THE CREEKS ARE BEAUTIFUL IN NATURE

This is how the creek was before oil exploration


Creek Damage from oil exploration

The Niger Delta  is the largest mangrove swamp in Africa and the third largest in the world. Its dense forest and complex labyrinth of creeks and waterways breathes life into over 339 plant species and more than 100 species of birds and fish. Tall palm trees with thick branches stretch upward before bending to touch the water below. The natural wonder stretches for miles and miles, but today it’s only a fragment of what it once was.

A burgeoning population coupled with rapid urbanization has swallowed much of the mangrove, which is being reclaimed to create more habitable land. Meanwhile, multinational oil companies have dredged the swamp to build pipelines, disturbing the delicate saltwater and freshwater balance, eroding banks, and depriving the roots of plants and trees of vital nutrients. Oil spills have clogged the soil and contaminated just about every community in the Delta, contributing to myriad health problems, including cancer.

The list of environmental mishaps reads like a criminal record. Royal Dutch Shell, one of many multinational oil companies pumping crude from the troubled region, has admitted to 1,693 oil spills since 2007. (Advocacy groups like Amnesty International claim the figure is much higher.) In just one of those spills, in 2008, 100,000 barrels seeped into the Ogoni Land region of the Delta. Thousands of hectares of mangroves were damaged, and 69,000 people were affected. Four months later, Shell was responsible for another spill that further devastated Ogoni Land.

For the Niger Delta communities that rely on farming and fishing, the environmental damage has been catastrophic. All told, the United Nationssays it could take 25 to 30 years and at least $1 billion to clean up pollution from more than 50 years of oil operations here. But the government has done little to help the region bounce back.

Countless studies reveal that access to water, electricity, health facilities, jobs, and education remain limited. A 2006 report from the United Nations Development Programme highlights “administrative neglect, crumbling social infrastructure and services, high unemployment, social deprivation, abject poverty, filth and squalor, and endemic conflict.” The report goes on to call the Delta one of the world’s starkest examples of the “resource curse.”

Stop the destruction of our Land, we want to preserve our land for the next generation to see its beauty. we want to show off what we have to the rest of the world.

The new face of Development.