Category: Rights of Nature/Mother Earth

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?

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.

The Future is in our Roots 

Environment is the tangible and intangible surroundings and the complex ecosystem that humans share with all beings, human and non-human, living and non-living. It is both visible and invisible. This includes the land, water, and the air, and all that live in them. It includes everything that aids our wellbeing and that includes our culture, spirituality and identity. Our environment is the source of our knowledge and wisdom. It gives us the strategic keys with which we navigate through life and beyond.

When one part of an ecosystem is destroyed, it impacts or destroys all the other parts. This means, nothing exists in isolation of everything else. Thus, the web of life is the interrelationships that hold everything together – something we often do not think about. As bacteria work in the soil, worms aerate the soils, insects eat the worms, trees grow in soils, birds perch on or live in trees. So, when trees die, and insects and bacteria aid their decay. And the decayed trees fertilize the soil and the cycle continues.

For instance, it is known that more than half of all living things on earth live in the soil and when soils are damaged, the impacts extend to the food web, food production, landscape stability and climate change due to altered carbon sequestration qualities. 

Many of our communities operated solidarity economies. Everyone’s welfare was largely ensured, and the basic rule was that everyone was basically his brother’s or sister’s keeper. Exploitation of labour was rare, as communal efforts were drawn on in farming seasons as well as when homes were being constructed. 

Moreover, farmers engaged in seed development and sharing. There were no patents on seeds and other varieties. If profit was not the driving force in social relations, over exploitation and accompanying pollutions were rarities. We see ourselves as integral parts of Nature rather than as some super being that has Nature prostrate at our feet. Anthropomorphic conception of nature centres actions and considerations on perceived human needs and this has raised many blind spots and birthed exploitative relationships with the land, water, air and the beings we share the planet with.

Other factors that helped healthy living were humility and compassion. Humility opens our eyes to see, that we are not alone on earth and show our dependence through that we are interdependent in a web that cannot be broken. Similarly, Compassion helps us care about the wellbeing of our neighbour by seeing them as our relatives. These values encourage healthy deference to Nature and mandate the roles of stewardship and trusteeship that we must play. 

The very first commandment given to man at creation according to the Bible was:

The LORD God placed the man in the Garden of Eden to tend and watch over it. Genesis 2:15 (NLT). This injunction forbids destructive relations within the webs of life. 

The complex web of life

Environmental protection?

Formal environmental protection laws can be said to have been codified in Nigeria in 1992. The Koko toxic waste dumping in 1988 led to the establishment of Federal Environmental Protection Agency (FEPA) by Decree 58 same year and later amended by Decree 59 in 1992.

It must be said, however, that environmental protection or defense has always been an intrinsic part of our culture and tradition. Notably, Conservation was carried out through taboos in the form of social controls about what was acceptable.  and what must not be done. In the same way, Sacred sites were also locations of conservation and species protection. And Our people also use festivals to regulate or mark when certain activities can be carried out. So, Fishing festivals help to prevent fishing and hunting at certain seasons, thus allowing the fish or animals to reproduce and mature before they are caught or harvested. 

Simultaneously, Certain species were taken as totems in particular communities and such species became entwined with the communities and were members of the communities. Generally, there were strict protection and usage of the gifts of nature and of lands, forests and water bodies including streams, creeks, rivers, swamps. 

Wisdom of the Beings

Wisdom in other than humans can be seen in several phenomena. For our conversation, we will reference migrations of beings as signifying wisdom that should humble humans and demand a duty of care towards these webs of life.

First let us consider the monarch butterflies. Monarch butterflies migrate from Northern America to California or Mexico during winter. Although the butterflies migrate back at the year it is their great-great-grandchildren that make that return journey, not the same butterflies that Chad made on the earlier trip. They can fly over distance of 3000 miles and end up in the exact areas they usually stay in. How do these tiny beings carry out such precise expeditions? Compare them to humans who need a compass or a google map to navigate their way to the next neighbourhood.

And how about the turtles that have specific spots in Lagos for laying eggs. These turtles lay eggs at Elegushi beach, Lagos and can rightly call that area their home. Species found here include endangered turtles’ species, such as the Leatherback Sea Turtle, the Green Sea Turtle and the Olive Ridley Sea Turtle. They come to lay their eggs between October and April yearly. Upon hatching the youngsters would leave and return after four years to lay eggs. The conditions that made Elegushi a desired destination have changed in recent years. Land use and seafront changes have made the area inhospitable. The coconut trees that provided shade are largely gone, and plastic wastes pose peculiar risks. Besides these, persons hunting for sea meat are on the prowl.

