rugged resistance to the claws of fossil fuel extraction machines we call this resistance Ogonizing and Yasunizing. The clarion call is for the world to Ogonize and Yasunize.

As a working definition we see Ogonize and Yasunize to mean “a call for the protection of territories with natural or cultural diversity threatened by serious environmental impacts such as from oil and gas extraction, open cast mining, and other mega-projects.”

Here is the background to the birthing of these words. Yasuni is a territory in Ecuador where the people voted in a national referendum in 2023 to keep the oil in the ground. Over 59% of voters chose to end oil extraction activities in the Ishpingo, Tiputini, and Tambococha (ITT) oil fields, located inside the Yasuni Park. Ogoni is a territory in the Niger Delta where the people halted oil extraction in 1993 by declaring Shell a persona non grata. This move led to the militarization of Ogoniland and the execution of Ken Saro-Wiwa who was the leader of the Movement for the Survival of Ogoni People (MOSOP) and eight other Ogoni leaders on 10 November 1995. Because the people have remained ogonized (and are not agonizing) they have stood their ground and rejected efforts by colonial extractors to return to the oil fields of Ogoniland.

To Ogonize and to Yasunize is to reject the culture of poverty and death and to stand for the wellbeing of Mother Earth and her children. It is to stand for Ubuntu, Etiuwem and buen vivre.

It is a decolonial struggle against authoritarian extractivism and other socioecological misbehaviours.

Rejecting Food Colonialism

According to a popular adage, “when solving a problem, dig at the roots instead of just hacking at the leaves”. The challenge of food insecurity in Nigeria/Africa requires a deliberate pause and critical thinking about the factors that have created it and a concerted effort at addressing them. Overlooking the root causes of food insecurity (including farmer-herder clashes, banditry), poor support for local farmers, poverty, inequality, inflation, climate change and others shows the lack of readiness to solve the problem.

The gates for the entry of GMOs into Nigeria were flung open in 2015 with the enactment of the National Biosafety Management Agency (NBMA) Act. This act was further expanded in 2019 to allow for gene editing and synthetic biology. Sadly the biosafety Act was preceded by the creation of National Biotechnology Development Agency (NABDA), an agency created to promote modern biotechnology. It was later christened National Biotechnology Research and Development Agency NBRDA). To be clear, this agency was established at a time there was no biosafety law in the country. The cart was clearly put before the horse and this seriously injured any effort to regulate the sector and ensure biosafety in the country. This is particularly so because the promotion agency has a deep embryonic connection with the agency that ought to regulate it. This warped governmental approach has made it impossible for policy makers to see biosafety as an existential issue.

These two agencies of government can be excused for seeing themselves as infallible and even as being the government itself. They see GMOs as a one size fits all solutions. They virtually forget other areas of modern biotechnology and set their eyes only on gutting our agricultural and food  systems,  Solutions such as the genetic engineering of plants/animals do not address these root causes and we should be worried that there is such an adamant push to entrench them in our food systems by the producers and their allies in government. There is obviously an open conspiracy to counter our best interests while locking in colonial controls over our agricultural and food systems.

GMOs are promoted in Nigeria on the premise of addressing food insecurity. However, after almost three decades since their introduction in the world, they have not eradicated or reduced hunger. Rather, they lock in the system that promotes hunger by degrading soils and poor harvests (case of Nigerian cotton farmers in 2024), reducing biodiversity, disregarding the knowledge of local food producers, and concentrating power in the hands of a few market players. 

GMOs ride on the wave of global fetishization of technology by which technology is considered a silver bullet. Besides the generally poor regulatory frameworks, GMOs directly impact on human as well as socio-economic rights of our peoples. The complex threats including environmental degradation, and loss of our food heritage make it expedient that we examine the push for GMOs on the continent more critically. We must debunk the notion that resisting GMOs is akin to opposing science or technology. Reject GMOs is also not a matter of fear, except the fear of being colonized with its attendant exploitation and humiliation.

It is important to stress that GMOs represent a paradigm shift in agriculture; they are not just an option or solution. We must think beyond the mythical temporary relief that is imagined or promised and consider what long term impacts they portend. GMOs are plants, animals, or microorganisms that have undergone fundamental changes at the cellular level and can no longer be considered natural. Most of them are engineered to withstand dangerous herbicides which kill other organisms except the engineered ones. Other crops are genetically engineered to act as pesticides aimed ostensibly to kill identified pests that would otherwise attack the crop or seeds. Examples include Bt Cotton and Bt Cowpea or beans approved for commercial planting and consumption in Nigeria.

