For thousands of years, human settlements in the Niger Delta, endowed with discipline and respect for its surroundings, existed in symbiosis with one of the largest, efficient and productive equatorial ecological systems in West Africa. It is now evident to many observers that driven by greed and profit, four decades of multinational oil exploitation in this region has resulted in one of the worst environmental offenses in history.
Shell and other multinational oil corporations would be wise to heed their own funded reports that encourage them to clean up the Niger Delta; or should be forced through all possible legal channels to do so. Programs to provide social and health care services must be complemented by cleaning up the vast Delta Region of Nigeria. Only extensive ecological reconstruction of this once extremely productive area can possibly redress and reverse the destruction of the environment and the dispossession, destitution and denigration of local populations. With the enormous profits gained from the region over the past four decades, oil industries can easily afford to do this. As a major producer of oil for combustion and flared gas that directly emits greenhouse gases, it is in the interest of the world community to clean the Niger Delta and dramatically the extractive practices. Reducing demand for oil through greater efficiency is the part other nations can play.
“Nigerians are corrupt because the system they live under today makes corruption easy and profitable. They will cease to be corrupt when corruption is made difficult and inconvenient”
–Oil: Prize or curse: CHIDI ACHEBE and PAUL R. EPSTEIN, Daily Champion [Nigeria] July 16, 2004. And Vanguard (Lagos) July 15, 2004 [via AllAfrica].
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