Colonial Environmentalism and the Breaking of the webs of life

When the web of life is broken the act overlooks justice considerations and takes down both resilience and dignity. One of the big forces disrupting the webs of life has been colonialism. Colonialism often entails the invasion, annexation of territories and outright stealing of land and resources. Our notion of land is complex because it is more than territory. Land is our history, our culture and that which connects us with our ancestors, our spirituality and our stories. Colonialism is not a mere historical phenomenon, but one that is ongoing in a diversity of modes.

Secondly, the notion that pollution is permissible up to certain “carrying capacity,” or threshold, of soils, rivers, the air and the earth has been very harmful. Although such ideas have been projected as science and provide platforms to certain forms of environmentalism, we believe that they are patently wrong, ignore the right to a safe environment and are intrinsically colonial. The notion of the threshold of pollution has benefitted polluters and exploiters as it offers them the license to pollute.

We all hear about standards measured by levels of contamination and pollution. When it is said that the ground water at Ogale, Ogoni, has benzene, a known carcinogen, 900 times above the World Health Organization’s standard, it simply means that the WHO permits certain amounts of the carcinogen in potable water. The same with the amount of carbon in the atmosphere which is measured by parts per million. This led to the computation of carbon budget that informs that the planet can tolerate up to 350 parts per million of carbon in the atmosphere and that beyond that concentration we risk catastrophic climate change. Following standards of permissible pollution of this sort scientists have produced charts that show where limits have been overshot. Meanwhile entrepreneurs of pollution use the thresholds to promote ideas such as carbon offsets and carbon trading. 

What is less considered is the fact that extractivism and accompanying pollution have harmed our soils, swamps, water bodies and the air, generally disrupted the webs of life, displaced, impoverished and killed peoples. In computing pollution thresholds, humans care very little about the heavy impacts on the webs of life because the measure of permissible or assimilative pollution is considered regarding humans and no other than humans.

The promise that pollution can be eliminated through recycling, just like carbon trading, numbs society into thinking that an equilibrium is being maintained in the use of natural resources whereas they lock the world on an imbalanced pathway of multiple overshoots. 

The idea of circular economy falls in this same pathway when it comes to overproduction for consumption. The push for capital as a driver of transformation of nature upends any sense of balance, beats consumption rates and yields waste that ought to erase the profits if producers were responsible for the whole of life cycle of their products. Inbuilt obsolescence as well as the concealment of the costs of waste and pollution are political actions. 

Pollution in the Niger Delta and Nigeria generally has become so pervasive and has trumped containment. It can be said that there is a pollution epidemic. And it must be political for this level of pollution to be tolerated. Setting thresholds before pollution can be said to have occurred is a dangerous concept of accepting contamination by assuming that it is acceptable to be damaged to such levels.

The Future is in our Roots 

Bringing back environmental sanity requires a resurgence of African environmentalism through cultural and political action. This is a subject we will dwell on in a subsequent conversation. The web of life is quite resilient, but persistent degrading actions by certain humans and corporations are testing that resilience to the limits. The School of Ecology aims to waken us to the dangers of further disruption to the webs of life and the need for everyone to be an environmental defender if we must build resilience and ensure socioecological justice.

Guiding thoughts at HOMEF’s School of Ecology on Ecological Justice and Resilience held at Oronto Douglas Hall, HOMEF, Benin City, Nigeria on 24 March 2025

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.

——-

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

Books, Imaginations and Ecological Liberation

“…all classical traditions of world literature are fostered by environments where there are intensive struggles against great evils for the restoration of human dignity.”

– G. G. Darah, “Revolutionary Pressures in the Literature of the Niger Delta”

The Community and Culture Programme of Health of Mother Earth Foundation seeks to underscore the foundational role that literature plays in our culture. Our stories, poems, theatre, songs and dance often aim to educate, correct through the sharing of information and through naming and shaming. These cultural practices conducted in the public, are for public consumption and demand action. The overall aims include keeping a record of happenings, envisioning what should happen and providing keys towards attaining preferred ends.

Ken Saro-Wiwa, Nigeria’s hero of the environment, was many things in his lifetime. He was a socioecological activist, a politician, educator, businessman, playwright, novelist and poet. He used his resources and talents in the service of the Ogonis and by extension his nation. While he laced his writing with humour, he was dead serious about the rejection of marginalisation, ecocide, exploitation and oppression. He fought for socio-ecological justice. It can be argued that through his artistic production he woke the consciousness of his people and used the cultural tools at his disposal to ingrain in them a sense of commitment to the Ogoni cause and along with that a determination to fight for justice. It can also be argued that without his prodigious cultural and literary outputs the Ogoni struggle would have burned out by this time.