GMOs represent the subversion of Africa’s food systems which was intentionally constructed through the colonization of thought — a phenomenon concretized through persistent coloniality of knowledge and power. You may wonder why anyone would subvert another’s food system. The reasons for this are many. The colonizers think and act in their own interests. This subversion covers every area of production and  ensures that labour is not invested for meeting local needs while expanding and consolidating labour to meet the needs of the colonizers. By emphasizing a cash economy, for instance, farmers are forced to neglect their own nutritional needs, and are derided as subsistence farmers, and are made to offer their labour in exchange for meager wages. When the exploiting colonizers are kind, they turn the farmers into mere out growers who own nothing, are given seeds to cultivate and are thereafter given a fraction of the harvests. The colonial powers scored double on this count by introducing slavish plantation agriculture which grabs lands, displaces communities and offers locals menial jobs as farm hands or guards. 

Colonial agriculture thrived not only by producing crops for export, but it also benefited from altering the appetites of the colonized. These changes did not happen only through advertisements; the indigenous foods were denigrated as uncivilized and sometimes simply forgotten due to a chronic absence of the crops or ingredients for preparing the foods. Today, the erosion of varieties is exacerbated by many related factors including genetic manipulations, hybridization of crop varieties, prevalence of junk foods and hostile seed laws.

Our farmers saved seeds are falsely deemed inefficient, whereas these seeds are indigenous and have the natural ability to adapt and thrive in prevailing circumstances in which they are grown. It must never be forgotten that our farmers have selected and preserved seeds, crops, and animal varieties over the centuries. They have kept a stock of varieties that both provide food and meet our medicinal, cultural and other needs. They kept the norms that preserved biodiversity. They practiced rotational farming, mixed cropping, strategic pastoralism, and seasonal fishing. They understood the rhythms of nature and maintained the natural equilibrium by being respectful of the Earth.

These practices are being threatened by the genetic modification of seeds particularly those that make up our staple foods. Core concerns about the control of seeds are being ignored by many but these should be confronted head on and now is the time to do so. Our farmers will be forced to depend on corporate seed entities for seeds as productivity of GM seeds typically degrades after the first planting. Overtime, we risk losing our genetic diversity and control of our seeds to these foreign entities who are merely after profits no matter the cost to human life or the environment.

Responsible use of technology in agriculture requires that we keep careful watch on their effect on human and environmental health. We also need to consider the fact that technologies that promote monoculture and erode our biodiversity are not sustain-able and must be avoided in a world that is almost at the brink of ecological collapse. We cannot afford to make a fetish of techno fixes or consider them to be silver bullets. We do not need GMOs to be able to produce enough food for our population. GMOs have not led to an increase of food production since their introduction. In 2025, it was reported that Tanzania achieved food sufficiency by 128% without GMOs and by increasing support for their local farmers and by promoting organic food production. Recent studies have revealed that more than 40% of food produced in Nigeria goes to waste due to lack of proper processing and storage facilities. This needs to be addressed.

We must decolonise our agricultural system. The ways to achieve this include the preservation of crop and animal varieties, rebuilding our food systems, thereby, recovering our culture. A decolonized agriculture invests in support systems for farmers, including by providing extension services and providing/upgrading rural infrastructure. It also means preserving local varieties, ensuring that farmers have access to land and, funding research institutions to build a knowledge base on healthy soils and resilient indigenous crops. It would also mean putting farmers on the driving seat of agricultural policy, elevating and prioritizing the precautionary principle in biosafety issues, and outlawing harmful herbicides and pesticides. It would again mean placing a swift moratorium on all types of agricultural modern biotechnology as this is a key means of eroding species varieties besides threatening outright extinctions.

Nigeria is at a critical point where we must decide on the way forward for food sovereignty. This is not just another symposium. It is a space where we must exert our rights, and demand for the liberation of our food system.

Keynote by Nnimmo Bassey, Executive Director of HOMEF, at the National Symposium on GMOs held at Qualibest Grand Hotel, Utako, Abuja, on 1 September 2025.

Needed Socioecological Cohesion

The fabric of the social and environmental conditions of Nigeria are literally stretched to the limit. The threats emanate from local and global strands of the polycrisis wracking the globe. Exploitation, displacements, conflicts, climate chaos, socioeconomic inequities combine to threaten the tenuous fabrics holding our nation and peoples together. Desertification, deforestation, extreme water and air pollution, deadly floods, coastal and gully erosion, insecure farms and diverse ecological devastations all merit a declaration of national environmental security state of emergency? The widespread environmental challenges also provide clear platforms for collective work to salvage the situation in ways that political coalitions may not.

