Nigeria: Let’s Leave Oil in the Soil

Surveying the myriad problems behind the Nigerian state’s facilitation of unregulated oil and gas extraction, Nnimmo Bassey and Environmental Rights Action (ERA) demand that obscene oil company profits be used to clean up the environmental and social mess inflicted upon the Niger Delta population. Concerned about the government’s inability to tackle the problem of gas flaring, Bassey and the ERA propose a concerted endeavour to stop gas flaring, audit all oil spills and bring about a thorough clean-up of the region in order to detoxify the land once and for all. With a view to moving Nigeria away from its dependence on crude oil exports, Bassey and the ERA argue that offering new oil blocks should be resisted and oil kept in the soil.

As the Niger Delta boils and as Nigeria looks towards a bleak future with diminished oil revenues, the oil corporations operating in Nigeria continue to garner obscene profits. This happens because these corporations are not paying for the environmental costs of their operations and because ecological debts go unattended to. Local communities have shouldered the burdens while the corporations laugh all the way to the banks secured by their opaque joint venture agreements.

The trend of profits made by oil companies over the past couple of years is very telling. These companies reap profits in the face of whatever woes the world is confronted with.

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