Books are the vehicles for building sustainable struggles and retaining a heightened sense of humour while doing so. Literature can and should be an ideological and confrontational tool to reclaim the social mandate of the oppressed. 

While books meet the aesthetic needs of the people, they also shape their imaginations. Undoubtedly, we are shaped by our imaginaries. Writers like Chinua Achebe, Wole Soyinka, Ken Saro-Wiwa, Ngugi Wa’Thiongo, Niyi Osundare, Odia Ofeimun, Tanure Ojaide, Christopher Okigbo, Helon Habila, Chimamamda Ngozi Adichie, Nduka Otiono, Chigozie Obioma and a host of others challenge oppressive systems and the imaginaries that acquiesce to such situations. 

Our community and Culture programme aims to use the tools offered by authors, poets, playwrights, storytellers and singers to build environmental consciousness, offer pictures of alternative futures and promote resistance to the horrendous environmental exploitation and damage happening around our nation and continent.

Today is the first in our series of Book Days. As we get ready to digest portions from the book A Walk in the Curfew, there is another book we should peep into. 

This other book is The Great Ponds by Elechi Amadi. It is a book that pictures the disruptions of society through fights over natural resources and mirrors the destructive extractive activities that has numbed our sense of the fact that the environment is our life.

Two key characters in the book are Olumba of Chiolu and Wago of Aliakoro. These two communities engage in protracted wars over fishing rights to Wagaba Pond. In the tale we see Chiolu warriors defeating those of Aliakoro, and thereafter members of Chiolu claimed Wagaba Pond and fished in it without hindrance. Aliakoro villagers, however, began to poach in the pond, and Chiolu sent a war party to catch the poachers. We note that these two communities were from the same clan. They were family torn apart by a natural resource.

Over time the two communities were plagued with wars, kidnappings, and an epidemic akin to COVID-19 which is the pivot around which the stories in A Walk  in the Curfew are spurn. 

Wago was emblematic of Aliakoro’s superiority over the other villages. His power got magnified in stature by those most troublesome desires of humans: honour and praises. Yet being a proud man Wago decided to blow out his own candle, to commit suicide in the contentious pond. The elders in Aliakoro knew suicide to be a great sin but they also knew that for Wago to choose to do so in the pond was a tactical and overly insensitive gesture. Personal interest had disregarded the communal good.

The Great Ponds is a testament to the power of literature to reflect, shape, and challenge societal norms. Amadi’s work continues to resonate with readers, offering valuable insights into the complexities of human nature, community, and tradition. It also offers a cautionary tale that we should not allow natural or other resources to divide us and lead to needles destruction and deprivations.

Now, let’s turn to the writers of A walk in the Curfew and other pandemic tales, some of whom are here with us today. By writing the stories in the time of the pandemic, the writers show that emergencies are excellent moments for reflection on life. They also hold up the light on how to build resilience and overcome the most dire situations.

The stories remind us of the power of human connection, solidarity, and creativity in the face of adversity. The writings not only capture the complexities and challenges of the pandemic but also offer hope, insights, and inspiration for a more just, equitable, and sustainable future.

The authors’ contributions to this collection are a gift to humanity, and there is no doubt that these offerings will resonate with readers worldwide.

Congratulations Onome Etisioro, Mfoniso Antia (Xael) and Kome Odhomor. Thank you for offering your creativity and for opening this journey on our Community and Culture highway.

Comments at HOMEF’s maiden Book Day held on 31 January 2025 in Benin City, Nigeria

Privatized and Sacrificed

The Niger Delta is a privatized zone by the simple reason that the international oil companies have since appropriated it as a wasteland suited only for dumping of toxic wastes, oil spills, gas flares and produced water.  The privatization of the region began in 1956 when the first commercially viable oil well was drilled, and has continued unabated. The privatization has been so obnoxious because since the creeks, streams, rivers and swamps became waste dumps, they have been fit for no other purpose than to serve the private needs of the polluting corporations.

The UNEP report (August 2011) on the assessment of the Ogoni environment and the Bayelsa State Oil and Environment Commission (BSOEC) report (May 2023) attest to the fact that the region has been wholly grabbed.

The total dispossession of our peoples of their environment, disconnection from their roots and despoliation of what is left is worse than slavery and colonialism. Indeed the nearest label that can be placed on the situation may be environmental racism. Colonialism could plunder and mete inhuman treatment to its subjects, but environmental racism normalizes the treatment of both the people and their environment as non-living, subhuman and fit for nothing but to be trashed.