Waiting before acting is a luxury the people cannot afford. The clarion call for action is urgent and critically existential. This reality inspired the Nigeria Socioecological Alternatives Convergence (NSAC). Regrettably at this second outing the conditions remain dire. We remain undaunted because we understand that the struggle for the change we need cannot be a sprint because it has to be a comprehensive overhaul of a system entrenched by indifference and lack of accountability. The socioecological alternatives we propagate must overturn the current predatory system of destructive extraction and shredded ecological safety nets. Our charter has to construct a Nigeria that is decolonial and post extractivist.

In the maiden national convergence, we collectively agreed to a national charter for socioecological justice.  Even as we achieved that major milestone we had hopes that at a future date, we would have participants from other African countries. That future has come faster than we expected. At this convergence we have participants from Burkina Faso, Cameroon, Ghana, Mali, Mozambique, Senegal, Sierra Leone and Togo. We also have other international partners. The reality of having an African Socioecological Alternatives Convergence (ASAC) is drawing near. 

There are sources to learn from in efforts to overhaul environmental governance in our nation.

  • In Africa, Kenya and South Africa have constitutional provisions for environmental rights that we can learn from.
  • The South American countries of Ecuador, Bolivia and Venezuela have constitutional provisions for the rights of Nature.
  • The Rights of Nature includes the right for Nature to be free from pollution. It also places obligations on human at a number of levels. The Declaration on the Rights of Mother Earth is yet to be universally adopted[1].
  • There is a strong campaign for the recognition of ecocide as a crime in the Rome Statute in line with genocide, war crimes, crimes against humanity, etc.
  • We already have outcomes of litigations as well as reports that show evidence of ecocide in Nigeria and these could back up the urgency of the crisis . Two of such reports are the UNEP Report ( Environmental Assessment of Ogoni environment, 2011) and the Bayelsa State Oil and Environment Commission Report (Environmental Genocide, 2023). 
  • Delta State House of Assembly is working on a bill to recognize the personhood of River Ethiope. The 2014 National Confab had recommendations for justiciability of human and environmental rights 

According to the NSAC Charter, ‘Our vision is of a Nigeria where ecological integrity, social justice, and economic wellbeing coexist. We must birth a Nigeria where the rights of nature are respected, where communities have control over their resources and enjoy resource democracy, and where everyone has access to clean air, water, and a healthy environment.’

The key demands of the NSAC Charter include 

·       Access to water as a human right

·       Recognise the Rights of Nature

·       Inclusive policy development 

·       Just energy transition from a polluting and epileptic dirty energy model to renewable energy

·       Job transitioning

·       Transition to agroecology

·       Ensure biosafety and biosecurity, ban genetically modified organisms  

·       Halt deforestation, promote reforestation 

·       Protect our wetlands and halt indiscriminate land reclamation 

·       Invest in flood control infrastructure 

·       Enforcement of mining regulations 

·       Decommissioning of mines and oil wells at end of life 

·       Compensations for job losses and reparations for ecological damage to affected communities

·       Ecological audit — State of the Nigerian environment 

·       Environmental remediation 

·       Accessible and affordable clean energy. Energy democracy

·       Revamped emergency response mechanisms 

·       Reject false solutions to climate change, including carbon offsets, geoengineering, etc

·       Halt gas flaring

·       Halt and reversal of divestments by IOCs

·       Declare no mining zones

The environment supports our life and exploitation of nature’s gifts must be conducted in manners that do not disrupt or breach the cycles of nature.  As part of nature, humans have responsibilities and obligations regarding how we interact with our environment and other beings we share the planet with. Human activities contribute to the squeezing we are experiencing from desertification in northern Nigeria and the erosion washing away our communities on the coastline. Sixty-eight (68) years of extraction of fossil fuels has rendered the Niger Delta a disaster zone. Climate impacts and environmental genocide leave festering sores on the territory. Uncontrolled solid mineral extraction is poking holes across the land, and these combined with long abandoned but non-decommissioned mines are scars that we cannot ignore. 

Let us together ‘Yasunize’ and ‘Ogonize’ by demanding the protection of communities and territories with natural or cultural diversity against activities that cause serious environmental impacts, such as from oil and gas extraction, open cast mining, and other mega-projects. We must wake up and demand a change of mentality. Our leaders must Arise and be true compatriots, not lords or emperors, even if that anthem has been placed on the shelf. Oil for development has placed Nigeria on a treadmill surrounded by voracious and insatiable forces of exploitation, expropriation and extermination. 

The major focus of this Convergence is Examining Relevant National Policies and Frameworks for Addressing Environmental, Climate Change and Socio-ecological Challenges. We have an erudite professor and climate change expert to set the tone for our deliberations. We look forward to learning about those critical planks for addressing the subject. We will also hear how the policies and frameworks which he has helped formulate and frame over the years are faring.

