KEY POINTS
- Bayelsa Governor Duoye Diri seeks FG’s intervention in tackling oil pollution, growing cancer index.
- Pollutions such as oil spill and risky environments have paralyzed the state economy and created a health disaster.
- Governor Diri presents the Bayelsa Oil and Environment Commission report and calls for the implementation of the report.
Bayelsa State Governor Duoye Diri has called on President Bola Tinubu to intervene in the environmental crises devastating the state which he said have brought economic activities to a halt.
While addressing state house correspondents after a meeting at the Presidential Villa in Abuja on Tuesday, Diri said oil poisoning has devastated the environment and claimed many lives through unfamiliar diseases in Bayelsa state.
The destruction of the environment and health emergency
Governor Diri went further to relate the effect of the pollution caused by the activities in the oil sector with the growing cases of health complications among the people of Bayelsa, particularly cancer.
He blamed these vices to the archaic refineries that most of the oil firms managing the area utilize which have been replete with oil leakages and pollution.
He condoled that matters concerning cancer were almost considered a normal thing in Bayelsa state adding that the situation called for federal intervention immediately.
Diri also brought forward the Bayelsa Oil and Environment Commission report which could account to the environmental degradation by operation oil production.
It recommended, avoidable measures aimed at minimising the adverse effects on environment and standard life for the people of bayelsa state as part of recommendations highlighted in the report commissioned by his immediate past administration represented by senator Henry Seriake Dickson.
To fix system problems that have been around for years, Diri urged the government to apply these recommendations.
Calling for support to civil structures and appreciation
Aside from noting the environmental effects on the state, Governor Diri called on the President to consider rehabilitation of the dilapidated East-West road infrastructural which was gabarding the development of the state’s economy.
In a report from Vanguard, the governor also appreciated Tinubu for placing people from Bayelsa in strategic national posts within the Federal Civil Service, including the Head of Service of the Federation.
However, in accepting these appointments, Diri noted that Bayelsa and the Niger Delta, in general, has been Barclay’s resource endowment zone for Nigerian oil wealth since the first discovery of crude oil in Oloibiri, Bayelsa state, Nigeria.
Nevertheless, he pointed out that it has not been receiving commensurate value addition on the resources, with a desire for increased federal focus on the development of the region.