Kwame Nkrumah wrote spoke 0f exploitation without redress in his book titled Neo-Colonialism, the Last Stage of Imperialism (1965):

“Neo-colonialism is also the worst form of imperialism. For those who practise it, it means power without responsibility and for those who suffer from it, it means exploitation without redress. In the days of old-fashioned colonialism, the imperial power had at least to explain and justify at home the actions it was taking abroad. In the colony those who served the ruling imperial power could at least look to its protection against any violent move by their opponents. With neo-colonialism neither is the case.”

This gives an apt explanation of why the Niger Delta has become a sacrificed zone with ostensible acts of defense actually turning to acts of indignities and degradation. It is clear that we cannot escape or reverse the perverse situation unless we reboot our imaginaries, recreate our mindsets and reconnect ourselves to our environmental and sociocultural milieu. We need to rediscover our indigenous sovereignty as the core plank in the struggle for political as well as for socioecological liberation. Frantz Fanon in Black Skin, White Masks (1952) touched on this when he declared, “Imperialism leaves behind germs of rot which we must clinically detect and remove from our land but from our minds as well.”

It is hard to find anywhere else in the world that has been so insidiously trampled underfoot than the Niger Delta and other hotspots of mineral extraction in Nigeria and also in Africa generally. In this regard we note that the tin mines of Jos have been sacrificed abandoned. The same can be said of the coal mines of Enugu and other rising zones of plunder ruled by bandits and so-called unknown gunmen. Indeed, neocolonialism would probably not have progressed the way it has without the compromise of our elites in all spheres of human endeavour. These traitors gladly take the place of slave drivers and colonial masters and ensure the privatization of our commons and our commonwealth through devious legislation and through pure elite capture of the socioeconomic systems. 

The BSOEC report titled An Environmental Genocide tells of Bayelsa State as having a per capita hydrocarbon pollution of 1.5 barrels. Pause to think of that. 

Between 2006 and 2020, Bayelsa State had 3,508 oil spill incidents or 25% of all oil spills in the Niger Delta according the data from the National Oil Spill Detection and Response Agency (NOSDRA). It suffers an average of 234 oil spills per year. Figures from NOSDRA are notoriously unreliable as it under reports even in comparison to reports from NNPC. 

One bizarre example of a sacrificed zone is the Awoye community of Ondo State which has Ororo 1 well at Oil Mining Lease (OML) 95 in its immediate offshore. That oil well blew up in a fiery inferno in May 2020 and has been burning and spilling till date. In other words, Ororo 1 oil well has been burning and spilling crude oil for 4 years non-stop with nothing being done to halt the crime. The ongoing sacrifice has impoverished the people in the coastal communities by decimating their livelihoods — farming and fishing. 

Zones of sacrifice are dotted all over our continent with all having roots in extractivism incubated by colonialism. Here we can mention the gold mines of Ghana and South Africa; the diamond, cobalt and lithium mines of Democratic Republic of Congo; the diamond mines of Liberia and Sierra Leone; the oil fields of the Albertine Graben in Uganda,  Okavango basin  in Namibia and Botswana, the Saloum Delta of Senegal, the Sudd in South Sudan; the coal mines of South Africa; the gas fields of Cabo Delgado in Mozambique; the phosphate fields of Togo and Western Sahara, to mention a few. 

When our territories are sacrificed, it is not just that our land is debased, we are the ones being sacrificed. This becomes clearer to us when we realize that, for a fact, rather than being owners of the land we are actually the land. To liberate ourselves from this exploitative cul de sac, we must know that environmental action is an investment, not a cost. Every action we take today towards ending the sacrifice of our territories is an investment towards reinventing an environment that does not eat us up.


Welcome Words by Nnimmo Bassey at School of Ecology on Recovering Oil Sacrifice Zones  by HOMEF @ Niger Delta University, Amasoma, Bayelsa State, Nigeria, on 2nd  August 2024

COP28 and the Evasion of Climate Justice

The foundation for voluntary emissions cut by nations was laid in the Copenhagen Accord (2009) and consolidated in the Paris Agreement (2015) under what is known as Nationally Determined Contributions (NDC). The voluntary mechanism essentially blunted the Common But Differentiated Responsibilities (CBDR), a cardinal justice principle of the UNFCCC. Whereas in the past, rich, industrialized and polluting  nations were grouped as Annex 1 nations and had binding emissions reduction requirements, under the NDCs, there are no binding obligations. Nations simply have to do what is convenient for them to do and report back on what they have done to the COP. Such submissions were made for the stocktake at COP28. 