NSAC is a space for the convergence of ideas, sharing of wisdom and passion. We note the critical role of communities in nation building and believe that any nation that sidelines communities is on a very slippery slope. This is why we must do all we can to stand with our peoples, build cohesion for socioecological transformation and ensure communities are embedded as key players in defining the direction of a truly just energy and social transition.

It is our collective space. It is our time. Welcome.

Welcome words by Nnimmo Bassey, Director of HOMEF, at the 2nd Nigeria Socioecological Alternatives Convergence held at Shehu Musa Yar’Adua Centre, Abuja, on 14 July 2025.

[1] https://www.rightsofmotherearth.com/declaration

Yasunize and Ogonize the World

On this Earth Day, we call on all people, all movements, and all communities of conscience to rise up and reclaim power from the toxic and exploitative grip of extractive forces that continue to assault peoples, communities and our Mother Earth. We stand with peoples and communities who are resisting the violent operations of a global economic system that exploits, pollutes, and dispossesses without care or limit. 

As we mark this year’s Earth Day, we must not forget that while corporations celebrate with green logos and hollow pledges, millions of communities are living the realities of poisoned air, dead rivers, stolen lands and a stolen future. Our communities are bleeding. And while the machinery of capitalism and warped geopolitics try to make us believe we are powerless, we know better. Our people are not defeated. We are rising. 

For too long, transnational corporations have treated our lands as sacrificial zones, our waters as waste bins, and our lives as collateral damage. But Earth Day is not theirs to co-opt. It belongs to the people. And today, we reaffirm that the theme Our Power, Our Planet is a call for resistance as a duty, and as the path to justice. We are children of the Earth. We are neither disposable nor discounted.

The crisis we face is not just an environmental crisis. It is a crisis of power. Capitalism, especially in its neoliberal, expansionist form,has long waged war on the planet. Wars over oil, food, forests, water, and rare earth minerals are frontlines of a global assault on our Mother Earth. These are not isolated events; they are the inevitable outcomes of a system built on the notion of endless growth, domination, and extraction. The cost is incalculable: ecological destruction, climate chaos, mass displacement, food insecurity, and cultural annihilation. The victims of this global assault are overwhelmingly the poor, the Indigenous, and local communities. On this Earth Day, we stand in fierce solidarity with all peoples resisting the corporate plunder of nature, from the Amazon to the Congo Basin, from Standing Rock in North America to the Niger Delta and Okavango Delta.

Our work has always centred on grassroots power. We work with communities to monitor pollution, defend their territories, and demand environmental justice. We promote food sovereignty through agroecology and seed autonomy. We push back against GMOs and the biotech takeover of our food systems. Through our School of Ecology and Sustain-Ability Academy, we cultivate radical political education and ecological consciousness. We reject the capitalist myth that the Earth exists to be exploited or to be recklessly transformed. We reject the lie that development must mean destruction. 

We insist on Eti-Uwem, on Ubuntu — highlighting our interdependencies and interconnectedness. Thus, we reject the notion that a small elite can poison the planet while the rest of us pick up the pieces. We call for a decolonisation of nature and a restoration of balance, rooted in solidarity, equity, and justice. We join cross-border campaigns for climate justice. We organise against land grabs and water theft. We build autonomous local alternatives, from community energy systems to collective food production. We defend the commons, challenge patriarchy, oppose militarism, and reject the imperialist logic that turns nature into a battlefield.

To mark this Earth Day, our vision is clear – a cooperative, decentralized society powered by community-controlled renewable energy. An economy where land, water, and seeds belong to the people, not to profit-hungry corporations. A politics where those most impacted by environmental destruction lead the way in healing and restoration. We are calling for the closure of expansionist projects like the EACOP pipeline in East Africa and the Nigeria-Morocco gas pipeline in West Africa. 

We demand the halting of efforts to divest by polluting oil companies that masquerade as agents of development while destroying ecosystems and communities. We demand that they bear full responsibility for close to seven decades of atrocious pollution on the Niger Delta as well as payments for remediation, clean up, restoration and reparations for decades of plunder. Our Power, Our Planet calls for a total transition from fossil fuels, rejection of false solutions including carbon markets, geoengineering, corporate “net zero” lies and stand for real climate. The transition away from fossil fuels and dirty energy isn’t simply an environmental imperative, it is a moral obligation that we owe the future generations and it is one that must be undertaken without delay. We make this moral demand on an increasingly shameless immoral world. 

