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Femi Folaranmi, Yenagoa
Archbishop of York, John Sentamu, has described the pollution occasioned by oil exploration and exploitation activities as a slow environmental genocide destroying lives and property in Bayelsa State.
Sentamu, who is also a member of the British parliament lampooned the international oil companies operating in the state for failing to uphold same standards they are operating elsewhere in the world in the devastated communities of Bayelsa.
Chief Press Secretary to the state governor, Fidelis Soriwei, in a statement, said the cleric made the remarks while presenting an interim report as the chairman of the Bayelsa State Oil and Environmental Commission.
He said organised theft on a regionally and nationally, on an unprecedented scale, is what is happening in Bayelsa and it is too weightless to describe the magnitude of the crime.
He said the multi-national oil firms had committed an outrageously unimaginable level of damage to Bayelsa and its people which should not be allowed to continue.
Sentamu, who noted that the commission had spent the past seven months conducting researches in all the eight local government areas of the state, described the level of degradation as serious and lamentable.