Voluntary emissions reduction can work in a situation where there is no crisis and no urgency for action. However, the world has already progressed from global warming to global heating and the prognosis for the future shows very dire situations. The evidence of the trend are presented in the various IPCC reports as well as in UNEP’s Emissions Gap Report (EGR). The EGR issued just before COP28 showed that rather than reducing, global greenhouse emissions increased by 1.2 per cent from 2021 to 2022 to reach a new record of 57.4 Gigatonnes of Carbon Dioxide Equivalent. In addition, an aggregation of the NDCs proposed by nations showed that the world was heading for a 2.5 to 2.9C temperature increase above pre-industrial level. At that temperature level,  there will be a spike in freak weather events and the overall conditions will make parts of the world uninhabitable. 

The reliance on NDCs lock in inequality and injustice in the entire climate negotiation process. With this understanding, my initial conclusion is that COPs conducted on an unjust basis will continue to yield hollow outcomes that at best scratch the surface of the climate crisis.  

Fossil Notice

COP28 had three significant accomplishments, but around each are bubbles of uncertainties and loopholes. The three highlights are the adoption of Loss and Damage Fund mechanism, the agreement to triple renewables capacity and double energy efficiency by 2030, and the agreement to transition away from fossil fuels in energy. Yet, in all, the real winners are the army of fossil fuels lobbyists and the petrostates. 

After kicking and screaming for decades, the COP finally agreed to acknowledge that burning of fossil fuels must end. The phrase of transitioning from fossil fuels for energy was so carefully crafted it leaves an ocean-wide space for the fossil fuel industries to keep on prospecting for, and extracting the resources. The restriction of the open-ended transition to renewable energy gives the industry the space to keep drilling for production of plastics, petrochemicals and diverse products. In other words, that celebrated clause does give a life line for the petroleum civilization to trudge on. 

Carbon Wordsmiths 

The wordsmiths of the COP play with the imaginary of the world and it is time to wake up to this fact. At COP26 the phrase “phase down” instead of “phase out” was introduced. A phasing down of coal, for example, simply indicates there would be some efforts to tinker with production and consumption volumes of the hydrocarbon. It does not by any stretch suggest halting dependence of the dirty energy source.  A lot of energy was spent at COP27 and COP28 to push for the “phase out” language in the outcome documents. The draft outcome document of COP28 particularly gave a number of options on how the language for “phasing out fossil fuels” could be couched. While negotiators and politicians tried to wrap their heads around the clause, which would remain a clear ending of the fossil fuels age, the wordsmiths came out with “transitioning from fossil fuels in energy.” So, there is the phase down, phase out and then a partial transition. Strikingly, the document also highlights the continued role of transition fuels―a clear reference to fossil gas. Fossil fuels moguls must lift up glasses to that. 

Carbon Speculators 

Whereas there was no agreement on adopting a UN sanctioned mechanism for carbon trading, aspects of Article 6 of the Paris Agreement opened the floodgates for carbon capture and utilization and storage, carbon dioxide removals and variants of geoengineering. Carbon capture introduces the notion of pollution abatement, an interesting term. Whilst it is clear that the best action is to stop pollution at source, the COP says keep polluting, but capture the pollution before it escapes into the environment. If it doesn’t work, all the polluter needs to do is to show that it is sucking or removing the errant carbon from the atmosphere. The cheers that accompanied the closure of the COP has always reminded some of us of the same reaction we see when bells are rung at the stock exchange. Carbon polluters anonymous unite!

The carbon market business has been a speculator’s paradise, with scant transparency or integrity. This state of play allowed carbon cowboys and dealers to trade in phantom carbon or even forests, leaving investors in limbo. With the matter now rolling over to COP29, observers now wonder if the tide of land and forest trading desks across Africa would be stemmed. In the run up to COP28 there were reports of deals aimed at selling off huge swathes of African territories to be utilized as carbon sinks. 

There are reports of nations inking memoranda of understanding or agreements to cede huge segments of their territories for carbon credits. Zimbabwe has put 20% of its forests on the chopping block, Zambia and Liberia are extending 10% while Tanzania is said to offer 8 million hectares of forest. Nigeria’s Niger State offered to sell 760 ,000 hectares of land to Blue Carbon, a UAE carbon focused company, for afforestation programme that would see the planting of 1 billion trees. 

The thing to note is that the lands or forests are not sold in perpetuity. The leases have stipulated years over which the investor would find ways of securing the carbon in the land, sea or forest. They could also engage in carbon farming through, for example, clearing the territory and then creating a tree plantation which should be seen as a colonial euphemism for monoculture cash cropping. The investor farms carbon and owns the credit accruing from there.  