We lean on heroic, even difficult, struggles of communities and territories who have insisted on keeping fossil fuels in the ground. We salute the courage of Ogoni people who halted crude oil extraction in their territory in 1993 and remain resolute on this reality to date. The Ogoni struggle has been an inspiration to communities across the world that real

Real power is Peoples’ Power. Today we call on all to stand with the Ogoni people, to Ogonize and reject any attempt to reopen the oil wells of Ogoniland.

We equally applaud the people of Ecuador, especially the indigenous communities in Yasuni ITT in the Amazonia who struggled against the extraction of crude oil in their territory. They kept at it for over a decade and a national referendum was held on the matter in August 2023. At that historic referendum, 59% of the citizens of the country voted to keep almost 1 billion barrels of crude oil underground in the Yasuni National Park. They inspire the rest of the world to Yasunize their territories. On this Earth Dat we call on all peoples to rise and Ogonize and Yasunize our world.

While some wish to make Earth Day a festival of greenwashing, others are using the day to mock the drive for climate justice. But we will not allow it. Both groups will fail. This day belongs to those who fight. Our struggle is not only against polluters and profiteers, it is for Mother Earth, for justice, and for the future.

Our Ocean and Human Rights

Today we are considering the state of our ocean—not as a commodity to be exploited, but as a common good that sustains life, livelihoods, our culture and spirituality. Our ocean is under siege, and the communities that depend on it bear the brunt of pollution, displacement, and human rights abuses.

 Across the coastline of Nigeria, community folks are being forced from their territories, deprived of their resources and left to grapple with the consequences of laxly regulated natural resource exploitation.

The economic forces driving this destruction prioritize profit over people, extracting resources beyond the ocean’s capacity, and leave behind a trail of ecological devastation. The infrastructure of Nigeria’s economy begin at our shorelines and extend to the deep waters where resources are extracted— and coastal communities who bear the pressures from the land and the sea remain trapped in poverty. We cannot ignore the countless oil well blowouts that have polluted our waters: Akaso Well 4, Atanba, Bonny Terminal, Buguma Wellhead 008, Santa Barbara, and the ongoing inferno at Ororo Oil Well 1 at Awoye, Ondo State, which has been raging for close to five years now, among others. These disasters are ecological crimes that contribute to climate instability, and a worsening scarcity of land and water, placing entire communities and livelihoods at risk.

We live with the struggles of fishermen and women who set out each day with their nets and baskets, only to find empty waters—enclosed and sacrificed for industrial dredging, multinational oil companies and corporate fishing. A Community like Aiyetoro with its history of well organized governance and industrial strides is now a ghost of its former self, bashed and washed by unrelenting waves and left to grapple with unrelenting impacts of global warming and possibly heading for complete displacement unless we act.

We acknowledge the plight of Makoko’s communities, whose rights to housing, food, and health have been trampled by forces that would be happy to have the people displaced so the waterfront can be grabbed by speculators. Overall, the destruction of marine biodiversity disproportionately affects fishing communities, making them the most vulnerable to environmental degradation.

Our fight to defend the ocean is inseparable from the fight for human rights and justice. We must resist the unchecked advances of transnational polluters in our ocean and demand accountability. We must protect our biodiversity, our land, and our water from the destructive forces of exploitative capitalism seeking to privatize the commons. It is time to rethink our relationship with nature—to take only what can be replenished and respect the delicate balance that sustains us all.

Governments must act—not as enablers of destruction, but as stewards of the environment, ensuring that decisions about natural resources are made with the full participation of the communities who rely on them. Nigeria has signed so many conventions and treaties regarding the wellbeing of marine ecosystems.We even have designated Marine Protected Areas whose protection is disputable. Our constitution may be said to have a tilt towards ensuring the right to life, but there can be no right to life without the right to a safe environment.

This workshop is more than a gathering—it is a platform for us all as oceanographers, marine scientists, government agencies, civil society organizations, and community leaders to reflect, strategize, and commit to the urgent task of defending our ocean. Coming on the heels of the International Wetlands Day, we use this opportunity to take a stand against so-called land reclamation which should rightly be named aquatic ecosystems conversion and grabbing. We have seen wetlands and dependent economies destroyed by urbanization and diverse speculators. We are also seeing swaths of the ocean and public beaches being converted into fenced housing estates or so-called superhighways. These disregard the fact that the state of the ocean directly affects the climate, reflects on the quality of our lives and the capacity of the Earth to maintain her cycles and support all beings.

Let us seize this moment to build a future where our ocean is protected, our rights are upheld, and our communities thrive.

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Nnimmo Bassey’s Opening Comments at the State of the Ocean Workshop held at the NIOMR on 3 February 2025