Ensure Safety Standard – Minister tells Oil Companies (5/8/08)

The Minister for Environment, Housing and Urban Development Halima Tayo Alao has urged oil companies operating in the Niger Delta region to ensure effective, regular environmental, and clean up exercise as a way of checking environmental degradation.

While on a courtesy visit to the Acting Governor of Cross River State, Hon. Francis Adah, shortly after declaring open a three day Stakeholders Consultative Workshop on Oil and Gas organized by National Oil Spill Detection and Response Agency (NOSDRA) of the Ministry in Calabar, Monday, Alao said that oil spill is an ecological problem to the environment and must be handed with utmost efficacy.

Alao also warned that oil companies should not lose sight of the fact that while exploring for their wealth there is always a devastating damage caused to the environment during these activities which they most look into.

She raised the hope that the workshop, which drew stake holders from the sector, was organized to appraise the damages done to the environment with a view to proffer lasting solutions and urged stake holders to collaborate with the Ministry for it to be able to execute its lofty programmes.

On the issue of erosion, which she noted was a natural phenomenon, the Minister disclosed that between 1999 and 2007, a total of N3.8b ecological fund was disbursed to Cross River to check its menace, adding that the Federal government was willing to undertake any justified ecological programme in the state.

Halima Alao pointed out that currently, her Ministry is undertaking a forestation programme in the northern part of the state for research activities and called on relevant agencies in the state to key into the programme.

In his response, the Acting Governor of Cross River State, Hon. Francis Adah who was represented by the Secretary to the State Government, Barrister Fidelis Ugbo, called on the Federal Government as a matter of urgency, to come to the rescue of the state from the erosion threat along the gate way to Calabar which he noted may also cut off electricity power and transportation.

He maintained that another area of urgent intervention by the Federal Government is the Biase landslide which requires a total relocation of the affected community by the State Government in other to save their lives.

Adah maintained that with over 600 erosion sites across the state, two major drains need to be established as the first step to tackling it and sued for support from the Federal Government.

On the issue of sustaining a green and clean environment, he said that the State has a role to play in ensuring that every inhabitant is accommodated without harm, stressing that the challenge it faces is how to manage its forest reserves which prompted it to host an Environment Summit with the aim of moving beyond waste management and to addressing other environmental problems.

The Acting Governor disclosed that Government has adopted environment management policy to form part of the school curricular to inculcate environmental consciousness in the younger generation and promised to collaborate with the Federal Ministry of Environment, Housing and Urban Development in ensuring that its proposed environmental practice bill to the National Assembly is fully implemented to the letter when it becomes law.

Government House Press