The investor can use the carbon to offset his polluting activity at home and can even sell off some to help others offset their polluting activities. The investor can count a carbon sink in Africa as part of their Nationally Determined Contributions actions. The country that sold its territory may not do so. A question that requires answers in this market environmentalism project is about what happens with the sequestered carbon if a new buyer steps in after the expiration of the lease over a forest or territory. Supposing the new buyer embarks on land use changes, of what value was the carbon offset business beyond being carbon fiction or trading on hot air?

Lost and Damaged

Adopting Loss and Damage on the first day of the COP was a master stroke. After years of demands for payment for loss and damage suffered by victims of climate change, this was a great moment. The slack was that the funds would be warehoused in the World Bank, an institution that has a reputation of being anything but a bank of the world. Seen as a heavy handed neoliberal institution, the bank is loathed by citizens of nations over which it has engineered poverty despite its glossy poverty reduction papers. Aside from keeping the funds with the World Bank, a very instructive lesson was on how much funds were pledged for the fund at that first day. 

Pledges came from the UAE, Germany, USA and others. The $100 million pledged by UAE was a mark of generousity that, nevertheless, blunted the justice principle that requires that those with historical responsibility for the crisis should be the first to step forward. A total of a little over $400 million was recorded on the first day and this climbed to over $700 million by the close of the COP. We note that the annual loss and damage cost is estimated at $400billion. The highlight of the pledges was the miserly $17.3 million made by the USA. The point this made was that the unwillingness of polluters to stop polluting and to financially support climate action including loss and damage is not due to lack of financial resources. To back this assertion, one only needs to look at how much is expended by the rich polluting nations in military action around the world. NATO, for instance, had a budget of $1.2 trillion in 2022. 

Climate Justice

Having climate justice in quotes says a lot about the mindset of the nations with regard to the disproportionate climate change impact on vulnerable communities, territories and nations. The COP26 outcome document did not place climate justice in quotes, but added that it was only important to some. In other words, climate justice is not something of universal concern. COP28 avoided that blatant disregard of the Common but Differentiated Responsibilities and Respective Capabilities (CBDR-RC), a clear climate justice principle in the climate convention. In keeping with the general wordsmithing approach of the COPs, the principle and reality was now placed in harmless quotes. 

Africa at the COP

African negotiators went to the COP loaded with the outcome of its recently held African Climate Summit. Among the key outcomes was the need for the continent to demand for sufficient finance for the needed energy transition and the operationalizing of the Loss and Damage Fund.

African politicians see the continent as having limitless land and resources, including the so-called green or critical minerals, ripe for exploitation in exchange for cash. The leaders resolved to aim for green development and green industrialization. They also agreed to develop green hydrogen and its derivatives. To a large extent, the highlights of the document may not have influenced the official negations as much as it did bilateral and directional deals. 

The push by OPEC that its members should not accept a fossil phase out and, probably, no mention of fossil at all sat well with African negotiators, including Nigeria. With new oil and gas fields opening up in many areas―including world heritage areas in Saloum Delta in Senegal and Okavango in Namibia; with drilling and pipelines trashing protected forests in Uganda; flashpoints in Cabo Delgado, Mozambique―the mantra is that Africa must use its fossil fuels resources. On this, Africa’s politicians scored a point when the COP document stated that the transition from fossil fuels must be fast but also fair. This suggests that the transition will move on different gears in different regions. Nevertheless, the point is that the fossil fuels industry has been put on notice. The days of fossil fuels are numbered. Rather than talk of decarbonizing, the world will soon be speaking of depetrolizing. Within the coming decades, the global north will halt the production of internal combustion engines and, sadly, Africa will become the cemetery for such automobiles. 

Another point is that over 85% of the infrastructure on the continent are installed for exports clearly showing that they are not extracted to meet the energy needs on the people on the continent. 

The need to rein in fossil fuel extraction and burning goes beyond the climate question. The point that must not be missed is that from extraction to processing and burning, fossil fuels cause havoc on people and the Planet. The oil fields in many parts of the world are veritable crime scenes. Millions of old or orphaned oil wells have been abandoned around the world and remain ticking time bombs that could blow up and cause major spills at any time. 

Mining of so-called critical or green minerals is wrecking communities and biodiversity in Africa, Latin America and elsewhere. These have happened irrespective of whether the material is dirty or green. Lack of respect for people living in the territories where these resources are extracted routinely lead to a lack of consultation with the people, a lack of interest in their consent and a lack of care for the people. It is time to reach a consensus on the Rights of Nature to maintain her regenerative cycles without disruptions by humans. Indeed, the climate crisis is tied to our irresponsible relationship with Mother Earth.

Talking points used at a National Resource Justice Conference held in Abuja on the theme: Beyond COP28:Localizing Climate Solutions for Nigeria’s Resilience 18.12.2023

Extractivism’s Ecological Time Bombs

Extractivism is deeply  linked to ecological damage and negation of human rights

Ecological damage because it disrupts ecosystems, from the simple case of conversion of land use to the fragmentation of biodiversity and destruction of habitats. The following Human rights are directly negated: Right to water. Right to food. Right to dignity and the overall right to a safe environment (Art 24 of the African Charter on Human and Peoples Rights). Forced displacements and loss of housing as well as cultural and spiritual freedoms.

We are contending with both human rights abuses, and the rights of Mother Earth. Mother Earth has a right to be free from disruption of her natural cycles. Pollution of water bodies (streams, rivers, lakes, ocean) affects diverse species and has led to extensive extinctions and disrupts the cycles of nature. In the climate change negotiations there are contentious debates over reparations for Loss and Damage for remediation and restoration of extensive environmental and infrastructure harms. Some of these harms are extensive and may be irreparable and constitute ecocide.

Oil and gas

International Oil Companies (OICs)have been divesting and selling their onshore and near offshore assets to Domestic Oil Companies (DOCs) since the Local Cintent Act of 2010. By selling or divesting they seek to avoid;

  1. Decommissioning and removing unused or derelict infrastructure 
  2. Upgrading of poorly maintained facilities
  3. Liability for decades of environmental , socio-economic and human rights violations. We note that both Nigerian and international law hold that, regardless of any subsequent transfer of assets, liability remains the responsibility of those causing the injury. They could equally be held liable for damage that occur post-divestment if such arise from integrity issues that was not disclosed. 
  4. Clean up and restoration of the environment. 

The heavy dependence of the Federal Government of Nigeria (FGN) on IOCs and oil revenue has inexorably entrenched the non-transparent, corrupt, and strategically dysfunctional petroleum sector. This is the core enabler of the sort of reckless corporate behaviour that pervades the sector and by extension the nation. This misbehaviour has rendered  the relevant regulatory agencies either impotent or complicit in the malaise. 

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 the NNPC. Nigerian law and regulation requires proper Decommissioning, Abandonment and removal of all unused oil facilities to best international standards, these requirements are often ignored. This happens also in the solid minerals sector as evidenced by the abandoned tin mines of Jos and the coal mines of Enugu. Across the world, there are an estimated 29 million abandoned oil & gas wells, that will cost hundreds of billions of dollars to properly secure. 

These derelict facilities constitute threats to ecosystem impacts, groundwater contamination and human health. They are time bombs that have already started to explode. 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). The Santa Barbara blow out raged for 39 days, and official/industry estimate was that less than 5,000 barrels was spilled. Independent experts estimated that over 500,000 barrels  of hydrocarbon fluids, gas and oil were spilled in the monumental incident.  Numerous well head leaks are recorded across the region. Another notorious incident that occurred in recent times is that of the aged Trinity Spirit FSPO  that exploded and sank in February 2022. 

The Ignored Fire

Ororo-1 is a well located off the Awoye coast, Ondo State, in shallow water Oil Mining Lease (OML) 95. 

The Ororo-1 well has a long and checkered history. This 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 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 allegedly 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 2019. Owena Oil & Gas Ltd filled a lawsuit against the DPR over the revocation.

Interestingly, the well was re-entered  by the new “owners” in 2020 and the horrific blowout occurred on 15 May 2020. Note that the well was re-entered decades after it had been plugged by Chevron. The Nigerian government effectively took ownership of (controlling) the fire since it had revoked the rights of Guarantee Petroleum to the field by the time of the disaster.

Experts suspect that the blow out occurred due to a sudden rush of hydrocarbons under high pressure and the failure of both the Blow Out  Preventer (BOP) for the main well bore and the BOP between the pipe and the skin of the well. The blowout which occurred on the Hydraulic Work over rig (Grace-1 HWU) hired by Gaurantee Petroleum has been accompanied by oil spill and a constant inferno since the blow out.

It is clear that the abuse of our environments for economic gains through extractivism translates to trampling on our rights to dignity, to safe food, to potable water and to life. What shall it profit a government or even the people if you own all the petrodollars in the world, all the gold in the vaults, all the coal in the shafts and all the crude oil in the pipes, and yet you cannot breathe?

We demand our right to life. This is why the Ororo-1 well fire must be extinguished. Now!  This is why our environment must be detoxified. Now!

Presentation at HOMEF’s Ororo-1 Documentary Screening & Policy Dialogue on 27 November 2023

Will COP28 Play With Fire?

The United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) has again issued an Emissions Gap Report that underscores the fact that the Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs), the linchpin of the Paris agreement is not leading away from the climate precipice but is rather increasing the speed to a catastrophic plunge. While nations offer to do what is convenient, the world has experienced the hottest dark, weeks, months, and years in history. In simple terms, the world is breaking the global heating record daily. The UNEP report shows that if nations do what they offer in their NDCs the World is a reading to temperature increase of 2.5 or 3.0 C. The alarm has been sounding over the years and now we are staring a temperature increase that would be 100% above the sexy 1.5C target by set the Paris Agreement.

COP28 seems set to be a hollow ritual of climate action avoidance while nations hoist scarecrows that are mere totems to indolence. This prognosis may seem harsh, but from the vocations weather events recorded in recent months, increased water stress, desertification, floods and droughts, there is no way to sugar coat the climate vinegar we are serving ourselves.

It is sad that we are forced to attribute agency to all humans when we see climate change as a marker of an anthropogenic age. We should be fair to the millions that are vulnerable to climate impacts but have contributed nothing to the crisis. It has been argued that the climate harming actions were not taken by a majority of humans and placing the blame on everyone is unfair. It can be said that the basic justice principle of the UNFCCC, the Common But Differentiated Responsibilities (CBDR) attempted to address the fact that everyone is not equally responsible for wrecking the planet. The “common” underscores the fact that there is a causative commonality because no matter how minuscule the contribution may be, every living human exhale carbon dioxide and that most likely ascends into the atmosphere if it is not trapped by the trees, soils, or ocean. Adopting or accepting the principle demands that those who contributed the most to the crisis should also take responsibility for the consequences. To underscore this, the Emissions Gap report sums up that “emissions remain unequally distributed within and between countries, reflecting global patterns of inequality”.

The Emissions Gap report, one of the most appropriately titled reports, shows the chasm between emissions cut pledges and climate outcome prospects. The latest report shows that several points of no return will be reached if temperature increases climb as projected. Some of these changes would include the rapid melting of the ice sheets and the drying out of the Amazon forests. This would mean that, for humans, large parts of the world will be uninhabitable.

COP28 marks the halfway between 2021 and 2030 when the world’s governments should have done enough to limit the rise in global temperatures to 1.5C (or well below 2C) above pre-industrial levels. The COP will thus be a moment for taking inventory of what has been done, not done, or must be done. This inventory is termed a stocktake. A Land Gap Report by scientists from the University of Melbourne’s Melbourne Climate Resource examined updated NDC pledges and found that high emitting, high-income countries heavily rely on land use to offset their emissions. Australia, Canada, Russia, Saudi Arabia and the United States of America, account for about 75% of the total land required for this mathematical carbon offsetting. These land use carbon offsetting would require about 1 billion hectares of land mostly for tree planting to implement their mitigation pledges. Pledges of this sort ignore scientific and ecological principles and compounds the multiple crises the world is mired in by the encouragement of land grabbing, displacement of indigenous people, threats to food security as well as livelihoods, and ecosystems disruption.

The agenda for this catastrophe was set by the voluntary approach to emissions reduction adopted by both the Copenhagen Accord and the Paris Agreement. The adoption of a voluntary emissions reduction pathway is a direct subversion of both climate science and justice. The logic of science has been used to show the carbon budget as well as the temperature rise trajectory. However, the illogic of geopolitics has seen powerful nations backtracking from serious commitments and actions. This has expectedly driven the gap between equity and fair share wider by the day. Can COP28 afford to ignore the fact that we are hurtling to the precipice or to the canyon, as framed by the UN Secretary-General, Antonio Guterres? It will be foolhardy to ignore the call by the Secretary-General that leaders recognize the fact that “We are off the road” and “must reverse course” from coal, oil, and gas.

What does a reversing of course mean? Obviously, the COPs have been bogged down in the rut and reversing the course away from fossil fuels has been made to appear as “mission impossible”. Humans appear to have imaginations that are difficult to change once firmly imprinted on the plates of our minds. Imagination, ease, and greed appear to be three weights firmly placed on the neck of the Mother Earth to ensure that her discomfort is muffled, and our consciences are thus freed to fly over the edges of the climate canyon. To reverse course means turning our backs on coal, oil, and fossil gas. Our affinity to carbon makes this divorce difficult to comprehend or effect. If you do not see that tie, it means that you have forgotten that we are made largely of carbon. 

The Emissions Gap report reveals that temperatures already topped 1.5C for 86 days this year. The report also warns that the chance of keeping to 1.5C limit of the Paris Agreement is a slim 14 percent and will require deep emissions cuts by the big polluters. With this prognosis, it appears that COP28 will be a flaming COP. It may also be an avenue for a ritualistic elegy for a planet whose inhabitants fiddle while the flames leap to the rafters. 

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